• Week One: Elegant and Airy Dining Room Inspiration
• Week Two: Favorite Modern Dining Room Chandeliers
• Week Three: DIY Ribbon Trim Roman Shades

The Fall 2023 One Room Challenge is underway! In the spring, I decorated our entryway, including turning our closet into a mini-mudroom. This fall, I am working on our dining room! One element I have been planning for some time is a nice deep dining bench. I love the relaxed feeling of enjoying a meal and good company while lounging on a comfy banquette. There was also a practical reason for building a deep bench, which was to allow my table to be centered on our windows.

I have tricked myself into thinking I can build things, after I made these bookshelf extensions and watched way too many Instagram reels!! The way I ended up building our bench was specific to pieces I already had, so I will share my bench but also several ways to have your own!

1/ Have a banquette custom-built by a local carpenter

2/ Buy a pre-fabricated banquette

I could not do this, because I needed very specific dimensions. If you’re more flexible, here are some great pre-built options:

Riverbay Furniture Corner Breakfast Nook

Powell Upholstered Corner Nook

3/ Build a dining banquette from scratch.

There are several design plans available online. Ana White is classic source for great woodworking plans!

4/ Adapt existing furniture pieces to make a banquette

This is the route I went, partly because I was a bit daunted by building from scratch and partly because I had some pieces in my home that I was able to adapt. If you want to do something similar, look for media centers or storage benches with the right dimensions for your space. Typical dining seat height is 18-23″ high – allow height for a bench cushion, if you plan to add one.

I had a cubby bookshelf that we have been adapting to various uses for 15+ years. I had already been using it for a dining bench, even though it was not as big as I wanted. Also, while the storage baskets underneath the bench looked okay, I wanted a more finished look for our dining room. Here’s the “before”:

For the main part of the new banquette, I turned our shelf on its back, added rubber feet to the (new) bottom and used piano hinges and extra closet shelves to make a hinged seat.

This formed the basic unit of our new dining banquette, but I wanted it to be deeper and longer, so I built a frame that goes around the sides and back. I was making up the design as I went, and it took a lot longer than I expected, but I am happy with the results!

For now, I have our existing bench cushions on here, but they are undersized, so sewing new cushion covers is on the agenda for this One Room Challenge!

I’ll keep posting progress updates on Instagram and a weekly post here with more details! Looking forward to the next steps of this project as well as checking out the other participants’ awesome posts. You can follow the whole event on the One Room Challenge website!

Julie AKA “Jewels”