One Room House Tour: Dining Room

As promised, here comes the new dining room furniture, but I might as well show you the entire dining room since several people (OK, two) have asked to see more of my house. Brace yourself... this is a picture-heavy post.

We live in a cape-style home. The dining room is a separate jut off the back of the house. We moved into our current home a little over a year ago. The previous owners used this room as a family room (The room that they used as their dining room became our playroom). This is quite possibly my favorite room in the house. First, a view of each wall...



There's my little sewing corner.

Now a little more detail on some stuff around the room...

The two prints on the left side of the mantel are by a Vermont artist named Peter Huntoon (My husband and I both grew up in Vermont). The one on the far left is special because it's a painting of my father-in-law's feed store. The photograph on the far right pictures three men in front on a train engine. One of those men is my great-grandfather. The "Welcome Autumn" banner came from my printable.

My maternal grandparents were dairy farmers. They had cows until I was somewhere between 8 and 10 years old, then they retired. I grew up about five minutes from the farm, and boy do I wish my girls could experience growing up running through fields with cows, drinking milk right from the barn, and walking through the barn at feeding time. The sign over our mantel is something I found when we were cleaning out my grandparents' house. It was painted by the man who owned the farm before my grandparents. It's at least 100 years old. It is absolutely one of my favorite things that I own.

That enormous 25 gallon crock is the largest of several crocks that I own. I love them. They are sprinkled throughout my house. The toolbox also came from my grandparents' farm. Several years before my grandfather passed away he gave it to my husband. The old wooden level in front of it belonged to my husband's grandfather.

Now about that furniture... Last December we got a huge snow storm. After an hour and a half of shoveling snow, my husband hadn't gotten very far (we have a long driveway). I was over seven months pregnant, so I wasn't any help. He came in the house and said he wanted to go buy a snowblower. What's that I hear? Is that opportunity knocking? Well, a deal was struck that he could go buy the snowblower if I could get new dining room furniture within the next year. I figured we'd wait until after the baby was born to start looking, but we stumbled upon the table in January...

The top is made from reclaimed barn board. We fell in love with it immediately but didn't like any of the chairs that they had in the store. We decided to take the table anyway.

February came, a baby was born, and the chairs were put on the back burner for a while. About ten weeks ago we stopped back in at the store where we bought the table, but we still didn't see any chairs we liked. We started talking to the owner about what we were looking for, and she started showing us some pictures of chairs that she could order for us. We ended up ordering the chairs that day, and I am so glad they are finally here because I am loving them.

These are by far my favorite pieces of furniture in the house now.

The dining room is by no means "finished". I want to paint the walls... my entire house, aside from the girls' rooms and the guest room, is all the same color white. That's how it was when we moved in. And I want to get a braided rug for under the table. If I ever get around to any of this, I'll post an update. And I think I'll do more of these "One Room House Tour" posts on occasion so I can show you more of the house.

Hope you are still reading... there's a lot of stuff in this post. Thanks for stopping by today! On a side note... after I finished taking the pictures for this post, my three year old pointed to the trim boards in the dining room as said, "Don't they look shiny and clean?" To which I of course replied, "Yes, they're beautiful!" And she responded, "I just cleaned them with juice!" Reminds me of the time she told me she washed the windows with cheese. What's wrong with this kid?!