Party Like a Southerner: The Dinner Barn

The Dinner Barn
Ellijay, Georgia

On any given weekend, you’ll most likely find Mark Sage prepping dinner with his wife, Mary, inside a barn on their farm in the North Georgia mountains. “We have three boys under nine, and that’s a lot of energy, so we needed a place to get away,” says Mark, co-owner of the Atlanta home furnishings manufacturer Bobo Intriguing Objects, about the space the Sages converted after buying the property three years ago. Because the couple’s time at the farm usually revolves around friends and food, they retrofitted the outbuilding specifically for hosting.

The interior, which opens almost entirely to the outside, includes a bar, a sitting area, and a dining room complete with repurposed-oyster-bucket light fixtures and a giant framed forty-five-star American flag hanging on one of the clapboard walls. The building’s location is ideal for dinner parties: It borders both the couple’s quarter-acre kitchen garden and an outdoor fire pit. Most nights, Mark says, even the cows make their way from the nearby pasture to greet the Sages and their guests. “It’s like they know we’re having cocktail hour down here.”

BONUS PHOTOS: See more Southern entertaining spaces

Photo: Tara Donne

In With The Old

Oyster buckets double as light fixtures over the dining table, while salvaged doors add charm to the already rustic structure.

1 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

Barn To Be Wild

Gearing up for good times in Mark and Mary Sage’s dinner barn, one of seven outbuildings on their North Georgia farm.

2 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

3 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

4 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

5 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

6 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

7 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

8 of 9

Photo: Tara Donne

Rustic Revelry

A Georgia barn outfitted for entertaining.

9 of 9