Sixth House Renovation Plan - The Dining Room

Good day friend. We are nearing the end of our room by room renovation plans for the first floor. We are going to take a look at the dining room today. There are not a lot of major changes to this room in the renovation plan, the real difference in the dining room will be seen in the decorating discussions and the actual implementation of all plans - which will come sooner or later, of course praying for sooner and it's looking like later and later.

In case you've missed any of the posts about the sixth house, here is the full house tour and the renovation plans for the entry, library, sitting room, great room/family room and the kitchen. I made the bold, ground-breaking prediction in the last post that the renovation of the kitchen will have the single greatest impact on improving this house - crazy, I know! The dining room will be our true dining room. Like our Holland house, there will be stools at the island in the kitchen, family meals will be eaten in the dining room though. That being said, the dining room needs to feel like an extension of the kitchen rather than a formal, rarely used room. In all of my family's houses growing up and in my own houses two, three, and four we had formal dining rooms. I really enjoyed and appreciated having our more casual dining room be the actual "dining room" in our fifth house (Holland) and I look forward to having that same set-up here in Ohio.

Alrighty, let's get into it!

Here are the listing photos of the space as a reminder of what we purchased or if you prefer, "we purchased what?!" :-)

This is the view from the front door:

This is the view from the kitchen:

There are two main changes to this room:

1. Remove the soffit. The border wallpaper on the soffit sports twenty-three lion heads. We all counted them as we marveled at them the first time we ate in here.

2. Enlarge the opening between the kitchen and the dining room. I do not want to take the entire wall down because I want the wall space in the kitchen for a desk and I fear there are some mechanicals running through the wall that would most likely be too cost prohibitive to move.

Here is my graph paper plan showing the changes:

These are drawings from Brenda Parker, our architect:

Now for the fun (amusing) part, my mark-ups of the listing photos to help visualize the changes:

View from the front door, (intending) to show how you would be able to see all the way through to the windows over the built-in bench and also see the new island in the kitchen.

View from the kitchen, showing (with imagination) the room without soffits and the view to the new French front doors:

Is the biggest improvement to the room covering the light fixture? It might be!

Lastly, here is the blueprint with the revisions shown. The gray is covering up all of the shaded soffit and the white indicates the larger opening to the kitchen.

That concludes the dining room renovation plan. Removing the soffit should make the room feel much more spacious, as it now feels like the ceiling is closing in on you in there with lions breathing down your neck! The larger doorway to the kitchen will also help in the spaciousness regard. Next time we will explore the laundry room and powder room and close out the first floor list of proposed changes. I hope to see you there.

Thank you for reading today,

Kerry