DIY Farmhouse Dining Room

by Annie Holmes on Apr 2, 2018 (updated Jan 22, 2024) Comments Off

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An affordable DIY Farmhouse Dining Room

An affordable DIY Farmhouse Dining Room! How we turned an ordinary house into a stylish farmhouse on a budget!

An affordable DIY Farmhouse Dinning Room! How we turned an ordinary house into a stylish farmhouse on a budget!

Mr. Maebell and I started house hunting in 2015 and almost a year later we drove to the top of a long driveway high in the Tennessee foothills and I instantly fell in love. Right there, in the middle of nowhere sat the cutest little farmhouse I’ve ever seen. Before I ever stepped foot inside I knew it was the house. THE house where the Christmases would be, the house where the shop would grow, the house that would be OUR home. I was smitten, and he knew it.

36 hours later the house was under contract and 24 days later it was all ours. That was May 2016 and a lot has happened in the time since. Here is a little peek of what the house looked like when we moved in.

Before

Color everywhere. The previous owners had a pretty eclectic style (that is an understatement) the house was painted 10 very bright, unusual shades of color when we moved in and my neutral loving soul just couldn’t handle it. If you stood in just the right spot downstairs you could see FIVE different colors (bright red, teal blue, deep purple, chocolate brown, and gray blue)

The Plan

This is the vision I had for the room. Basically TONE IT DOWN! I wanted a neutral, refined space. We planned to prime and shiplap the walls. The ceilings are 9 feet tall downstairs, but with the dark colors the space felt very small and choppy. I wanted the shiplap to draw your eyes up and utilize the ceiling height. Aside from the color in the room I really wanted to choose furniture that actually fit the space. The previous owners had a small dinning table and a caddy corner shelf and it seemed that a lot of the room wasn’t being utilized.

With a game plan we got to work! The first thing of course, was to take care of the walls. We primed the walls with drywall primer (cheaper and does a great job covering bold colors like this red) I knew we were covering the walls with shiplap, but if we didn’t repaint you would see the red through the spacing.

Progress

This is the opposite side of the dining room, which is the entry way. The plan was to shiplap this area and add a fun light fixture. The previous owners had painted this side of the room dark brown, while the dining room side was dark red. I just wanted to simplify it so it looked like one cohesive space.

An affordable DIY Farmhouse Dinning Room! How we turned an ordinary house into a stylish farmhouse on a budget!

Excuse the mess, this is real life here. Ha!

So here you start to see things take shape. The shiplap was installed and primed. A new fun pendant was installed in place of the builders grade flush mount light.

On the opposite side did the same thing. This was a slow process because of course, nothing was quite square so we had to work hard to make sure each row of shiplap was placed evenly.

You can really start to see it coming together! This is before we filled any holes, seams or added any trim work. The walls had primer only in this photo and we hadn’t replaced the brown light fixture, but at least the rooms were all one color!

As the shiplap got closer to being done we purchased an unfinished sliding barn door to put between the dining room and the kitchen. Now this addition wasn’t 100% necessary, we didn’t NEED a door here but I really liked the idea of breaking up the space and adding a bit of interest to the room. I loved how the white walls paired with the raw wood in the chandelier so I decided to add the barn door to match.

And just like that! We had a whole new dinning room! The space feels twice as big because of the pretty white walls and the barn door adds such a cool element. I actually picked a different light fixture than I had planned, Mr. Maebell convinced me that the distressed wooden light and the white shiplap wouldn’t be enough contrast and I think he was totally right. When this light came in I really didn’t care that much for it, but after it was installed I was in love. I really love that the color of the wood on the barn door and the light works so well together and the industrial feel the metal hardware adds.