dining room makeover…take 2

My dining room used to look like this:

Very basic. Very boring. I was just never really satisfied with how it looked. So I updated it a little this spring and it looked like this:

Plus I had the same dining room table. Which was a concern, because our table only had 4 chairs and we have 6 people (5 who eat with their mouth and therefore need a chair at the table). I always planned to find some cute chairs to add to the ends. I like the eclectic look. But nothing materialized from that thought, so when the opportunity came to take my grandparents’ old dining room table, I jumped at the offer.

So then I did some furniture rearranging and ended up with an old church pew, that belonged to mom and came out of my grandparents’ old church and my dining room looked like this on Monday:

After a shopping trip to Hobby Lobby and Jo-Ann Fabrics, my dining room now looks like this:

I made table runners out of brown and white damask fabric, backed in a heavier weight fabric (canvas or denim). I made a seat cushion for the church pew and made the 3 throw pillows. I think I’ll make one more of each pattern and put them all across the pew. I also made a new valance for the window over the kitchen sink out of the same fabric as the pew cushion.

I found the baskets for $5 each at Hobby Lobby. They had been $25 each. I love their clearance aisles!! I plan to use them to stash away gloves and hats and all those goodies that collect right by the door that leads to the garage.

I enjoy sewing, but I do not sew with a pattern. I’m sure Miss Wicke, my high school home-ec teacher would cringe at my unconventional methods!

If you read the post below, you can see that I was able to mark several things off my summer bucket list already! I hope you enjoyed seeing my dining room transformation. And now you can rest assured that everyone at our house has a place to sit to eat their dinner!

Today I’m linking up to Transformation Thursday at the shabby chic cottage.