Looking for inspiration on how to use vintage pieces in your home? I’m sharing my dining room, all of my vintage goodies, and how you can get the look too! Take the dining room tour!
Isn’t it fun to see inside people’s homes? I know I love it!! It doesn’t even matter if the home is empty! I can’t help it, I love looking at floor plans too. In this video you get to tour my dining room and get to see how we have used vintage items to fill our home.
There are a lot of family pieces in my dining room that I’m excited to share with you.
The Farmhouse Table
Let’s start with that dining room table. I have changed out my dining room table multiple times. We have had a drop leaf table, a round table, and now a table I made with my dad. The table is slightly too big for the space, but I don’t think I’ll be changing it out any time soon because it is great for our family of 5 and can even hold grandparents or the kids friends when they come over too.
My dad and I actually built this table years ago, but we had it in our basement for a long time. At some point we did a furniture shuffle. The drop leaf table that we started with in our dining room went to the basement and became the kids table. Actually it is still in the basement and desperately needs refinished. It became the kids “craft” table, so it is covered with paint strokes that didn’t stay on the paper, puff paint, glitter, anything and everything the kids did for fun growing up was done on that table.
Having a designated area for the kids to destroy was nice, they got to be creative and I didn’t have to worry all of the time about damaged furniture. So if you have little ones, I suggest making a dedicated “craft” or mess area!! It really did help them be creative and me be less stressed!
We also had a round table at one point that I had refinished the top and painted the bottom. It was a great table and the right size for the space, but as seems to happen with time, my wants and decor changed! This room used to be a sage green color and when I painted the room, hung new decor, and moved other furniture, I decided to also swap out the table. We brought this farmhouse table up from the basement and I actually refinished the round one AGAIN, but this time for my sister.
The farmhouse table that we now have was built in the basement by my dad and myself. He had this old barn door with white chippy paint on it and also had some 4 x 4 posts in his scraps. I convinced him to help me put the two together to make this table. I think it came together really nicely! I sealed the white chippy barn door with polyacrylic and sealed the legs with polyurethane. You can read about why I used different products HERE.
I love this table, however, food does get into the cracks of the table, so it is hard to keep clean. And, the table is just slightly too long for the space. Ideally I wanted to have chairs on each end, but because it’s so long we only move them to the end when we are feeding extra people. We are really lucky that the table will fit in our space and it’s all thanks to the double doors that open into the living room.
Seating
For the seating at our table I have just used random chairs that we had, keeping all of them different on one side and then using a farmhouse bench on the other side. The bench I got when I was out on a pick and the guy was taking me in all of his barns, sheds, rental properties, we literally went on an adventure! Then out in the middle of a cow field, he had a hunting cabin he would rent out. He took me on a tour and when I saw the bench, I knew I wanted it! It was a great purchase for $60! The side with the three chairs also has a unique story. One chair I rescued when we cleaned out my grandma Dooley’s house, one chair I rescued when we cleaned out my grandma Pat’s house, and one chair was from a set my mom bought me.
You know the drop leaf table I said we originally used? Well, it had came from an auction and had a set of chairs with it. We had used this table when we first got married and bought our first house. I had refinished the top of the table and recovered the chairs. Fast forward to this house and after kids, the chairs eventually needed recovered. This time I recovered them using old feed sacks. Most of the chairs went to the basement for the “craft” table, but I kept one in the dining room.
Using Architectural Salvage
Flanking the north window I have a couple of dressers or cabinets. I currently have two lower pieces that I can display on, but I have also had a tall cabinet in one spot. Having low pieces, allowed me to hang these arched windows with chippy paint! These are also actually from family. My aunt and uncle moved out of their farmhouse into a home they built and my cousin moved into the farmhouse. He has slowly been updating the farmhouse and eventually the windows got replace leaving a bunch of these old chippy arched ones!
My aunt and uncle wanted me to help them get rid of them, so I kept a couple for myself and sold the rest! I knew they would look great in this space on each side of my dining room window and then I placed some simple small wreaths in front of them with some twine. Underneath each window is a white chippy piece that is both great for function and storage, but also great for showing off some of my vintage pieces. On one side we have our coffee bar. This was a great decision…moving the coffee pot out of the kitchen and into it’s own area. We keep all of the mugs, coffee supplies, tea supplies, etc. in this dresser. Moving it freed up so much space in the kitchen and it’s in a very functional location.
The Rest of the Furniture
The dresser it is sitting on I purchased over the years, probably at an auction, but I can’t remember, and then painted the body of it white and distressed. I had it in an antique booth for awhile, but when it didn’t sell, I moved it home. It has been in our mudroom holding hats, gloves, and scarves and now it is in the dining room as a coffee station. On top of it we have our coffee pot sitting on a cutting board. I love layering with cutting boards. Check out a little example I give on layering HERE, and it just happens to be using cutting boards!
But, not only is the cutting board for looks, but it also serves a purpose. Coffee pots can get hot and you never know what it’s going to do to an old surface. I learned this the hard way on a piece, so now, I always use something under the coffee pot!
The coffee supplies we use every day are stored in this awesome green chippy bread box. It’s truly the perfect size for the items, because I buy the BIG 2lb tub of coffee, AND it’s green! Green is my FAVORITE color!
On the other side of the window we have a cabinet that I rescued from my grandma’s house. It was an old built in kitchen cabinet that got moved to the garage when they remodeled the kitchen. With the help of my carpenter we closed off one end. It had been built in and you could see all of the drawers from the side. The other end was probably also built in, but there are boards there that block the view of the drawers. The top of the cabinet is little wood strips like a butcher block cabinet and I love it.
On this cabinet I always have a big old white and green chippy paint scale, but everything else seems to rotate. It is literally the only place in the house that I feel frequently gets a new look! I also have a scale hanging off of the wall. The scale it’s self is a brass front dairy scale, but I’ve just married it to this unique cone shaped scale basket that was actually used to weigh chickens!
You’d stick their head in the skinny end and the wider end held their body while you weighed them. It’s very unique and I love it. Sometimes I hang greenery out of it, but most of the time I leave it empty. On the wall beside it is an old livestock sale bill that is mounted onto wood. My grandma had a couple of these. This one was in the barn and I took it, there was another one in the house that another family member kept.
On another wall I have created a chalkboard by painting a mirror with chalkboard paint! I took a big mirror and added painters tape around the edge. Then I painted and distressed the frame and covered the mirror with chalkboard paint. Around the mirror I hung some orphaned ironstone lids using plate hangers. These beauties were too beautiful to leave behind even though they didn’t have dish to go with. Hanging them on the wall seemed like the perfect solution!
And sometimes I cover up the chalkboard with this pussy willow wreath. I got this for myself one year when I was sat up at the Junk Jubilee Antique Show at the Iowa State Fair Grounds. It immediately called my name because my Grandma always used to have fresh cut pussy willow in the house! I just love this handmade wreath. You can get yourself one HERE.
Kitchen View
And then you have a view to the kitchen! This is the one wall we removed during the remodel. Read all about that HERE. I get a lot of comments about our bar stools! My welder friend, Flint, made these to sell and I knew I needed some! They are so unique! He said if I found the chairs, he would weld them for me, so I was on the hunt. I actually have 4 of these hotel chairs turned bar stools and they are all a little different, yet go together. I picked them out here and there, always trying to find rusty ones with green paint! They are definitely a conversation piece!
If you enjoy seeing my home, you can check out our upstairs bathroom HERE.
Get the look…
Another Arched Window
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