I have often dreamed of being able to host in my own home, in big dinners, in tables loaded with snacks for mingling people, and for board games taking up lots of space. Now, when I look at my dining room (sadly currently devoid of all people) I can imaging this in my mind. I am not sure if I ever had a specific vision in my mind for what my dining room would end up looking like, but I am sure happy with the results.
As our home is very open concept the dining room is found right between the kitchen and the living room and there is a clear line of sight between the three. It is also one of the brightest areas of the house with one wall being almost entirely windows, including the screen door out into the backyard. There are two levels of blinds as well with a lighter one that lets light through and a full blackout blind (which we never use). This wall is the accent wall with our darker navy colour painted on it and the other walls that you can see are our more neutral white.
The kitchen and dining room are separated by a bar. When we first bought our home we considered putting bar chairs there, but are now very happy that we didn’t as we like having the area open and as a place to have our water pitcher accessible as well as potentially serve food from in the future.
Under the bar we have one of our most recent DIY’s. Previously there was a drawer unit here holding excess kitchen things, but that is being moved into the den in our current renovation and as such we have transformed these wooden crates (found in the Ikea as-is section) with some white paint and now they hold onions, potatoes, and at the top our tableclothes, napkins, and hot pads.
The star of this room is truly our large dining room table. This table is actually from ikea and it was one we wanted years ago, but never thought we would have a space that was big enough for it. The chair we have had for a few years, we just added a fifth one when we moved in, but there wasn’t a bench that matched. Thankfully I have an extremely talented dad who was able to created a bench that matches that table perfectly. While I haven’t been able to have a full crowd around the table just yet, one day I am sure it will happen.
Along the wall we have our buffet. The unit was at one point Nigel’s dresser, but we turned it on its side, added some legs, and moved the drawers and doors around a bit. Here we store all of our cookbooks. a bit of a bar, and in the buffet I store my china and nice dishes that I also can’t wait to bring out and use. On top I have a few plants as well as my storage from my watering can and mister. My snake plant also lives in the dining room and is doing very well.
On the wall is a collection of photos from Nigel and I over the course of our relationship that he put together for me. The light fixture in this room was here when we bought the place, but it works well and I like the light that it brings to the room.
While I feel like this is a room that we haven’t put a lot of work into, it is one that I really feel like is mine. The table is big, the lighting bright, and one day we will have many people here.
Check out my past creating home blog posts here:
fivestarredlife.ca 
4 thoughts on “creating home – dining room”