DIY Rustic Dining Room Table Reveal!

Finally, the time has come where I can reveal the finished product of the table hubby built from scratch for our dining room! He finished it just in time for my bff's bridal shower, but I had to wait for our chairs to come in before the big reveal. We're SO happy with it and I'm still in awe that the crazy man I married could build this with his own hands, and for under $150 at that!

I showed him some pictures of what I wanted - a rustic Restoration Hardware inspired, dark plank table with cream linen upholstered chairs. From Restoration Hardware, the tables I liked ranged from $2,600 to $3,600 - and that wouldn't include the chairs - woof. Plus, they were all 7-9 feet long.  As I wrote about here, we've had quite the struggle finding a dining room table long enough. Our dining room is 18 ft long, which we loved about the floorplan, but posed a challenge in terms of being able to find a table that could fill the space. To allow room on the ends for chair movement and walking past, we determined we would need an 11 ft table. We looked in probably 15 furniture stores (not to mention TONS of places online) and didn't find a single 11 ft table. The general market size cap seems to be about 9 ft, since most dining rooms are no longer than 12 feet. The difficulty finding the right sized table, our love for DIY'ing, and the cost savings benefits were enough to persuade us to try to DIY - and I'm so glad we did! Here is our dining room/empty void BEFORE the table:

We picked out the wood for the project ourselves from a local lumber dealer. Ross drove us out there and I was so surprised and pleased to have ended up less than two miles from where I grew up in Bahama, NC. So not only is this table special because it was handcrafted by hubby, it was also made from Laurel Poplar planks from the exact zip code that I came from! Here's the raw product, still covered in bark. :)

The table top is two inches thick (a thickness I don't think we would have been able to find at a home improvement store) and the base is 3 inches thick made from one massive 3 inch thick plank. We paid only $75 for all of the wood we needed to make the table, which felt like a STEAL, especially for an upgraded type of wood like poplar.

It took hubby about a week flanked by two full weekends to construct it. He started with the top. That took the biggest chunk of time. Then, I drew on posterboard the shape I wanted for the bases and he used a jigsaw to trace them. We spent a lotttttt of time sanding - like days. Hubby did most of this but I helped for a couple hours. Then, he stained the whole thing. We chose Minwax Wood Finish Stain and Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane because of the dark, natural look. It was less than $25 for the stain and polyurethane combined.

Ross did a beautiful job staining. It really brought out the beauty of the poplar. Lastly, our fabulous neighbors helped him carry it in (thanks Tim and Mike!). It's incredibly heavy. While he was working on the table, I ordered sconces and mirrors for the dining room wall and after months and months of chair browsing, finally bit the bullet on some budget friendly chairs that had the tufted linen upholstered look I wanted. Here are some photos of the work in progress:

And here's the finished product! It's an 11 foot, dark, plank style table that seats 12 comfortably. We still haven't found the right end chairs (I'm thinking the same color linen but larger, monogrammed and wingback), but the side chairs fill it out well.

 

And because I just couldn't help myself, I also did a sample place setting in our formal and casual china. I love both with the table!

How amazing is my hubby? I hope this thing stays in our family for generations (I hope our kids and grandkids have big dining rooms or open floorplans!) and that our children are proud of what daddy could do with his own hands. <3  Kinda cheesy, but I love everything about this table!

Thanks for reading barbies! xox!

UPDATE: we later completely redesigned the color motif in the dining room, doing a custom gray diamond paint job, upgrading the chandelier and doing wainscoting. Check it out here.

Submitted to: http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net/

Like the BDH Blog on Facebook!

Great news barbies: the BDH blog now has a facebook fan page!

You can like it by clicking here:

https://www.facebook.com/BDHblog

Like other bloggers, we'll use the facebook page to announce new blog updates, share BDH photos and projects and do fun giveaways!

Thanks for liking us! xox!

Updates from around the BDH!

Hello Barbie dolls!

Now that all of our summer travel, volunteering and work madness is behind us, hubby and I have finally had some spare time to pour some love into the BDH. We've bought a few things, painted, tweaked and crafted. Here are some of the photos from our updates. I'm also adding them to the home tour page.

I've added vintage Barbie art and four hooks on one of the walls in my clothing closet to display my current favorite outfits. The art was REALLY expensive if you were going to buy it piece by piece, so I instead ordered a vintage Barbie art calendar for $10 and just trimmed down the pictures from 12x12 to 8x11!

We bought this cute black and white trellis rug for the sitting area in the kitchen.

We added this iron scroll to our oven hood. It was slightly too tall, so of course hubby took it into the garage and was able to neatly make it smaller. He amazes me!

Our two night stands in the master bedroom are done as far as décor goes. This is his. Mine is identical but with a photo of him from our wedding. <3

A photo of our master taken from the couch in our master sitting room:

A new pink rug and rearranged furniture in the formal living room:

Here's another sneak peak at our new 11 ft dining room table that hubby made with his bare hands last week out of laurel poplar wood. Post on the table and full reveal coming soon!

We made this 4 ft wide canvas art for above our guest bedroom for under $10! I bought some fabric on clearance then had hubby build a cheap wooden frame (it took under 15 minutes) and just staple gunned the fabric to the frame, and voila! We now have art that takes up a large chunk of that wall and also is perfectly on theme with the pink and gray room.

More photos of our downstairs guest bedroom.

Over the summer we've completely revamped the previously tan and empty library. We painted it dark brown, added curtains sewn by my mom and bought this oversized upholstered chair from Overstock.com. We also added the stately gold frames to the walls. We also ordered and installed the 2 inch wooden blinds for all three windows. They were pricey, but definitely add to the room's dark, old world library effect.

That's all for now in terms of updates barbies! Check back soon for a guest post by Ross on how he built our new, 11 ft Restoration Hardware inspired dining room table from scratch in a week for under $200!

xox barbies!

Great Gatsby / Roaring 20's Party for my BFF!

Hello barbies!

You've all heard all about my beautiful best friend and the formal living room we built onto at our house with the plan of hosting a fabulous bridal shower for her there. I wrote about it and our plans to host the big shower here and here. Well, the day finally came and it was a great time! The bride's friends, family and future in-laws were so much fun and all dressed fully on theme. She and the groom got tons of beautiful gifts too.

The bride wanted a Great Gatsby themed couples shower, so that's what we did. We went with gold, silver, black and white to keep with the Golden Era vibe. We also used a lot of pearls and feathers.

We had spare boas, pearls, hats, headpieces, rings and of course, red lipstick, for guests coming without enough Gatsby attire (although hardly anyone needed it). I also added the "Doll up your outfit darling" sign in a pearl frame.

I made the giant dice pictured by buying 3 moving boxes from Lowes, then wrapping them with inside out wrapping paper (I had to go through my entire collection to find one without hallmark logos or grids on the inside!). Then I used my anchor mixing bowls to trace tons of circles on black paper, then cut them and taped them to the boxes. These were used in our kitchen, which was a casino themed area meant to give the guys a masculine place to play poker while we ladies engaged in some of the girlier shower traditions. I also made the large aces out of poster board and had hubby cut me a piece of mdf so that I could make a casino sign. Lastly, I framed pictures of 1920's era guys playing casino games.

I also made a gold flag banner with their wedding date on it and silver/black and white flag banners with their names on them. The gift table was a black and white overlay, with a gold glittery sign I made that said "something new."

The food was almost all served on our new, 11 ft, Restoration Hardware inspired dining room table (yay!) which hubby built from scratch by himself with locally harvested poplar wood from my nearby home town, Bahama, NC. More on the table in my next post (hubby is guest blogging and will explain step by step how he made it!). The bride's mother, future mother-in-law and groom's restaurant (yes - he owns two fabulous Italian restaurants) made and brought SO much delicious food, which was so helpful. I only bought a few finger foods, made fruit cups and made chocolate and lemon pudding cups. The moms and the restaurant were the bomb!

All in all, it was a great couples shower filled with lovely guests and the world's prettiest bride. Seriously, could my BFF be any more gorgeous?

For any of you who might be thinking about hosting your own Great Gatsby, Roaring 20's or prohibition-era themed party, I think the biggest thing to remember is to keep things as glamorous as possible. It was an era of extravagance - the Great Depression hadn't hit yet and Americans were living large. It was also a time of wild, decadent in-home parties because of prohibition. For fashion inspiration, look no further than my best friend: lace, pearls, feathers, beading, sequins and headpieces are all a must. For men, think suspenders, bow ties, tuxedos (if after 6), slicked back hair, trench coats and hats. Keep the champagne flowing and I'm sure it will be a success!

Thanks so much for reading barbies and remember to stay tuned for a blog post penned by my hubby on how he built our gorgeous, new Restoration Hardware inspired table with his bare hands in under a week for under $200! I'm so proud of him and still just ecstatic to have a dining room! The chairs should arrive this week, so hopefully we'll have a before and after dining room post by this weekend!

Stay fabulous barbies! xox