Adding A Bench To The Dining Table

We are pleased to announce that we have rearranged yet another room in our home (right after our video house tour of course- d’oh). This time it is the living/dining room. See, we enjoy that we were able to move our dining table into our jumbo living space right off of the new kitchen (the whole open living plan has consistently appealed to us) but once we took out an arm chair to make room for the table and scootched the couch and the remaining chair over, we realized that the “living” part of the room was a little compromised. In adding a table for six, we lost an arm chair, so our living room was down to seating for three (two on the couch and one on the chair).

Now we in fact do all of our lounging and hanging out in the den (which thankfully is not short on seating) but due to my perfectionism (read: lunacy) I knew there had to be a little adjustment that would make the living/dining room function perfectly whether it came to dinner or lounging. And then I saw a picture from myhomeideas.com with a round dining table with four chairs and a curved banquette around it. And that is when lightning struck (metaphorically speaking). I realized that if we had some sort of cushy banquette or bench seating at the dining table it could double as seating for the living space too. And that is when I was inspired to drag our little mini-mud room bench from Target into the room.

Jackpot.

Of course we had to get another bench so that one could go back to living in our mini-mud room, but another bench meant even more under-bench storage. Hooray! And we in fact found a slightly leggier version at Bed Bath & Beyond (the taller height was more comfy at the table) and the Target bench went back into the corner of the den where it so happily resided before. Victory.

Here is what the living/dining room looked like pre-bench:

And here it is post-bench:

It is our new go-to spot to eat dinner (there is something romantic about sharing a seat) and can also be pulled out and used as living room seating too. Gotta enjoy multi-tasking furniture. Now we are back to having a U-shaped conversation area in the living room, and we can easily seat 5 peeps again. I knew there was a solution. And I am sure John’s glad that it was a low-cost one, too.

Here is the new set up from a few other angles: