Doubling Our Dining Room Storage

Last week, I showed you the table we chose for the kitchen dining area. The goal was to find a long thin table that could seat 8 daily, and 10 when needed. The table I picked is 104″ long {even longer than our old table}, yet I somehow thought it was a good idea to save money on delivery by picking it up from the warehouse myself. My dad and I measured the space in his Yukon and thought it would fit, but we didn’t factor in the size of the packaging. So when we got to the warehouse, the box was about 6 inches too long. Fortunately, the employees were super nice and helped us unpackage the table top right there on the loading dock. We wrapped it in a moving blanket to protect it and then slid it back into the car. It fit with less than an inch to spare. Phew! {Or Phewffff, as my 6 year old says.}

 

Seeing the new table with the old chairs made me even more eager to get new, gray dining chairs. At long last, the chairs we’d been waiting on for 6 months finally arrived, and just in time for us to host a dinner party… because that’s what everyone does in the middle of a major makeover, right? Not once, but twice, in fact, because I’m hosting book club this weekend as well.

With the new table and chairs in place, it was time to replace the glass and metal sideboard that matched the old furniture.

The curved glass shelves were looking pretty dated, and they just didn’t provide the functional storage the we really need. I was happy to see this space as a blank slate…

The boys, on the other hand, weren’t so thrilled when they got home from soccer to see what I had done!

These boys love their house and don’t like change. They were already mad that we got rid of their kitchen table and chairs… but taking down the wall of glass shelves was just one step too far. I know they’ll come around… eventually!

With the space cleared, it was time to decide what would replace it. To keep this overall project on budget and maximize the storage potential of this wall, I decided that IKEA was my best bet. I love the configuration of the IKEA EKET cabinets in this inspiration photo…

…but unfortunately my wall isn’t wide enough for that much storage. I knew I wanted to stick with a two-toned combo and a mix of open and closed shelving and drawers. We used IKEAs online design tool to visualize the options, and we initially decided on for sets of cabinets with doors, and one open cubical shelf.

But after thinking about it some more, I really wanted some drawers. So we made another trip back to IKEA, assembled a set of drawers, and came up with this configuration option. It looks even better with the doors and drawers in place, of course.

I like the simple lines of this cabinetry, but I’ll probably add some handles to dress it up just a bit.

The one thing I didn’t take into account when I first chose this cabinetry is how shallow it is. My old sideboard was nice and deep – deep enough for large serving platters, for example. I’m going to have to rearrange some of the kitchen cabinets to fit the oversized pieces in a different place, but in the end, this IKEA cabinet set up still gives me way more storage than I had before. And a girl can never have enough storage, right?! Especially in the kitchen!

That’s all of got for today. I’ll have some updates and lighting and tile next week!