It’s almost hard to believe that it’s time for the Spring 2018, One Room Challenge™. This time my Dining Room is getting a Modern French Country makeover!

What is it you ask? The One Room Challenge™, currently in its thirteenth season, is a widely anticipated biannual event every April and October. Each round, twenty featured and guest (that’s me!) design bloggers take the challenge and transform a space. Every Wednesday, the designers document their process while sharing their sources and professional advice over the six weekly posts.

In the Fall, I tackled a MASSIVE makeover called “Taking the Man Out of the Man Cave” and you can read all about it and follow my journey by CLICKING HERE. The transformation was pretty extreme and a LOT of painting! Here is a before and after preview of just the office space. It was SO worth the hard work, exhaustion, and carpal tunnel because I get to work in this beautiful space everyday and feel inspired!

Setting the Table for a Bigger Life

Now it is time to makeover the dining room and today is day 1! The original inspiration behind the makeover started this Christmas.  After having more people than usual in the dining room, I realized that my 52 inch round table wasn’t going to cut it.  5 people and place settings felt very cramped.  In the future I expect my son to bring people home and I’d like to find a partner too!

Plus my kitchen table is my kitchen island, so having a proper table that seats 6 to 8 helps me invite more people for dinner! Literally, I am “setting the table” for a bigger life 🙂

Here is what my dining room looks like today. The robin’s egg blue has been an Instagram favorite, my credenza has been a love of 20 years with tons of storage, the chairs custom upholstered, and drapes custom made.

Yes, I could have just updated the table but after living with this look for 8 years it was time for a change!

This is what my dining room looked like in our previous house and here is a picture of the chairs before I had them upholstered.

To say I made the most of what I have is an understatement. That china cabinet now lives happily in my family room, the dining table is back with my ex-husband, the artwork now hangs in my laundry room, and some lucky soul at Habitat for Humanity got that rug 🙂

A True Design Challenge

The hardest part of this makeover is the fact that I have an open concept floor plan and I have COMMITTED to a cream and pale blue coastal theme in my home.  Even after 8 years I am not tired of this color palette.

If you would like to read about how to coordinate fabrics CLICK HERE.

In looking at the dining room and mapping out a new color scheme, I’m not able to do anything too radical since you see it from every room downstairs.

So the big challenge is to make it look DIFFERENT! Not to worry, I’ll be keeping that fantastic chandelier because I still love it.

Design Inspiration, Paris in Springtime

Back when my son was 12 we took a family trip to Paris, in April. I mean nothing is more beautiful! What captured my heart was the Eiffel Tower and the carousel that sits beneath it.  The carousel top reminds me of my chandelier and the colors are so beautiful with the gold highlights.

Next is the mood I want to recapture! Laying on the grass on a warm spring day staring at the Eiffel Tower, with my son. Honestly, it doesn’t get better than this 🙂

Then the carved stone facades are SO beautiful, with the creams and grays.

Color Palette

Color honestly has been the biggest struggle in planning this makeover, then the Annie Selke Spring catalog came to my home! There it was, right on the cover – the color palette I wanted for my dining room. A little white washed oak, a pale green blue, cream, and gold.

LOVELY…calm and serene just like I felt laying on that grass looking up at the Eiffel tower. The irony? It’s called JOIE DE VIVRE  🙂

Here is my vision for the color palette, where I will take the wall color lighter to account for the room facing north to brighten the space.

A little French Country Styling

So the dining room can be used for my informal gatherings, I’ll be taking a more casual approach. French Country is a great style bridge to incorporate my formal credenza with lighter pieces and colors.

If you’ve never visited Courtney’s French Country Cottage, you will not be disappointed.  I’ve met her in person and she is just as beautiful of a person (inside and out) as her home is.

On her site, I stumbled upon this picture and thought someday I want to paint a piece like this…she calls it Swedish Country, but I just call it beautiful!

Then I found this beautiful French Country dining room designed by Kathryn Ivey Interiors and said ah yes, I know the direction I want to take in my own dining room!

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Modern French Country

So I set the wheels in motion, pinned some French Country rooms CLICK HERE, visited some of my favorite design retail shops, walked Home Goods, played with paint samples, and combed the internet for my dining room makeover.

This will be a modern take on French Country, with some clean lines and gold metallic accents. New wall paint, painting the credenza and basically most everything will be updated to create a serene modern french country style. I’ve ALWAYS wanted a bar cart, so darn it I am getting one!

Product Wish List

MIRROR | PAINT |  SIMILAR CHANDELIER | DRAPERY HARDWARE | UPHOLSTERED CHAIR | PILLOWS | ARM CHAIR | ARTWORK| BAR CART | LAMPS | TABLE | RUG

Have fun following along and please visit the 20 Featured Designers and the Guest Participants. Thanks to Calling it Home and Linda Weinstein for creating this fun event that motivates us to makeover our spaces in 6 short WEEKS!

To follow along, please consider signing up for my email newsletter in the pop-up window!

Once a week, I’ll send you an email with all the details and posts from the previous week.  To follow along daily, I’ll be posting on Instagram and Facebook, so choose the social media platform that works for you. Easy peasy! Every little “like” makes me smile 🙂

I’m off to start the transformation…CLICK HERE FOR WEEK 2  WEEK 3, WEEK 4, WEEK 5, REVEAL

Porch Daydreamer

Tracey