Today I’m sharing a few pictures of the great room from the antique farmhouse project. This was the first room we tackled in this ongoing project, and it is still a work in progress!
A little backstory: this is one of two side-by-side nearly identical antique farmhouses. This one had already been renovated to some degree when my clients purchased it. The neighboring one we’ve been working on for nearly a year and it has now been completely renovated, and we are just putting in the finishing touches.
This great room in the main house contains the main living space with comfy seating for TV watching, a dining area, and a sunny reading corner. It is a large, light filled space that connects the main house to the barn and has generous windows on three sides.
Many of the original features have been retained here including the antique solid wood 10’ bifold doors on both sides.
Originally, we were charged with making the existing furnishings work and pulling it together with some color and interest. It needed to be fun, but sophisticated, with an air of simple elegance that would match the character of the house.
There was an eclectic collection of colors in the furnishings and rugs, but different shades of red were a recurring theme.
We chose a colorful stylized contemporary floral that featured a number of shades of red alongside blues and greens on a white ground as the main pattern and used it generously for the shades and drapery panels for the 6 windows.
Here is where we started:
Antique Farmhouse Great Room BEFORE redecorating
We designed a new furniture layout that divided the room into 3 zones: TV watching, dining, and reading. This post has some of the design plans and our fabric selection process.
New built-ins were designed to house the media equipment - an enormous TV, assorted speakers, etc. The design was worked around the quirky protruding columns and contains cabinets with mesh screen doors to house the tower speakers. The back wall of the built-in is painted a ladybug red, and the TV is mounted on the back wall on an articulating arm. The design serendipitously even created a charming windowseat!
New window treatments are a combination of tailored Roman shades and full length panels where possible to create a sense of height. Fabric was selected in a fun pattern to add some life and pull the existing colors together. Draperies are trimmed with a dark red striped tape and hung from farmhouse-appropriate simple wrought iron French return rods.
We’ve also replaced the rugs in the living and dining areas. The living room rug is a wool patterned area rug and the dining rug is a bound carpet in a very forgiving antelope pattern that holds up to muddy dog paws and dropped food!
We ultimately replaced the gray sectional sofa with one in a warmer neutral color and better configuration, and added an assortment of colorful throw pillows.
Existing dining chairs were transformed with apple green paint and custom chair pads in a combination of performance fabrics.
The dining table was upgraded to a new one made from reclaimed wood.
All the old furniture and rugs have been repurposed in the second farmhouse next door that has been recently renovated (we shared some of that process HERE and HERE and the powder room reveals in both houses HERE, more pictures to come!)
Living spaces are never “done” - they are organic and as such are always changing depending on the circumstances and the needs of the people who use them.
Right now, we are planning to recover the chair and ottoman in the reading corner in a performance fabric.
The chair is one that we made over 15 years ago for a previous house and the fabric is finally showing its age from too much time in direct sunlight here.
I’ve selected 3 fabric options, and I’m voting for the apple green one!
And a custom round teal cocktail table/ottoman is currently on the drawing board for the TV area.
These are such fabulous antique properties and our clients are wonderful stewards of them, preserving the antique charm and but updating for modern living.
Other posts about this property you might enjoy:
The planning process for this farmhouse great room project
The dramatic office/library transformation with chocolate brown paint in this farmhouse
