My official first blog post for 2022! I have a ‘House Goals Project List coming later this week.’ We had a built-in banquette from Home Depot installed in our small eat-in kitchen dining room! This addition was a huge game-changer, giving our small dining room wall-to-wall seating, plus drawers below that provided much-needed storage. Read more about the project here.

As much as I loved the update to our dining room and all the storage, something felt a bit off. Our vintage dining room table no longer felt like it fit. Everything felt too white and the shape of the table didn’t feel good. I’ve very big on how a room makes me feel when I walk into it.

Several months ago, I started searching for a new dining room table and chairs that would feel and look better in our dining room with the addition of our banquette seating. Our dining room is small and directly across from our kitchen, they essentially share the same space. Check out a roundup of small dining room table and chairs idea here.

My goal for my dining room is to have the perfect balance of casual meets elegant. I want my space to feel cozy and inviting, but be able to dial up the style when we have guests over. It might shock you but this small space can actually seat six people! Our banquette seating is wall to wall and comfortably seats 2-3 people.

When I started looking for a dining room table, I knew I wanted the table to lean mid-century modern and feel perfect for everyday use and be beautiful for evenings when all dressed up. Since our space is small, it took months to narrow down my table selections. Plus I wanted a table that was budget-friendly and life-friendly, thankfully I was up for the challenge! Here’s our new dining room table and walnut woven chairs. I love how well they fit into our dining room. Our dining room table is from Edloe Finch, unfortunately they no longer carry the table, but I found almost the exact same Mid Century Modern dining room table here.

Katrina Blair banquette small dining room

Dining Room Chairs

Here’s a closer look at our Mid Century Modern Dining Room Chairs.

Mid Century Modern dining chairs, wood and woven seat — MCM Wood and Woven Dining Room Chairs

Stone and Bean Walnut Chairs

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New Hardware for Banquette

Another recent update in our dining room is upgrading the hardware. Originally, I installed gold squared handles that were affordable, but very poor quality. I upgraded to beautiful matte brass gold hardware. I consider hardware to be like jewelry, the right hardware helps to complete

Brass Gold Pulls CB2 — Matte Brass Gold Pulls

Modern brass gold hardware pulls

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Let’s Talk About Pillows

Let’s chat about pillows, basically pillows are stuffed animals for adults, I saw that in a meme on Instagram and it made me laugh. Pillows to me an essential, they provide comfort + style, plus on our long banquette having a enough to fill up on the long wall was essential.

I love our wall-to-wall banquette seating, the cushion was custom made by Calico, using their design services I was able to select the fabric, cushion style and piping the cushions. Over the last few months, I’ve added a bunch of pretty pillows to the bench. I have seven pillows o my banquette, they really help pull together the entire vibe for my dining room.

designer handmade pillow from Esty — Teal Blue Ikat Pillow

These pillows add the perfect neutral punch of color on my banquette.

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crate and barrel velvet pillow — Velvet Teal Pillow

Super soft rich velvet pillow cover, available with and without a down pillow insert

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Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

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My Dining Room Before & Now

Here’s a quick reminder of my dining room looked like before and how it currently looks. I love how it feels when I walk in to the space.

What’s Next for My Dining Room

I love how my dining room is coming together. Next in my project to do list, is finding artwork that that fits the space better. I’m leaning towards abstract artwork or bringing in family photos. I also want to update the lighting to fit the style of the table better. I’m a firm believer in taking your time to decorate your home to reflect your style.

Sponsored by LL Flooring and ShopStyle. Over the weekend, we made a huge upgrade to our small laundry room and had a new butcher block countertop installed over our washer and dryer from LL Flooring. LL Flooring offers high quality flooring options from hardwood flooring, engineered hardwood flooring and laminate flooring and all the supplies you need from your flooring project at great value. They even offer services like professional installation with their floors! In addition to flooring, LL Flooring also offers a large selection of butcher block countertops in several varieties of wood and butcher block island counters.

I partnered with LL Flooring and ShopStyle on updating my laundry room with new counters, all opinions and words are my own. Here’s my laundry room before, not bad but the old plywood counters didn’t perfectly fit thanks to our uneven walls and easily stained.

I visited my local LL Flooring store to look at Butcher Block counter options in person. After looking at the countertop options, I decided to use a butcher block island countertop that would give me the depth to sit above my washer and dryer. The butcher block counters LL Flooring offers are so beautiful! In fact they offer over eight different species of butcher block counters. After looking at all the wood species, I quickly fell in love with the American Walnut, Unfinished Maple and Unfinished White Oak.

I love the timeless look of butcher block and how much warmth and beauty they add to spaces. When my husband and I installed our old counter, I knew someday we’d replace it with a butcher block, the beauty of butcher block is undeniable.

After looking at all the options, I decided the Unfinished White Oak would be a beautiful addition in my laundry room.

Over the weekend, my Contractor Installer came to my home and measured our laundry room and confirmed that our walls are very uneven! Thankfully he was able to create a template using the old plywood and make adjustments to ensure a tight fit. My installer used to make butcher block blocks and was very impressed with the quality and beauty of the Unfinished White Oak from LL Flooring. To cut our butcher block counters, our installer used saw blades specifically for cutting butcher block countertops to ensure a clean cut. Our new countertop was heavy! He made adjustments to our existing framing to ensure they would hold the weight of the new counters.

The countertop installation was seamless! They looked incredible, the beauty of wood and all the tone variations just blew me away, I’m in love. The Butcher Block countertop update is a huge upgrade and now when I walk into my laundry room it feels substantial and looks amazing.

After the installation was complete, I applied Butcher Block Mineral Oil to the counter to help protect the wood from moisture and stains to help keep wood counters like new.

I love that mineral is also food grade and can be used on kitchen islands and kitchen counters. The mineral oil brought out the beauty in the wood tones and looks incredible! I’m so in love with how the project turned out!