Dining Room Before & After

Dining room before. A brief context to set expectations.

If the kitchen is the heart of the house, then what is the dining room? Especially when you can’t eat in the kitchen…

I wanted a dining room that felt like it was one with the purposes of the kitchen. A space where the family felt comfortable navigating in, working in, and laughing over shared meals. It quickly became obvious to me that I needed to renovate the dining room and the kitchen at the same time to create a cohesive space that could actually become the heart of our home.

The Dining Room Before

This dining space sat adjacent to the kitchen with a normal doorway that lead into it. But these separate spaces meant there wasn’t quite enough room in either the kitchen OR the dining room. If I’m cooking, there is was no space for my kids to sit and chat and visit or even help.

The Renovation Process

I’m not usually a fan of truly open floor plans, but I knew I needed more room for hosting, and it just made sense to open things up to the kitchen. The idea was to widen the doorway into a cased opening.

Step 1: Opening Up The Wall (Removing Cabinets)

In order to widen the doorway, we had to remove kitchen cabinets from the kitchen side of the shared wall. Don’t worry…opening up this wall means I’ll have room for a large island (with storage) in the kitchen that will make up for the lost cabinets.

Step 2: Moving Doorways & Adding Doorways

Notice the door and wall opening on the dining room side? This wall had no doorways before, but we opened a new doorway into the garage (and closed up the old garage door on the kitchen side so the fridge and oven could go there). We also knocked a hole for a doorway (see the yellow wall?) into what would be the future laundry room.

The old linoleum floors had to be removed from both rooms. New wood-look tiles were the perfect option to run from the kitchen through to the dining room for a cohesive look. That way spills are not a problem…we can mop it, but still enjoy wood style.

Step 3: Finishing It All Up

This is the view from the kitchen side, which was the original object of my remodeling ambitions. But it only made sense to do both at the same time in order to open the room up and create the right flow. You can see the cased opening on the right.

It went from a regular doorway to a wide cased opening, and this is the new view looking from the dining room into the kitchen in it’s ‘nearly done’ state.

The New View From The Kitchen Into The Dining Room

What a huge difference! Two closed off rooms now open up to each other making meal-time more convenient.

The flow feels unimpeded and natural. When I host dinner parties, there is room for guests at the table, more room at the countertop, and even enough floor footprint to add a second table when necessary.

Daily family life and mealtime has also improved! I can chat with the girls while cooking, as they sit at the kitchen island or dining table. We can serve up our plates from the stovetop and sit wherever. Plus the amount of storage has actually increased (although I tore out some cabinets initially).

The openness between rooms meant I could add more storage in the kitchen and even a sideboard buffet in the dining room. Before, it would have felt crowded, like walking into the sideboard right as you enter the doorway, but now I can use this wall for extra storage.

The Sideboard Buffet

I’m so glad I added extra storage using a sideboard! It is such a luxe addition to the space, and became a focal wall in the dining room.

I store dinner party wares in this sideboard; such as fancy utensil sets, taper candles, cloth napkins, table cloths, and more.

An Oversized Mirror To Fill A Small Wall

The opposite wall to the sideboard buffet is a small one now that I have added two doors. One leading to the garage (which I use as a workshop), and the other leading to the laundry room (which wasn’t accessible from inside of the house before).

Adding Elegance Through Fixtures

Over time, I replaced the builder-grade light switches and door levers with nicer brass ones. Sometimes the process of renovation isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning.

It took me a while to realize a chandelier would add the perfect touch of elegance. When the renovation was first complete, this isn’t the fixture we had in here. Unfortunately the first one wasn’t well made and broke. Fortunately, it gave me the opportunity to go for something much more dramatic.

A Sneak Peek Into The Kitchen & Laundry Room

This turned into a much bigger renovation with multiple rooms involved. There was no good way to do these spaces one at a time, so I ate the expense and had the basics of these three rooms done at once. But then took my time (and years) to refine the details.

Learn more about the details of the laundry room makeover here (and see the before photos)!

And I adore my kitchen! It is finally the “heart of the home” I envisioned for it. Check out the kitchen renovation process here.

Shop The Dining Room

The renovation gave me the bones of a great room, but it is the details that create charm and personalization. If you want to recreate the look, and know “where I got it”, you can shop the space here.

We reference Dining room before briefly to keep the thread coherent.

Dining room before comes up here to connect ideas for clarity.