Thanks for all the feedback. Definately a lot of food for thought. Work in_progress, the dining room is completely open to the kitchen. Bestyears, I don't do a whole lot of displaying. I may put some cut flowers or a few Xmas cards, but generally I like to leave the space uncluttered. We use the counter a lot when entertaining for food and drinks. I'm trying to avoid adding visual interest with vases or candles. I should definitely visit a showroom and see things in person. Clubcracker, I didn't realize you can get tile on overstock and eBay. Will keep an eye out. Sidney, thank you for posting all the pictures. I definitely don't want more wood in the room. There's a lot of wood between the built in table and chairs. Good luck on your project! would love to see pics! Olychick, I had forgotten about wallpaper. that's probably a better option than tile. even designer paper is $150 a roll and I would need only one roll. I love Galbraith and Paul or romo paper. Maybe I should go take a look. Someone in the kitchen forums photoshopped this for me. I like it, but this tile costs $100/ square foot plus there's the labor. I probably would do something a little less busy, like this: here are a few wallpaper pattern ideas: I do have this stencil that I forgot about: dlm, I painted the dining room and family room white so the outlets don't stick out that much :) teacats, I'm okay with the prints right now and am certainly in no hurry to replace them.

Thanks guys! We have an even teenier entrance when you just walk in the door - 3ft wide by 6 ft long. It has hooks for backpacks coats etc. When we moved in one of the first things I did was put up another row of hooks at kid level so they can (theoretically) hang their own stuff up. C., there is also a cast iron rad in that tiny space that is always crowded with those soaking wet mitts, but poly fleece just doesn't smell the same as it dries LOL. I saw this metal rack in a British mag once that fit over the rad and had hooks for mitts and socks. I've never been able to find one, but still search.

I think it's possible to combine one metallic with a color, for example your silver frames would look good with the black ones and the gold ones with the brown. I think it would be difficult to successfully combine all the differently colored frames you have in one gallery wall. Depending on the color and the color scheme of the room the colored ones might work with one of the metallics. Otherwise it's easy to paint wood frames. Consider using all walls for arrangements - hallways, foyer, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchen are all places one can put arrangements of framed art altho often we only think of using them in LR's and DR's. You may have to change frames for the subject matter to work with the colors. You could mat a smaller picture into a larger frame. Not perhaps as easy to reduce a large picture to fit a smaller frame but some could be trimmed or professionally resized. Have fun with this. What I usually do when planning an arrangement of multiple frames is to lay it out on the floor until I like the arrangement. A bit like an unorthodox jigsaw puzzle! :D

Hi les, thank you (again) for the comments. Hope you are still out there. I'm looking at either a greeny tan for the walls or a greeny blue (I know you can't tell in the pics but there is a nice bit of greeny blue in the chairs. the tile on the fireplace is going to be changed soon so I don't want to decorate around it. Funny how somethings that look good IRL look hideous in the pics and some things that look hideous IRL look good in the pics (take my word for it, the tiles are hideous). We tried doing the sofa facing the fireplace last night and found that it is just too long to do this. Also the coffee table is so long that the chairs had to be way out on the sides of the fireplace rather than pulled up close. A small round coffee table would fix this but I love our coffee table (and it was one of the few fairly expensive things we've bought for the space). I totally agree that dying the slipcover would make all the difference. I actually tried to dye it a couple of weeks ago and it was a bit of a disaster. I tried using rit dye in Tan and it came out really pinky tan instead of golden tan. The dye remover wouldn't work and I had to bleach it and I think it came out whiter than before. I then tried dying one cushion with tea, but it didn't seem to change the colour at all (probably not strong enough sol'n) and at that point I was so sick of it, I gave up. Next time it gets dirty, I'll try the teastain again. Awhile ago you suggest doing darker pillows on the sofa to connect the chairs to the sofa. I found pillows in the same brown as in the chairs and made some out of a contemporary stripe in the green, red and tan (but don't show up well in the pic). You were absolutely right, they look great. Like most everyone else, we've been hit by the economic crisis and there is a possiblity the school my dh works for will have to close. So we won't be spending anymore money on the room (or anything else for that matter) until we find out if they can weather this storm. I'm going to try ttodd's trick and scour the basement. I've got at least 10 cans of paint in the basement and I'm thinking I'm just going to mix away until I get a colour I like (don't laugh now, this is how I got the perfect colour for the kichen walls and living room ceiling). I bought the prints already, but may look for cheap frames at the craft store or do what I used to do in my college days and just hang them from a wire with clothes pegs :-) Truth be told, I love decorating on the cheap. In the photo below you can kind of see the trio of modern black vases. I saw the trio for $130, but didn't want to pay that. I found a collection of different coloured vases in shapes I liked and spray painted them all black (total cost $30).