Our current home has a joint kitchen/living room which contains our dining room table, which is a fairly sturdy G plan table that I got on ebay for a steal. It’s a bit battered in places though and we have 2 sets of chairs that don’t match each other to go with it! In our new home the kitchen is sort of L shaped, so we are hoping to use one side as a dining area, so we can have a specific area set aside for family meals. Our table is dark wood and I think something lighter would be a lot fresher and brighter, and for a relatively large item I think a lighter table might not dominate the space quite so much! The option to fold down into a small table would be a benefit too, our current table does this and if it’s folded out to its full size I manage to cover it accumulated stuff, so less surface area should mean less junk to contend with!
The grey legged table from Wayfair has a nice light coloured wood effect top which folds down, though i’m not sure how it would stand up to endless meals being splashed on it! I love the industrial look of the dining table from Habitat, it has a Zinc top which would just get better with age as it absorbs knocks and bumps, it doesn’t fold but would work so well with a bench seat I think! The John Lewis table has a dark top and lighter legs, I love the contrast but realistically do I want to be cleaning table legs every time someone has baked beans? probably not!
I would love a bench along one side of the table at least, so that if we have friends over we can squeeze more people in that we would manage with chairs, and because I love the casualness (is that a word?) that a bench seat brings, probably from the many nights spent in Brighton pubs with rickety old bench seats and a pint or two of cider! I also like the idea of a bench seat with storage beneath, although know realistically it will be ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and whatever goes in would never be seen again! The John Lewis bench has a padded top too, which would be a comfy addition, one I wish some of my old pub haunts had thought about!
Although we do have family meals together there will be times when for various reasons Sam and I will want to eat together in the evening, or have friends over so I also wanted to create a little area in the home for the children to have their own table and chairs, not just for eating at but for crafts and play activities too. Lots of friends have a small table and chairs for their kids but we’ve not really got a lot of room in our current place so it’s not something I really thought about. Ideally we’d need something light weight so it can be moved into the kitchen or the kids bedroom as and when necessary, and something durable and sturdy (have you met my toddler? she likes to stand on everything!) as well as easy to keep clean.
The wayfair children’s chairs stack and come in a few different colours, I love the tub shape of them and that they slide under the table when not in use. The John Lewis version look a bit more modern but not as comfy, and a box of crayons and pad of paper can keep Athena busy for hours so comfort is a must! The wayfair table and chairs look funky but the chunky legs would mean they don’t stack and would take up too much room when not in use.
So, food for thought (ha, see what I did there?) for our new kitchen/dining room, and hopefully we’ll be in soon so we can really start to explore the space and work out how to fill it!