The Dining Room

Ah, the dining room. How far it has come...and how far I want it to go. For a while we had our computer desk and dinette set in there. (That computer desk has been moved around more times than I'd like to count.) The dinette set was a newlywed gift and very appreciated but definitely temporary. You can't expect to have a $100 dining table/chairs long term. Perhaps if we had chosen better in the first place, it would not have become an issue as soon as it did. I loved the iron, and that is why we chose it. But a glass top smudges anytime you touch it -- and kids make it worse. Iron also wobbles quite badly when you barely knock it which is both embarassing and mess-making. Iron/glass also can create a more cluttery feel as it doesn't weight the room down. It doesn't serve as a very solid focal point for a dining room. It would be better used in a breakfast nook or sunroom where it is not the main function of the room. And when you want to have people over, four chairs around a small table doesn't really allow for many guests. But, like I've said before, if it is a gift or freebie...use the heart out of it while you save up for your long-term purchase.

We were blessed to be able to purchase our "lifetime" dining room set back in January. Then came the debate -- do we get all 8 chairs or just 6 for now? We had the money and the more you buy the better a deal you can get. We knew we'd have this table for a LONG time because it is quality and a classic style. So we got all 8 chairs. If you can swing it, do it in order to avoid "intermediate" purchases.

Notice, we also reinvented uses for some gifted furniture. We were using some of my dad's old bookshelves as a "buffet" (used for holding entertaining pieces in a dining room, placed at the far end of the room), but knew that when children came it'd be impractical. So, we put Matt's old dresser in place of the shelves because drawers conceal breakables and offers more practical storage. We shortened the shelves and now use them as a shoe rack in our closet.

Bookcases are the bane of my interior decorating existance. I can't stand them. Books look so cluttery no matter how you organize them. I can't wait to have a spot to put them out of sight -- they'd be ok in a real office because they are expected there. Or even bookshelves with doors on the front would be superb. But for now, open air books they remain.

Note the odd groupings in the room as it is now (third picture):
~3 main pieces of furniture along the wall: bookshelf, dresser, bookshelf
~3 wall hangings: spoon, portrait, fork
~5 family pictures: notice how we turned the frames so that they are not all hanging the exact same, and the middle one is larger than the rest. Creates intrest and symmetry. The horizontal line also goes with the flow of the large dining room table. The wood tone also matches the table (which I would love for the bookshelves and dresser, but you can't do everything all at once!).

Before the movers arrived with our stuff...



The "intermediate" dining room with bookshelves as the buffet.



What our dining room is today (only we now have all 8 chairs out). To finish off this room, I'd Move the bookshelves OUT -- who has a library in a dining room anyway? Then I would replace the bookshelf buffet with the buffet that matches our dining set. I'd probably leave the 5 pictures on the current wall because it would be too bare without them since it is such a big wall. That would leave the spoon/fork and portrait above the buffet. If the room were bigger, I'd shove the table over a little and put the matching buffet under the 5 pictures. And we can't forget about paint -- though I'm not sure what color I'd use since we're planning to get a new set of dinnerware in the next year or two. :-)