Dining Room Refresh

Currently in a season of life where I want to ditch all the furniture in my house and start from scratch. Can anyone else relate? Well sense that isn’t realistic, I decided a mini house refresh would give me the satisfaction I’m looking for, and won’t have my husband filling for divorce. When we bought our house almost every piece of furniture was gifted to us by our family. We were so blessed to be able to furnish our entire home without going out and spending a ton of money, but I am ready to start changing things up a little. I love what we have done with our home so far and I can’t wait to keep adding to it!

Farmhouse Table and Benches

I get pretty overwhelmed when I think about re-doing every room in the house, so I decided to break it down room by room. First up is our dining room. A few months back I was scrolling through Pinterest and found a beautiful DIY farmhouse table and benches. I figured it would be a long shot, but I brought the idea up to Jeff about building our own table instead of buying and after reallllly breaking it down for him and explaining we could build one for about $200 versus buying for about $1500 he quickly became on board. So that weekend we headed to Home Depot, and by we I mean he, to purchase all the supplies. It ended up only costing us about $100.

We used these plans to build the table and it took Jeff about two days. They were very thorough and easy to follow along. They also included the plans for the benches as well. We opted out of chairs and Jeff made two benches to go with the table.

After the table and benches were done it was my turn to take over. I knew I wanted a natural finish, so I ended up using the same brand stain as the plans we followed but opted for the dark walnut color instead. First, I started out by using my electric sander and 120 grit sandpaper to lightly sand the benches and the table. After, I wiped down the surface of the benches and table to remove all the dust. Now comes the fun part; it was time to start staining. I poured a little stain onto a plate and used a clean cloth to dip into the stain and then rub onto the wood. I also used a paint brush when I needed to get into small grooves with the stain. I was careful to not saturate the cloth/paintbrush as I wanted these to look natural and light in color. After I was done staining I let it dry for four hours. Then I took the sander to them again and lightly sanded. This helped give me the natural weathered look I was going for. Once the staining was complete it was time to add a protective coat of polyurethane. We plan on having a piece of glass cut to cover the top of the table to make cleaning up after meals easier, but I still wanted to put a thin layer of poly to really protect the wood.

• 

Shiplap Wall

Now that the table and benches were done I was onto my next project. We have a huge wall in our dining room that has always given me grief. It is so big and nothing seems to take up enough space when I hang it up. I initially thought about adding board and batten to three fourths of the wall to help take up space and add texture. I loved the idea but wasn’t sure how it would look. After staring at the space long enough and realizing you can see our foyer from our dining room I thought it would look good to continue the shiplap. It would add cohesiveness to the rooms and give me the texture I was looking for.

Jeff headed back to Home Depot to grab sheets of plywood and nails for the nail gun prior to us getting started. Fun fact: we always use plywood as opposed to real shiplap. It is way cheaper and gives you the same look. Before we could start with the shiplap we needed to remove the chair rail that was on the wall. Once it was removed I lightly sanded the area where the chair rail was to ensure the board that covered it would lay flat.

• 

• 

Now its time to cut our planks and start adding them to the wall. Jeff used a table saw to measure and cut the wood. Just as we did in the foyer, we started at the top of the wall and nailed our first board down. Since our wall is longer then the length of a sheet of plywood we were going to have two planks going across each row. This was going to leave us with a seam, which isn’t a huge deal, but we didn’t have a seam in the foyer wall so I didn’t want one on this wall. Ill show you my hack for covering seams later in the post.

• 

After the entire wall was planked it was time to cover those nail holes. I like to do this so when I paint you cannot see them. I use DryDex nail hole filler and a popsicle stick to fill and smooth out the holes. I also used the filler to conceal the seams. Using a popsicle stick I added a thin layer of filler to the seam and smoothed it out. It worked perfect. After all the hole and seams have been filled I took 120 grit sandpaper and did a light sanding over anywhere that had filler.

• 

Finally it is time to paint. I used Glidden Premium Interior Paint and Primer in semi-gloss pure white. It took three coats to cover the wood.

The Finished Product

• 

• 

xoxo