The Evolution of the Dining Room

Way back when we moved to “Perfect”, this was our dining room.

So small.  So boring.  We’ve moved multiple times over the years.  And I like to live in a house for awhile before I start decorating. Call me crazy, but I think that the house will tell me what it wants.  Seriously. But I had this massive dining room table from our previous home that had a HUGE dining room and I so loved it.  So we put it in there.   (Did I mention that we still hadn’t sold the other house?) And there wasn’t any room for anything else except a corner cabinet so I picked one up at an unfinished furniture store. I also hated the bucket lights in the cove ceiling. Come on, who puts bucket lights in a dining room?  So I bought a pair of cheap brass chandeliers at a big box store and I updated them with paint and crystals and Terry installed them after a lot of curse words.  Cheap, cheap, cheap.  Oh wait, frugal.

Then we installed hardwood floors, (yeah, we FINALLY sold the other house).  Here’s a view from the other doorway.

But that table was so freaking huge.  If I actually had eight people here to dine, I had to serve from both doors.  There was no way to get around.  But I LOVED that table!  Like a child. I was torn….so I let Michelle adopt it.

Once upon a time, when we lived in a far away kingdom, we had dinner parties.  A lot.  And that table was used.  A lot.  But here in “Perfect” we don’t have dinner parties.  We have cook-outs.  A lot.  And we eat outside in the screen room.  Or the garage.  Or in the yard.  And it doesn’t matter about the weather.  On the hottest days we use fans.  On the coldest days we have a patio heater and a fire pit.  We really needed a third guest bedroom more than a dining room!

But there was that Christmas Eve meal that we usually still ate in the dining room and if we had guests from the great white north in July, we didn’t force them to eat outside.  That would be just plain mean!

So we put a sofa bed in the room.  And a smaller drop leaf table which could be moved into the corner when we needed the bed.  I made drapes with black-out lining and we put curtains in the doors when guests slept in there.

Meanwhile, the formal living room was evolving.  Who uses a formal living room?  The piano was sitting in there looking very pretty and then we turned it into my office with a huge computer armoire and hutch.  And then I set up a sewing table.  And then a cutting table.  My beautiful piano was crammed into a corner.  And every time I cut out fabric I got a bruise in the middle of my back from backing into the piano.  Or I tripped over the ironing board because it’s always set up if I’m sewing.  I need more room!

Then one day I was out for a run and came up with a scathingly brilliant idea.  We don’t need that dining room!  I need a music room!

So much better! And I use it every day.  My piano is as happy as the dining room table is at Michelle’s!  And my piano is very happy that I didn’t give it up for adoption!

But I’m not done.  I’ll share more of this project next week and most likely a few weeks after…..