Our New House: The Dining Room

It almost seems comical to post a dining room tour since our living room, kitchen, and dining room are actually one large space, but those three rooms seemed too large to tackle all in one post!  So welcome to our dining room, which is also our eat-in kitchen - well loved and well used! 

The dining room sits between our kitchen and living room, so as you can imagine, it gets a ton of daily use.  I've kept the space pretty neutral in the hopes that everything flows nicely from one space to another.     

Here's a picture that shows the living room also, so you can get an idea of the layout.  We all absolutely love having an open floor plan, but it has presented challenges that I never considered.  For example, the lack of wall space, which makes furniture placement a challenge, as well as creating spaces that all flow together (especially including a kitchen that you can see from the living room!).  It's definitely still a work in progress, but I love that although I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, I can still feel like I'm with everyone else!  

 

The drapes are linen, and were made by my very talented mom.  The gray-blue matches some of our cabinetry in the kitchen.  

We purchased the table and chairs a few years ago from Costco.  We absolutely love them.  There are two leaves that we can add to the table and seat about 10 people.  So this table has been a workhorse for sure! 

 

Last year I found this old gate leg table at a local antique store and it has been a wonderful addition to this space (and also one of my favorite antique purchases ever!).  It anchors the living room from the dining room, and creates additional seating when we have a large crowd.  We've used it several times now as a table!   I also love the idea of adding at least one antique furniture piece to each room.  It can add so much character and warmth, don't you agree?

 On the opposite side of the wall, we incorporated some wood shiplap to add some character.  All the walls and trim in this space are painted the same color, Alabaster by Sherwin Williams.  I have since painted a few rooms in our home, but I'm not sure I'll ever paint this main room as the creamy white seems to help balance everything and enables me to change our drapes, pillows, etc. as the mood strikes!     

This cabinet is one of my very favorite things in our new home.  We eliminated the pantry that was in the house plans and instead asked our cabinet maker to make a built-in dining cabinet.  One of the things I loved most about our old farmhouse was the built in cabinet in our dining room (see pictures here).  I showed him pictures and asked him to create something that might give that similar old home feel... and house all my dishes - ha!  I love, love, love what he created.  When I first saw it, I was almost speechless.  Although the cabinet color is the same as our kitchen, we purposely used different hardware and a different cabinet design (like inset doors) so that it felt more like a dining furniture piece versus kitchen cabinetry.  

This cabinet is huge (9' tall) with deep shelves, so it actually fits my entire collection of dishes (much to my husband's dismay).   I use the drawers for storage, like cloth napkins, tablecloths, extra silverware, etc. 

Do you recognize these shelves from our previous home?  Justus made these and I could not bear to leave them behind and was insistent that they make the move with us.  I still love them and couldn't imagine our home without something so special.  

I just last week purchased the rest of the set of Johnson Brothers Staffordshire Bouquet to finish my collection and placed a lot of it here on these shelves as I love it so much.  This was a totally unplanned purchase, I promise, and I truly tried talking myself out of it.  I actually recently broke one of my saucers in this pattern, so when my mom and I were strolling through a few antique stores, imagine my surprise when I found an entire set with an amazing price - ha!  I couldn't not leave without it though, and while my husband was totally shocked that I could possibly feel the need to purchase more dishes (said with love), I'm sure you understand.  ;-)  

The console table was purchased our first year of marriage (15 years ago!), and eventually I'll replace it, but only when I find something really special and unique for this space.  This wall felt like it needed something simple, like lanterns, versus artwork, so we hung these here and added some timed candles that add a warm glow each evening. 

Thanks for touring our dining room space!  We eat together as a family every night here, so it's a well loved space.  It's such a simple thing, and yet means so much.  It's not just sharing a meal, but sharing about our day, our thoughts, our feelings.  

Let me know if you have any questions - hopefully I covered it all! I hope to share some more room tours in the next month or two, including the kitchen and living room.  :-)

 Dining Room Details:

Paint Color: Alabaster Sherwin Williams

Table & Chairs: Costco (I don't see these as being available right now)

All lighting: Pottery Barn

Lanterns: Pottery Barn

Framed Landscape Art: Ballard Designs