English Cottage Dining Nook Spring Refresh

Hey! This week kicked off the Spring ’25 One Room Challenge. If you are finding me through the One Room Challenge, welcome to my blog where I share my passion for creating comforting homes by thrifting, sewing and a little diy-ing along the way. While I’m not averse to buying new, I love being able to stretch a budget and get that “layered over time” look by incorporating vintage pieces. You can follow my decorating journey on the HomeSpunStyle Instagram.

So here we go! The kitchen in our coastal cottage home went through a complete renovation in 2022. The original galley footprint didn’t change but by vaulting the ceiling and adding skylights, we visually enlarged the space and brought in fabulous light. We installed some new cabinets and added new doors to others, all in a very soft grey called “icy avalanche”. We also changed up the flooring and purchased new appliances. You can read more about that renovation here.

At the end of the galley is our dining nook. As much as I love this little space, when you view it in the broader context of the whole kitchen, it reads warm tones in contrast to the cooler tones of our cabinetry and vaulted ceiling. With this in mind, I’m giving it an English coastal style refresh, in keeping with the rest of the space.

Here’s where we left off in 2022 with the dining nook:

And here’s a more recent photo – you can see I made a few changes – painting the table white and switching out the wall sconces (although I’ve never been satisfied with them).

Here’s the plan:

• Replace the old panelling in the nook with vertical shiplap in keeping with the shiplap on the vaulted ceiling. We’ll also bring it up higher on the walls so it is more to scale with the ceiling height. Right now it feels a bit short.
• Find the perfect shade of white paint for the walls! Presently they read slightly yellow — too warm compared to the rest of the kitchen.
• Swap out the black chairs with brown ones. The black chairs were a FB find. They are ok but I’m really loving brown wood tones right now. I recently found some older oak chairs at my local Good Will. They were only $15 each. They’re super sturdy but just need a little refinishing.
• Change the curtains. I semi-homemade my current curtains by adding pinch pleats to ready made panels back in 2020, before the renovation. I love them but they have a creamy yellowish background that feels off compared to the cool hues of the rest of the kitchen.
• Replace the current wall sconces with solid brass ones. As much as I have tried to love these Amazon sconces, they have never felt quite right. Maybe because I see them everywhere! New ones will be an investment unless I get lucky and find some old ones.
• Finally, I’d like to add a few English cottage accessories – hopefully thrifted.

Here’s my mood board for the space:

I signed up for the One Room Challenge again to keep me on task with completing this project over the course of the next 8 weeks. If you’d like to see daily progress, be sure to follow the Home Spun Style on Instagram. And stop back here on my blog for weekly updates where I’ll be sharing more photos and details.

If you’d like to check out the design plans of the other participants, you can find them at the One Room Challenge Blog.

Happy Decorating!

Debra