The New Place - The Dining Room

Back to the house tour! 

I had a pretty good idea in my head when we were talking about a dining table as to what I wanted. I wanted counter height, and I was thinking square so that there would be lots of room in the middle to serve family-style meals when we had company over. The table we found at the Brick I absolutely love, even though it's rectangular. It very comfortably seats six right now. We just pull the table out from the counter it butts up against on the left and put the sixth chair on that end. 

The sixth chair causes a little bit of a storage problem when it isn't in use, though. We were storing it in the basement, but the chairs are really heavy and the stairs are really narrow. Given how often we entertain, it just is too much of a hassle for Tim to be dragging the extra chair up and down the stairs. Right now it's tucked in beside the mantle, which makes for a bit of a narrow walkway to the stairs. 

I'm looking forward to seeing what my mother thinks about the dining table, since she was against the counter height idea. I think it looks really sharp and I love that when people are sitting at the table, they are at the perfect height to interact with whomever is cooking in the kitchen. It's really nice to be able to cook and talk to people while they have a glass of wine and just chill. 

I'll admit, though, that the counter height is a bit inconvenient for extra seating. The table has two leaves that open it up another two feet. This table will seat ten comfortably with the leaves in - possibly even twelve. But because it's counter height, we can't just park camping chairs at it for extra seating. Larger dinner parties will have to wait until we can afford more chairs. Unfortunately they're not cheap, either. $199.97 apiece at The Brick.

We had Tim's parents over for our first scheduled dinner party, and almost immediately scraped the table with my Maxwells-Williams plates. So placemats were an immediate necessity. I picked these up at Home Outfitters. Tim loves them because they're actual reeds stitched down onto a fabric base. They look really nice against the dark wood of the table, but are still pretty neutral. 

The flowers are a bit of both of us - Tim being a big sweetheart and me being a big suck. I LOVE having flowers around the house, so I'm always so charmed when he brings me home a bouquet of daisies or irises. carnations or lilies. The fruit bowl is a compromise. Tim, with his science background, likes to put in anything he can argue is fruit, like tomatoes and avocadoes.