Farmhouse Dining Room Restoration: Before and After

We officially finished restoring the first room in our fixer upper farmhouse!  We have been working on the dining room since July and it is finally complete.  Check out the before, during, and after pictures of this room!

Before:

The dining room was by far in the roughest shape compared to the other rooms in our fixer upper farmhouse.  It had a water damaged ceiling, crumbling plaster walls, brown wall patches made from unidentifiable material, layers of dirt and dust, and old flooring that had seen better days.

The pictures below show what the dining room looked like just after buying our house.  You can see a full video tour of our farmhouse HERE.

During:

The original plan was just to paint the room to make it look nice.  That all changed once I started picking at an old water damaged spot in the ceiling.  Picking quickly turned into a large hole, which ultimately ended up in taking the entire drop ceiling out.  To our surprise we found an old tin ceiling, similar to the one in our master bedroom.  Unfortunately we were’t able to salvage it as a ceiling due to the missing moulding and several rusted pieces.  I did salvage as many pieces as I could to use for other projects.

Underneath the old tin ceiling was a pot of gold.  Hidden away for all these years were the original beams from when the house was built in the 1800’s.  I’ve never seen anything like them. Kurt and I both agreed that we wanted to leave these beams exposed.

The walls were in really rough shape, but ripping the room down to the studs was’t in our budget or timeframe.  Instead I decided to plank the walls to create a shiplap look.  I used 4×8 underlayment boards from Lowes, ripped down to 6 inch strips.  At $15 a board, this method was the most timely and cost effective way to restore the walls in this space.

 

Paint made all the difference in this room.  I used the same colors that I used in our stairway.  The shiplap is Sherwin Williams Pure White and the wainscoting and trim is SW High Reflective White.

After:

The finished room still stops me in my tracks.  This space has come so far.  My favorite part about this room is how much the original details stand out.  The beams, trim, wainscoting, and pocket doors are the highlights.

Unfortunately, the wood floors were unable to be refinished.  In attempt to salvage them, we decided to paint them with Behr Porch and Floor paint.  The color is Edgecomb Gray by Benjamin Moore.

I also used Citristrip Paste to remove the red varnish from the original pocket doors.  I love how they match the wood tones in the beams now.

The chandelier was a thrift store find for under $10.  I have been saving it for years with hope that we would one day have a farmhouse to hang it in.  I think this chandelier was made for this room.

Next Steps:

It’s finally time to decorate!  I am so excited to complete this room by adding special pieces back into this space; like our 7 foot farmhouse table.  I will be back soon to share part 2 of this reveal.  Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today to take a look back at the process of this room.  For more behind the scenes and updates be sure to follow along on Instagram as well!

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