Today I am sharing my French cottage dining room decorated on a budget.
Welcome to my winter dining room tour. I love to share that creating a room you love can be done on a budget. This room is filled with things that were bought at thrift stores, estate sales, antique malls, and Facebook market place.
A pair of perfectly aged ice skates that I found at an estate sale and a fur collar for my dress form add just a little coziness. This container of some sort was $5.00 at an estate sale. I spray painted the top and bottom white and covered it in brown craft paper and a printable graphic.
A little ironstone collection displayed on a vintage factory shoe rack is nestled in the corner. I only buy ironstone when it is very reasonably priced. Most of my pieces were found at estate sales. It takes persistence and patience, but it’s worth it. Oh and the shoe rack was a Facebook marketplace find.
Mid photo shoot I decided the dining room needed some roses because, well, roses. A quick trip to the grocery store was in order. I pulled out this tool box and filled it with flowers. I also got some hydrangeas for the mantel. The dining room chairs were found on craigslist and then painted and reupholstered. It was actually a dining room set. I just resold the table.
This tool box was given to me by a dear old friend. It belonged to her Grandfather. She knew I was just the person to use and love it. I’ve always dreamed of filling the whole thing to overflowing with roses, but there aren’t any flower markets or where ever one goes to get buckets and bundles of roses for less than a million dollars near my house, so a few will have to do for now.
Pretty bottles and roses wrapped in old book pages and tied with string adorn the old chippy mantel. These bottles were found at a thrift store. The candle scones next to the mirror were from Goodwill. I just painted them white.
The dining room has always been my favorite room in the house to decorate and it has gone through many changes over the years. Another good reason not to spend a lot of money decorating. It makes it easier to change things up now and then.
This French settee was at a resale shop for $40.00! I checked the price tag over to make sure it wasn’t $140.00 or $400.00. Nope. $40.00. And can you believe I didn’t buy it? I went home and started checking Pinterest to see if it was really the style I wanted. It just took a couple of minutes and I was in the car heading back to the store. Of course it didn’t look like this when I bought it. It was covered in dirty green velvet and the wood was not a very pretty finish.
I’m pretty sure someone else is happy I went back to the store that day.
5 Tips for Decorating on a Budget
- Patience. It’s a tough one but the best way to save money. Wait until you find what you want at a price you want. There were many chandeliers on the marketplace but I waited and got mine for $25.00!
- Use your imagination. An item or piece of furniture may not be exactly what you were looking for but you can make it into something you want. This leads me to number three.
- Be willing to do the work to make a piece your own.
- Shop all the places that sell all the things cheap. My favorites are thrift stores, resale shops, estate sales, auctions, and Facebook marketplace. Go often. Look at the online sites often. It takes persistence.
- Barter. If you have a friend that can sew, build, or paint, trade services. You can offer babysitting, errand running, or whatever you can do for them.
I wanted to do this little tour because the dining room is more “done” than it has ever been. It seems I always change decorating directions before I ever finish the room. You can’t really see it, but over in the corner is a little cabinet that needs to be refinished and there is a cupboard on the back wall that is empty since I removed the Christmas décor. Oh and I’ve been wanting to make white ruffled seat covers for the chairs and a table runner would be nice, oh and….maybe it’s not as done as I thought.
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Thank you so much for stopping by!