From Shabby to Chic: Dining Room Buffet Makeover

As we slowly, and I mean slowly, renovate our half-demolished 1960s house, the dining room has been a particularly hard space to wait for. It’s so functionally important, and one of the quirks of our house when we first moved in was that it didn’t have a designated eating area. They did have one of those Grandma-esque colored glass shades (love you, Grandma) over the corner of the carpeted living room, which must have been where they set up a dining table. But the area we’re converting into the dining room was, I assume, their formal sitting room, decked out in wall-to-wall pink (carpet included), and heavy floral drapes. (Check it out. Don’t be jealous). 😉

So a project of paramount importance has been the conversion of the pink living room into the designated dining room. This is taking quite some time, however, because we have drywall to repair and that’s the kind of fixer upper project we can never really get to. We also have to refinish the real wood floor, which has seen better days and has a different finish than the new engineered hardwood floors we’re installing elsewhere in the house.

In the meantime, I’m trying to patch together a makeshift eating area for us (so we can graduate from the coffee table in the living room). I painted and decorated the three walls which aren’t currently demolished and bought a 6ft plastic fold-out table for interim use. We also don’t yet have ceiling lighting in this room, so we’ve been using a rather hazardous halogen floodlight to illuminate our evenings. It’s not that glamorous, but it’s working for now. Make the most of what you have, right?

In the midst of all this hodge podge functional living, I have felt a need for a piece of furniture that could store and organize my excessive collection of dishes and tableware. A behemoth 8 foot china cabinet wasn’t going to work in our smallish space, so I went about looking for something that could function as a sideboard or buffet. I found this piece on a yard sale page for $40 – which was doable for real wood (although free-on-the-side-of-the-road is always my favorite price point).

As you can see, it was in generally poor shape, which is what I actually wanted, since I was furniture-shopping with a refinishing project in mind. It was the wrong stain finish, had some hardware missing, and needed some serious TLC on the top piece.

First order of business was to sand and stain the top piece. It was actually, as I discovered upon inspection at home, a piece of veneer! But it was real wood veneer, so there was enough of a wood layer there to carefully sand and refinish it (much like engineered hardwood floors).

I tackled that immediately, even as the sun was setting and the mosquitoes were emerging, because this piece was heavy, and I knew if we lugged it inside we weren’t going to drag it back out again just to work on it. Seize the refinishing moment!

I decided to use Varthane’s stain in Carrington, because it’s the stain color I’ve been using for my plate shelf projects (post on that coming soon), and also the one I plan to use on our 8-foot dining room table (when we ever get around to building it).

After sanding the other areas for better paint adhesion, we brought it inside. Sanding and staining are outdoor projects, but latex paint can happen anywhere. I put a few good coats of white satin Behr on there and waited patiently for my new brass pulls to come in the mail.

Next I set about to lining the shelves. I found this great Contact brand liners that are totally removable, and therefore crazy easy to work with. They didn’t come in a huge range of pattern options, but I was happy with this one I found at Target and felt it was in-keeping with the antiquey look of the overall house.

 

I love the contrast of the dark stain top and the bright, clean white base, and I plan to build a fireplace and mantel under the staircase with the same color scheme, so it should hopefully get really cohesive around here soon.

All in all, this came together pretty quickly (about two weeks). It was a great outlet for me in the evenings because, as I wait for bigger construction projects to progress, having little tasks and satisfying befores-and-afters to work on keep me feeling productive. Plus, I think I’m developing an addiction to sanding and staining things. Super satisfying. You should try it sometime!