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After hacking together an Ikea Expedit window Seat we REALLY thought we were done. But then came Halloween night 2011. Katie and I were sitting on the couch in the living room waiting for the neighborhood kids to begin knocking at the door and we realized, we’ve lived in this house for 3 months and this was our first time actually sitting in this room. We began talking about it and wondered why the heck we needed a formal living room when we have an awesome family room where we spend the majority of our time. We started giving it some serious thought and decided that it could make for an awesome dining room.

You see, Katie’s family is huge and when you combine the 2 of our families, the numbers get pretty outrageous. And at the time of this conversation, our “official” dining room was tiny (check out the floor plan below) The room was only big enough for a small 4 seat round table. That just wasn’t working.

So we began concepting, dreaming, and ultimately using our imagination.

Initially we thought it would be a pretty big undertaking, but once we laid out all the things that would need to be done it was actually pretty straight forward – just think about the rooms differently.

I mean, who says we can’t put a dining room table in the ‘living room’?

Now, you may be asking yourself “if you plan on making your living room a dining room, what the heck are you going to do with your original dining room??!?” Great question which we’ll expand on more in a separate series of posts specifically about the former dining room conversion but to put it simply – we wanted to make it a main level office. But let’s snap back to that living room.

While waiting to stumble upon the perfect table to fit the space, Katie stumbled upon this beautifully chaotic rug at Target. What was awesome was that the rug, which normally ran about $350, was accidentally marked down to $70. We were sold.

After that, it took a few months to find the right table, but we did.

We stumbled upon this Plantation Cove extendable table with seating for 8 for just under a thousand dollars. Which was awesome because we had just sold the floral sofa for $80 so we put that directly toward the table. (For some reason their ‘marketing’ picture makes it look like it is off white. It isn’t… you’ll see).

Also, one of our goals was to find a way to store all of that extra seating without actually STORING the extra seating. What do I mean? Well, instead of storing the additional seats in the basement we wanted them to live among the room in a usable sort of storage.

So, as soon as it was delivered, we found a home for each extra piece. The bench fit perfectly in the bay window and the 2 arm chairs were perfect for the desk in the main level office (again, you’ll  hear more about this in an upcoming post).

So with the window seat completed, the couch sold, the table in place, the bench in the bay window, and the piano still along the front wall, the dining room (and ultimately our vision) was finally coming together!

Do you guys think we’re nuts? Did we make the right decision? What’s awesome is that it can always become a living room again if we ever sell the house.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7