Clever Dining Room Details

Southern Living, Apr 2005 by Mercer, Amy Bickers

It's not always about the table. Creative accents give this North Carolina home character.

Cathy Barkley is a self-confessed decorating magazine devotee, an avid flipper, she says. A visit to her Davidson, North Carolina, home reveals that she does more than turn pages-she absorbs and implements ideas.

In the dining room, a light-filled space at the center of her home, Cathy added fun and unusual touches for a look that is both casual and refined.

Celestial Inspiration

The ceiling became a canvas for a faux paint project inspired by star designs Cathy had seen on inlaid wood floors.

To create the design around the light fixture, she cut a piece of cardboard in the shape of one radiating point. Cathy then traced the triangular shape onto the ceiling with a pencil, rotating it around the light until she had eight points. After finishing the outline, she drew a line down the middle of each point. Cathy used subtle paint colors-khaki and slate blue-to fill in each half of the points. The astrological accent is an inexpensive twist on the standard ceiling medallion.

Vintage Valance

Cathy found this unusual window treatment at an antiques booth in Charlotte. The salvaged tin was already cut to fit a window, but a similar find could easily be altered to fit as well. Because Cathy found just one, she knew she wanted it in a room that had only a single window.

"I never really put curtains in my house. They're usually fussier than what I like. It worked out that the tin fit exactly on my dining room window," Cathy says. The aged, creamy finish of the metal valance works perfectly with the rest of the room's color scheme.

Furniture Fix-up

Cathy used her proficiency with the paintbrush to transform a dark and dated dresser into a buffet. She chose a soft shade for the piece to complement hues found in a portrait painted by her grandfather Leo Rocca; the artwork hangs above the buffet. Once the paint dried, Cathy rubbed burnt umber paint on the piece to give it an aged finish. A change of hardware on the drawers and doors completed the simple transformation.

AMY BICKERS MERCER