Our Newly Furnished Dining Room

In the old days, our current dining room was considered a family room on the original blue prints. And the original dinning area included a nook off the kitchen, plus a small area in the living room. Not with my family or Tom’s. Hey, we each have 3 siblings, and many nephews and nieces. Each fully attended family gathering would be at least 14 people, including us. Therefore the previously allocated floor plan for the dining area wasn’t going to function for us. Besides, this room is connected to the kitchen and opened onto the deck with the ocean view. One of the best room for view in this house, and since I plan on doing quite a bit of entertaining, this was it, our new dining room.

Having to sit this many people, we needed a big long table. We shopped around many places and most of them only sell tables that had 6 – 8 seating. Granted most new home has much smaller footprints, one fringe benefit of having an older home. We even search craigslist, hoping for a table from a community center or a church. The one or two we found wanted way too much money for used one. After much searching, we found our farm table from Pottery Barn. We bought it with the extension leaves, delivered and assembled all for us, including the one bench seating.

For seating besides the single matching Benchwright wooden bench, we decided on Tolix chairs. I should say I did. Tom wasn’t too crazy about the idea, until I showed him multiple pictures of magazines and web pages. I want this room to be casual, not a formal dining room. The style is in now for bench and bistro seating. Why not? After seeing the pictures, he was totally OK. Did I not mention my hubby cannot whatsoever visualize home decorating ideas???

When the Tolix chairs arrived, my husband told me he couldn’t fit his butt in the chair! What??? But I had just the perfect answer for him. I said, “Honey, this is why you will be sitting at the head of the table with an upholstered more substantial chair.” No debate there….

The funny thing is the Benchwright table with the leaves in is at least 10 feet long. Can you imagine we each sit on each end of the table and trying to have dinner with just the two of us? LOL. I do have an alternative plan for a smaller dining area/game table in the original dining area for more intimate dining option.

By the way, the table runner, I got it ages ago in Africa during a safari. It was too long for anything in the past. Now, it is just perfect length for this table. See, you just never know, thing does work out in its mystery way. I would have a difficult time finding a table runner this long here now.

Back to the room itself, this room and the kitchen were the only rooms in the entire house covered with wood floor. We do have plans to replace the existing woods to match the new wood flooring we put in the rest of the house. But I was waiting until we know what to do with a possible kitchen renovation in the near future.

The walls are painted with the color “Oyster (DEC748)”. The entire house ceiling, trims, and cabinets are painted with "Whisper (DEW340)". The chandelier came with the house. The open beam was there and we love it, so it stayed. The wall with the mirror from my old house is the only “blocking” wall between the kitchen and the dining room. We so so so want to remove it, except it is a low bearing wall and is needed for earthquake damage prevention. We can remove it with reinforcement beam going across the entire room, but then you are talking about big $$$$. The alternative is to open a hole in it, like an indoor window. Still need some thinking, not in any hurry.

There was a long debate where to mount Tom’s multiple fishing poles. In his apartment, we mounted them on the open beam ceiling, but the ceiling was level. Here the open beam ceiling is sloping, so there is no way to easily mount them right, plus, there is the chandelier hanging in the middle of the room.

Tom didn’t want to have his fishing poles in a closet or a corner in the garage somewhere. He said he is proud of his fishing poles and wants them out for everyone to see…blah blah blah, something about Hemingway and his sport fishing hobby.

Finally, I compromised and said he could mount them on the wall above the window, but not above the set of French door opening onto the deck. He said what was the difference, well, it would block the flow through view of the deck and trees and ocean…man oh man. So after the decision was made, a few weeks later, he still hasn’t mounted it until the weekend before the house warming party.

Then he told me he couldn’t do it because the plaster material on the wall was not going to hold very well. I came up with plan #2, standing them up like pool sticks in a game room. Mount the pole fixture to the wall, and then stand the fishing poles to the fixture. Install the fixture on each side of the window. DONE!

Now, he told me he wanted to mount a dead fish above the window to compliment the fishing poles. What happen to the same reason why he couldn’t mount the fishing poles up there due to the plaster material? I think in his excitement of having a dead fish in the dining room, he forgot the challenging technical issue at hand with an even heavier object. I rolled my eyes and gave him the evil look!!!