Eat-In Style for Six

One of the things I love about my home now is being able to fit more than four for dinner in our 1950's eat in kitchen. We now can officially seat six in our dining room, which huge for our modest 1956 rancher huge! During the rebuilding of our home we decided to widen the doorway between our living room and dining and kitchen. This change really opened up our home and has made the adjoining rooms all feel larger. I think natural light from our large living room window, front door, dining room window and kitchen and laundry room all make everything feel bigger (love that!) 

Before I share the recent change, here's a reminder of what are space looked like a few months after moving back in our home, click here to see what our dining room looked like before the fire (if your new to my blog, our home was damaged in a house fire in July 2012, we spent half of 2013 rebuilding our home)

One of my girlfriends was kind enough to let us borrow her dining room table that wasn't being used in ours until, I found 'the table.' Anyways back to finally being able to seat six! When I was looking for a vintage dining room table for our dining room, I knew I want it to be either round or oval with pretty pedestal legs. I passed on many tables holding out for just the right one, I found the right one stalked it and eventually bought it via Craigslist (some of the best money spend to date!) Read more about our crazy table adventure here. I fell in love with the Klismos dining airs from West Elm and bought four on clearance. I decided to only buy four, because I was hoping to add a banquette in our dining room. Well that day has arrived, I've been literally in love with the Hayden Banquette from World Market for like years, I mentioned it here & here. After stopping in World Market on Sunday just to poke around Hasani and I decided to finally pull the trigger and bring it home for a steal (but I'll get to the steal part in a few) 

Over the past several months since moving back into our home, our dining room has evolved so much! I hung a curtain and rod high and wide and sewed back tab drapes (click here for the How To) Refinished our dining room table and hung a gallery wall full of black and white family photos. 

Here's our dining room now that we added a banquette...can I just how much I'm in love with this view, the way it looks 'meant to be.' 

The banquette is a really nice size, and fortunately fits perfectly in our petite eat in kitchen (thank goodness!) I was nervous it would be too big or stick out too far since its nice and deep. When its not 'in use' we have the table pushed back a tab so its looks tucked in just like chairs are tucked in under a table. 

Now for the total steal part of this story, on Sunday the banquette was on sale for $279.00 regularly $449.00. The store we visited only had two in stock and one was promised to another customer who put it 'on hold.' After talking to the store manager and checking the shipping status to find out when they'd get more inventory, she offered to sale the floor model banquette to us for $ 239.99 plus taken an additional 15% for using our World Market Explorer card (words just like a Safeway club card, enter your phone number and bam instant savings!) We paid $ 203.99 for this beauty. Here's a snapshot of our receipt. I double and triple checked we could return the banquette at any time during their normal return period if we changed our minds, they said no problemo :) 

I can't wait to have friends over and all gather round of table and sit on the banquette and socialize. Its amazing to see how truly transformed our dining room feels now that we added the banquette, such a good feeling.

What do you think of our new addition to our eat in kitchen? 

DIY Laundry Room Countertop

I recently painted our laundry room door a pretty shade of aqua Behr Bali Blue to be exact, and mentioned we were in the process of making our little laundry room more efficient. Our laundry room is just off our dining room and kitchen, our laundry room isn't original to our house it used to be located in the garage. Oh how I loathed doing our laundry in the garage, it felt like a dark cave. I haven't really talked much about our laundry room / mudroom on the blog so here our some more deets on this hardworking space. During the rebuilding phase of our house we decided to add an indoor laundry / mudroom addition to our home, best decision ever. I'm beyond thrilled to have a dedicated area inside our home to for laundry that's bright airy and a nice size for our petite home. 

The back wall in our small space is dedicated to our laundry area, we opted on front loading washing machine and dyer to maximize space. I really wanted to carry hardwood floors into this space, but I needed to be practical since our washing and dryer and mudroom are in the this space we went with faux wood look tile. Another good decision! The tiles are long planks and laid the same direction as our wood floors to help create a cohesive look with our flooring. We opted to go with dark drown grout. I love how easy the tile is to keep clean and how nice it looks! Here's a reminder of our home laundry room space looked like prior to moving back into our home.

We bought our washing machine and dryer from Sears during the Memorial Day holiday sale, at first we planned on buying and entry level set, but thanks to the savings we were able to buy an upgraded Kenmore with a few more bells and whistles plus we saved some extra cash thanks to local rebates offered though SMUD and PG&E. We've had our washer and dyer for about 7 months and love them! 

Ever since our appliances were delivered, we've been wanting to add a counter top above them, for folding clothes etc. We decided to DIY a wood counter top for laundry room. I love how much warmth wood brings into space and it seemed like the perfect easy affordable solution for a counter top. We went to Home Depot and purchased Red Oak Plywood. The plywood was perfectly smooth and had pretty grains that we thought would look pretty once stained. 

We had Home Depot cut the Red Oak plywood based on the measurements for the counter top. Using 1x2 boards we made a ledge along the back wall and sides to hold the counter up, so the counter top doesn't rest on top of the washer & dryer. In the picture blow you can see the wood ledge. 

The sides of the Red Oak plywood are unfinished, we used a 1/2 piece of trim to make the the counter appear thicker. We countersunk a the nails and covered the nail holes with wood filler. I fell in love with our new counter before the stain even went on, I love how much space it provided. 

I wanted to cut down on all the staining steps, so I decided to try Minwax Polyshades in the color Mission Oak with a satin finish. I applied three coats of staining to achieve the dark rich stain I was wanting. The stain goes on really runny, so I just took mine time applying each coat. I love the the rich color counter top turned out. 

It's exciting to see the laundry room / mudroom start to take shape. So far adding a little storage bench (that I plan on recovering) and painting the inside of the door a fun color along with our DIY wood counter top have really given our space so much more purpose. 

Next on our list for this space is to add cabinet storage, shelving and possibly a back splash. I'm still tossing around ideas: subway tile, colorful wall paper or stencil? Once the bench has been recovered in more 'me fabric' and I add more storage for 'mudroom essentials.' So happy with decided to tackle our laundry room counter on a whim.

*Update: We chose not to nail our new counter top in place, so its floating above the washer and dryer, we figured if we ever needed to make any repairs it would make it easier by being able to remove the counter top * 

What do you think of our DIY Wood Counter top? Have you started any laundry room updates to your home recently?