We are over half way there for the One Room Challenge and I am busy doing more of the decor aspects of the room, and this week was chairs. The chairs have been my biggest up in the air item in the room, but I am so happy with where I landed. I decided on updating vintage cane dining chairs, and love the end results.

Vintage Cane Dining Chairs

I love cane webbing and really wanted to tie it into this room somehow, and my initial thought was the chairs – but I wants affordable and something not everyone has, so I landed on some vintage cane dining chairs and LOVE them.

The chairs I bought to update are mid century modern cane back and seat chairs that have the most gorgeous metal frame. I LOVE the overall look to the chairs, but also had no interest in the chrome with the room I was doing. I knew that a small update could make them the chairs of my dreams, and I was RIGHT!

One Room Challenge – Week 5

Before I get to the chair update, lets talk One Room Challenge. If you haven’t been following along – the One Room Challenge is essential a challenge for bloggers and influencers to finish a room in 8 weeks. Some are doing DIY, and some aren’t…but there are some pretty amazing spaces happening.

You can check out the other participants here, and check out my progress here, or on Instagram (@arinsolange) in my ORC highlight bubble.

Next week will be lighting, followed by 2 weeks of styling the space on the walls and the smaller aspects…and then I WILL BE DONE!

Updating Vintage Cane Dining Chairs

This was a super easy project….as long as you can find the chairs, BUT if you love the look I also found some great chairs you can buy new and give the same look to, so I will link those below.

Supplies:

Below is a list of the supplies you will need – it isn’t much!

• Chairs – clearly mine are vintage, but here are some very similar ones.
• Painters tape
• Rubnbuff in color Grecian Gold – you will need about a tube a chair
• Black spray paint. I used this one and HIGHLY recommend it. It is by far the best spray paint we have ever used.

Directions:

The directions for this are SO EASY. Because the paint is a chalk paint it takes a lot of the work of sanding out of things.

1. Remove the seat back and seat from the chair.
2. Using painters tape you need to cover ALL of the cane on the front and back, and top and bottom of the seats.
3. Spray paint the wood portions of the seat and back, and while that is drying its time to rubnbuff.
4. For the rub n buff – you have to do lots of thin coats. Using a paper towel rub in some of the rub n buff and let it sit. The first coat or two will look like you did NOTHING, but it will layer on. After 4 or so layers you will have perfect gold legs.

That is really it. This was a one day project for us, and the longest part of it was the painters tape. The end result was GORGEOUS and exactly what I was looking for in terms up updating something old to be more modern.

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Hopefully you love our updated vintage cane chairs and feel ready to do the same to some chairs to make them perfect for you. Be sure to follow me on Instagram (@arinsolange) and leave any questions you have in the comments below.

I can’t believe we are finishing out the third week of the One Room Challenge! I wanted to share where I am at in the room, and my plans for this next week.

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Week 3 One Room Challenge

Week 3 was a TRUE CHALLENGE. One reason it is so fun to do something like this with a time challenge is because it pushes you to move forward with a project even when there are busy seasons in life

October for us is jam packed with 3 birthdays, lots of Halloween prep and so much else, and it tends to make the month CRAZY over here. Because of that we had a little bit of delay on getting this room looking perfect, but these weekly updates kept me going forward!

This week was our big wainscoting week, as well as final decision making week, so I could make orders of everything we needed in the room. So that is what I will be sharing with you this week!

What’s the One Room Challenge?

Before I get to the updates for the week – I wanted to share what the challenge was one more time as well as show you have to follow my progress.

This blog post shares much more about what the challenge is, and you can find the other participants here.

I obviously set out to update our dining room for this 8 week challenge, and you can track the progress on Instagram in my ‘ORC’ highlight, as well as on my blog here.

Wainscoting the Walls

This is not your tutorial…maybe this week that will happen. Maybe it won’t ha. But none the less IT DID HAPPEN. And it is SO GOOD. I have been back and forth on ‘how much’ to do in this dining room. It is open to the rest of the house, but still definitely framed out to be it’s own room as well.

When a room is open, you have to be more careful not to over do it in terms of being bold..because no one wants to look at 400 things as once. I also think it was a room that was dying for a bit of romance and elegance, but know that too formal isn’t our style….so we will tone that down with the details.

We went with a fairly traditional chair rail with wainscoting in this space because we already have some chair rail through the main floor that is original so I wanted to play off of that.

The trim is UP. But now it needs to be caulked and painted…so this next week this room should look a whole lot cleaner.

Final Room Choices

Now that the wainscoting is up, 90% of the purchases and decisions have been made for the room so the next few weeks will be more assembly than major DIY’s.

Below you can see the final choices I made, and shop them if you are interested. One thing I went back and forth on in the bringing stages was whether or not to add a bench in the bay window. I decided NOT to. That isn’t to say I will never do that down the road in this space, but for now I loved the idea of the long drapes.

The other decision I went back and forth on was the ceiling. I actually ordered tin ceiling tiles thinking that was going to be my plan, but as of today I decided not to.

I know I am going to get some flack on that. Because honestly…lots of you have been around since this dining room, and loved the bold! I TOO LOVE BOLD this old home…it has so much fighting for attention that is so deserving.

If we didn’t have big bold stairs I would likely not worry about the ceiling too much, but I think allowing the wainscoting be the only bold architectural element is the right choice.

Final Mood Board

Below is the final mood board for the dining room. I am 100% on everything aside from the chairs – those are a maybe.

Shop the Items Above

• Curtains – I am torn between some from IKEA and Amazon – I will let you know where I end up
• Gold Curtain rods – these are the same as the ones from Avé’s room
• Vintage mirror
• Light Fixture
• DIY dining table and bench – see my tutorial here
• Rug
• Chairs – this is my up in the air item. If I do them I will rub n buff the legs gold.
• Black sconces – I love how small these are
• Framed photo from Minted.

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Hopefully you love the progress this room is making! Be sure to pin the photo below for later, and I hope you continue to follow me on Instagram (@arinsolange) for the rest of the progress.

We are already on week 2 of the One Room Challenge, and I am taking on our dining room. I knew one of the things I for sure wanted to do in this space was update our dining table with a more modern dining table – so I wanted to share this super easy DIY that can be done with basically no tools!

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One Room Challenge – Week 2

Incase you missed last weeks post, you can check out this post for my inspiration on our dining room update that I have planned for the One Room Challenge.

Essentially in this challenge participants will take on one room in their home over the course of 8 weeks and give it a full face lift. Some will be big some small, but it is a great way to cheer others on.

Our dining room was a blank slate and I have been wanting to give it the love it deserves, so for this challenge that is exactly what is happening.

DIY Modern Dining Table

We are trucking along with the biggest DIY in the room today, which was a new dining room table. After we built my friend Val a table this summer, I knew I wanted to update our own table. Her design was GORGEOUS, but the legs were A LOT of work, and that was daunting for many of you in terms of a DIY.

Because of that I wanted to see if I could come up with a DIY dining table that would require very little in terms of tools, and be ‘easy’ for anyone to recreate.

I love modern design, and to mix that into our very old and vintage home, so I knew that having a modern table in the space, with more vintage bones would end up being the perfect look for us. This blog post will walk you through how to make this dining table, and you will have to follow along on Instagram and my blog to see how the room comes together around it.

Building a DIY Table

Like I said before – this is not my first table DIY – I did a DIY dining table this summer, and also built a DIY outdoor table a few years ago that has gone bananas on Pinterest.

Building a DIY table doesnt have to be hard, but there are things to keep in mind when you are doing one, no matter what design you go with.

1. You want to stick to one kind of wood. Different Wood will take stain differently, so sticking with one kind of wood will give you a better end result.
2. Getting straight lumber that is in good shape is important. Take each board out and inspect them before you buy them. The extra few minutes at the store will make you thankful!
3. Factor tools into the cost and design you go with. For instance – this DIY Modern dining table costs a little more in supplies than others, but there are very few tools needed, so if you don’t have many tools, you won’t need to add that to your cost.

Supplies for Modern Dining Table DIY

Below is what you need in terms of supplies. For us we tend to find the best lumber close to us at Menards, but Lowes, Home Depot, or other local places are great too!

This is also based on an 8 foot long, 4 foot wide table. The width is much wider than average, but we like having a wide dining table. You can adjust the lumber choices if you don’t want those measurements.

• [6] – 16x1x8 foot pine boards
• [26] 24 inch wood Rounds
• [24] 18 inch wood rounds
• Wood glue – lots of it
• Kreg Jig and Scews – you could skip this step if you don’t own one.
• Sander – electric would be good
• Wood filler
• Stain of choice – I went with
• Wood Conditioner
• Polyurethane – water based
• Screws for connecting wood rounds – we used 2 inch
• Screws for connecting the base to the table top – 1.5 inch
• Drill
• Larger Clamps – we used these large ones but you could do smaller clamps at the seems
• Small Clamps

Supplies for Matching Bench

If you want to do a bench with the table top the following supplies are needed. I am not listing things like tools and screws because you should have those for creating the table. This is simply ADDITIONAL items.

• 12 inch wood rounds
• Jigsaw
• [2] 1x16x 8 foot pine boards

How to Make your DIY Modern Dining Table

Alright now to how to make this! This is easily a one weekend project and takes very few tools.

Assembling the Tabletop

Your first step is to Sandwich all of wood pieces into stacks of 2. Take each of your 1×16 boards and using wood glue and clamps stack them together. Essentially you are creating 4 2×16 boards.

Once those are dry, put pocket holes into the bottom of 2 of your 2×16’s. You are going to use a combination of pocket screws and wood glue to join together all 3 2×16’s to create your table top. This is when your larger clamps can come in handy if you have them!

That is by far the hardest part of this. Once your table top is done you will want to use wood filler to fill any cracks and sand the whole table down on the sides and top. It can be really tedious doing that much sanding but it is worth it.

Attaching the Legs

Once your table top is up to your standards flip it upside down and it is time to assemble. Before you start to attach anything you need to find your placement of your ‘legs’.

We centered the legs in the middle width wise, then had them 16.5 inches in from the ends for the placement width. I felt that gave it good stability and clearance.

To assemble the legs you are going to go one by one. Place a 24 inch wood round down, and using wood glue and screws attach it to the table top. Next add an 18 inch round in the same way. Keep going until you have done 14 24 inch rounds on each side.

Let this dry for 24 hours before you flip the table!

Staining and Finishing

Once your Table is done – it is time stain and finish it. Before you stain, you need to wood condition the entire table. This will allow it to dry in a more uniform manner.

Next apply your stain, and finally finish it with 2 coats of a water based polyurethane sealer.

And then you are done!! Follow the the same steps above for the bench if you are gong to go that route!

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DIY Dining Table | DIY Outdoor Table | DIY Stools | DIY Built in Cabinets

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Hopefully you enjoyed this tutorial on how to build a DIY modern dining table and you are ready to tackle the project yourself. If you have any questions be sure to leave them in the comments below, and be sure to follow me on Instagram (@arinsolange) for more fun and DIY.