Project Preview: Dining Area

Our house has kind of a strange floorplan, having been converted from a cape to a colonial about 12 years ago. The original living room is now just a pass through from the new main living area to the guest room/bathroom and staircase. It is an empty space still (and we just passed our 1 year mark in the house) and oh how I wish I could borrow from it to make a proper dining room.

Alas.

So the "new main living area" is one big open space that includes the kitchen, family room and dining area, which is off to the side that looks out over the top of the driveway. It is framed by two doors - one leading outside (left one) and one leading out to the screened in porch (right one):

There are two walls to contend with. One big one:

And one smaller one.

We really want to warm up this space to make it cozier and a more welcoming part of the room. My go-to idea when it comes to making things feel customized...built-ins! You may recall the ones Jason constructed at our old house. Those were pre-built Home Depot cabinets that he raised and built shelves on. They worked for that living room but...I wanted fancier this time. Glass! Lights! And we went back and forth a lot on how to do this. Should we make the cabinets a color to offset the kitchen? Maybe a dark gray like our old fireplace? Should they be off to one side, using that one big wall?

But the more pictures I looked at, the more I knew something like this would be my inspiration photo:

And because the space is shared with the kitchen and living room, keeping the cabinets consistent was probably the safest. We turned to our trusty Martha Stewart catalog, picked out a few options, sat down with our designer at Home Depot and came up with a rough rendering.

Here is the space pretty much straight on.

 We are going to put floor to ceiling cabinets on either side of the windows and connect them with a bench seat that runs the entire length under the windows. Akin to:

Except with glass cabinets on top, three little drawers and then a box at the bottom.

The built-ins should add some much needed height and character to the space.

NOW for the fun part...design elements! I created this mood board for my ideal choices. You know, if there was no such thing as money.

It's a hard thing because our whole room so far is white/gray/blue/tan. It's very muted, so I can't go out of the box and introduce a crazy new color in the area. The whole room has to flow so I fear my choices for the bench cushion and the roman shades on the windows might end up being a little safe.

So that's where we are at! We actually did order the farmhouse pedestal table you see above - it's from Ethan Allen and we are in the middle of our 7-9 week wait time for it. Hopefully only another couple of weeks before the cabinets are in as well, We are hosting Thanksgiving this year so Jason needs to get a-buildin'!