Turning the Dining Room into a Dining Room

Our lower floor had two squares of carpet, one for the dining room and one for the living room. When we moved in this house, we never planned to use the dining room as a dining room, for two reasons. One, we needed a playroom. The kitchen had a nook or some sort of space that was perfectly fine for a table, so we knew we could use that as a place to eat, which would then free up the dining room to be a much-needed playroom. But the other reason we didn't want to have it as our main eating area was because it was carpeted. And with three little kids, you're going to get food and drink on the floor, so that didn't work for us.

 Recently, though, we decided we wanted and somewhat needed a bigger eating area, so we could at least host another couple for dinner. We also needed a new dining room set, because ours was old and beaten up, and also because we were down to only five chairs, as the others had tipped over (usually due to Joshua) and broken. Also, our playroom isn't getting used as much as it once did, because the kids are bigger and doing different things in different areas of the house.  And in fact, we have mostly been using it as our school and craft room, as we bought a used craft table and a few chairs and a rug to go in the center of the room.  The kids do crafts there, but Meghan also uses it when she does schoolwork with the kids.  But that table can easily be moved over to the old eating area.

 Adding all of this up, we decided it was time to get a new, bigger dining room set, and also to replace the carpet in the dining room with wood, and then have that as our main dining room.  As part of that, we also had the rest of the main floor wood refinished as well.  We did that this week, and here you can see first the final night of the kids at the craft/school table, and then the before, after, and during (which is interesting to show how they make it seamless with the existing wood).  I see now that I failed to take an after picture that was from a similar angle as the before picture, but whatever.  You get the idea.  We think it looks great, and it will be more functional for us at this point in our lives.