Dining Room Updates: a series

It has dawned on me over the last several months, that without even knowing it, we have been updating the dining areas in our home.  We have two dining areas in this house, a combined formal dining/living room and our kitchen nook.

As my blog implies, this is our forever home, the house we plan to grow old in and it is and always will be, a work in progress.  While we have a long wish list of projects for our home, sometimes you just "happen upon" a great deal and then that item jumps to the top of the list.  Ironically, the dining areas have been the focus of these perfect finds and projects recently.

Over the next few weeks, I will share a series of posts on the updates we have made (and still working on) to these rooms in our home.  This series involves new chairs, broken glass, upholstery, refinishing, sewing, styling, savvy shopping and more.

Let me start by sharing the "before" of these two areas in our home.


Kitchen Nook
The majority of our meals happen at the kitchen dining table. This nook located just off the kitchen screamed for a small round table, perfect for our family of four and our everyday meals.

We were fortunate enough to find a beautiful Pottery Barn wood pedestal table on Craigslist when we bought the house 2 years ago.  It came with a glass top to protect the wood which is awesome. Unfortunately, the table did not come with chairs.  Chairs has been our wish list ever since.  For the past 2 years, we have been using 4 of the chairs from our large dining table until we found the perfect chairs for this room.

Formal Dining Room
As you enter our home you are greeted by a large open concept "formal" dining and living room.  I use formal in quotes because we are so NOT formal people.  Even when we have dinner guests, we are more likely to put the leaf in the kitchen table than use the dining space designated for this.

The formal living area was a new space to us, therefore we did not have any furniture for this room and it has not been a priority.  I know, we have lived here for 2 years and it still largely sits empty.  The only thing in this room is our large dining table from our other house.  The "nook" area in our other home was huge so we purchased a large table for this space.  This is what it looked like for the past couple years.

As a reference point, I wanted to share what our dining area/kitchen nook looked like in our previous home.  As you can see, the "nook" allowed us to have a dining table that seated 8 people comfortably.  That always baffled me but I loved that it freed up a space in our great room for other family needs.

I can't wait to share with you some of the amazing projects I have been working on.  Let me just say, I can't wait to host Thanksgiving this year in our new formal dining area.  I still have a lot of work to do but it is great to have a deadline!  We have so many blessings in our life and this year is not any different.