We recently found a French sideboard for the dining room and it came with an unexpected surprise!

There’s a new find in our home.

A pretty French Louis XVI style sideboard has arrived in our dining room!

Several months ago, I saw this pretty sideboard at a local antique shop and I fell in love with it’s Louis XVI style, original paint, carvings and old gilt.

But I hesitated about buying it because our dining room is so tiny, so I walked away from this beauty.

I went back several times, and each time she was still there. I secretly hoped that no one would buy her!

 

Fast forward a few months, and once again I was shopping at the same shop and saw that the sideboard had been marked on sale.

Hubby was with me and knew that I had been swooning over this piece for months, and he encouraged me to buy it, even though I knew it was going to be cramped in our tiny dining room.

But it’s so hard to walk away from a great piece of French furniture when I find it, and somehow I always find a way to make it work.

At some point, we’ll be moving from this home and hopefully (fingers crossed) the next dining room will be a little bit larger than the one we have now.

So I decided that this old beauty needed to come home with me!

The sideboard is nice and large with cabinet doors on each side, and the center is filled with four drawers.

I love finding these pieces that offer lots of storage for linens or surplus dishes.

This is especially true if you live in a home that doesn’t have a lot of storage areas.

The sideboard also came with an unexpected surprise.

Once we moved it into the dining room, I realized that it was very similar in design and color to the vintage French Karges dining chairs that I found a year ago! 

They are not an exact match, but close enough that they work perfectly together. I was so surprised when I saw this!

The sideboard has the original creamy paint and it has seen some wear over the years resulting in some chips of paint, lots of patina, and rubs of paint.

It has quite a bit of natural distressing which I’m a big fan of, and the gilded accents have such a gorgeous patina.

I love the frenchiness of the original metal hardware.

 

I placed the sideboard in front of the window because there simply isn’t anyplace else to put it!

And, for now, it works just fine there. This home is an open concept, which I’ve never been a big fan of, and the dining room is very small which makes it difficult to stage larger size furniture.

My furniture totally throws the placement of the chandelier off in this room.

The dining room space was definitely designed for a small table and chairs and not the substantial pieces that I have.

But it’s ok, because I know that it’s all temporary until we find the exact home that we’re looking for.

On top of the sideboard, I placed a pair of vintage Italian pottery candlestick lamps with rectangular linen shades. I’ve had these lamps for over ten years, after finding them at an estate sale.

In the center I displayed a collection of antique, vintage, and diy altar sticks in various heights.  

One of the first questions Hubby asked me when we brought it home was, “Are you going to paint it?”.

I don’t have any plans to paint it for the time being, however I will say that I miss my blue buffet that I painted so long ago.

I ended up selling the blue buffet to make room for the antique French Vaisselier that I found a year ago, but y’all were right!

So many of you told me that I would regret selling that blue beauty, and I do! So, who knows, someday I may try and duplicate that gorgeous shade of blue….but for now, I’m awfully fond of this sideboard’s original creamy finish.

Plus, it works so well with the finish on those chairs!

I hope you have enjoyed seeing the new furniture in the dining room. Have you found any fabulous pieces of furniture lately?

Cheers, Cindy