Dining in Style

Another room that has undergone a major transformation is the dining room.  When we bought the house, it looked like this:

It was the only room other than the kitchen that had any overhead lighting, and it was a ceiling fan.  I wish I had thought to take a close up of the fan, since it was lovely with a crystal base and 1980's fantastic styling.  Alas, it has long since gone away and been replaced by this:

And, as you can see from the first photo, we added a pantry and a broom closet on the back wall once we took down the wall between the dining room and kitchen.  I really wanted to keep a formal dining room, but there wasn't a way to do that and also have an island and a pantry.  Now, I'm so glad I have my island and my pantry and I really don't miss a formal dining room at all.

The pink thing in the bottom left?  It's a cat viewing platform so the cats can look out the front window.
Yes, our cats are spoiled.  

And, yes, those are balls of yarn as a center piece.  I used what I had.  

We did move the light fixture  quite a bit so that is centered between the windows--one was once in the living room and one was once in the dining room.  The table is my old one that was inherited from a family member when I moved into my very first apartment way back in 2002.  It will get replaced eventually with something a little nicer, but he works for now.  The "bar shelf" will also get replaced eventually with a side board or a buffet, but we needed somewhere to store all the various wine/beer/cocktail glasses we've accumulated over the years, and so we used what we had.

We also hope to one day find a nice corner china cabinet for the corner next to the other window where the Catsel (Cat Castle) currently lives.  That will get moved to the family room once it is finished and I'd love to have a place to store my nice dishes one day.

I will say that with the island, we haven't eaten at the table at all, except when my parents were up to visit (we currently only have 2 bar stools, although we have room for 4).  My thought is that we won't use the table much until there are kids and then only for dinner.  But still, it's nice to have it.  And it's so nice to have a wide open space since it makes the small living area feel larger.  Not that we're lacking for living space.  We have more than we need already and we still haven't finished the family room yet.