Jennran, I think the first thing you need to do is figure out how you want to use this space. Do you want a dining area in this room? Do you need a dining area in this room, i.e. is there anywhere else to put a table in the house? What else will you use this room for? Will it be the main TV watching area, or is there a separate family room? Do yo have kids and will they be using this room and if so, what for? Will this room be used to entertain guests? Will it be used by you and your DH at night, to chat and unwind? Until you know what you want to do in the room, it will be difficult for you to work out how to arrange it. That said, you can put the dining area anywhere you want to. My apartment is part of a large old house that was split up into 5 units. I have less than half the original living room as my living room and all of the original dining room as a dining room. Which is all well and good, but the living room is much, much smaller than the dining room. And you enter directly into the living room. So I'm in the process of switching the living and dining rooms. (Or I will be as soon as I find a dining table I like.) When I'm done, you will enter into a combination foyer/dining room, with a round dining table in the center of the room. The dining room will be a living room, with seating for at least 5 people. Right now, my living room seats 2 comfortably and 2 more perched on hard wood chairs. It's about making the space you have work for you.

Newbieremodeler, This is my opinion but there are few things that are necessary in making a small home function well for a family for a LONG time, not temporarily until you buy a bigger house. But a well functioning home where you can raise a family. I am thinking about this alot lately because we are buying some rental properties and trying to make these homes "livable" for a family so they are easily rentable. These are things I am thinking about.... 1. Eat in kitchen is not necessary but a kitchen that is close and CONNECTED to an eating area is. (there is a difference) You can connect to an eating area with visual and physical connection. 2. Easy access to the nice green space in your backyard/sideyard that allows you to connect to the outdoors. This allows you to enjoy summer BBQs and perhaps entertain easily in the summer. (I would put sliding glass door from your dining room to make it happen easily in your house). You can't afford the linear foot without cabinets in the kitchen. So you have to put the slider in the dining. This is a typical small home solution. An easy way to make your house livable is to put a deck across the east side of the house (kitchen dining side if this give you a nice access to the yard and increasing the entertaining space without adding on to the house.) 2. Dining area that accomodates a larger group of people with rearrangement of furniture to host occasional parties, ie Thanksgiving, birthday parties, having another family over for dinner is ABSOLUTELY necessary for long term staying power of a small home. I think this is a more important criteria than actual eat-in kitchen. When the house cannot accomodate life's meaningful events in your own home, you feel that your house is not "good" or "big" enough. I think older home designs (pre-WWII) understood this well and gave generous spaces to the dining area even though they did not give enough to the kitchen. Imagine feeling that you can never host a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 at your house because there is no way to make it happen even with rearrangement of the furniture.... In your current kitchen, you can probably seat 6 to 8 adults in the dining and a card table with kids in the living room. Set the table close to the dining opening near the fireplace and have a nice Thanksgiving/holiday party at your home for 10 or more people. This allows you to create memories for your kids. In many of your plans, there is no way you can host the holidays at your home: ie the banquet kitchen and the kitchen eat in table.... These are great for larger homes where there are other areas to host a large party but not in a small home, IMHO. Do you forsee yourself hosting family parties? Dining rooms that are somewhat open to living room rearranges furniture easier for parties. There are people who never host sit down dinners (informal for families. I am not even taking FORMAL) at their homes because it is impossible. On the other hand, I have been in homes that are much smaller but the house makes holiday dinners happen. If you think having these life's events in your home is important to you, then you need to design for it. I think many of your designs show 36 inch opening between the dining and LR. I think this is smaller than what you already have. (58 inches, I am reading). I am not sure what the reason is behind this.... I would open up dining area as much you can given the load bearing condition. Figure out the house first then the kitchen. This is really important! This is not easy because you have to optimize everything and look ahead to the kind of family you will have. You need to have a reasonable plan for various phases of your family's life. For example, if you are a family that will watch TV in the basement, then you need to plan for the basement media room. More questions about the house: How will you use your basement as you have kids? Will you be satisfied with 1 bath on the main or wil need/want to add 1/2 or 1 bath on the main? Where is the nice part of the yard? How will you access that? Do you use the garage to park? If so, do you enter the house through the kitchen? Do you just use the garage as a storage and never enter the house that way? You can add storage in the garage easily to put overflow kitchen stuff in there IF you move the kitchen to where the dining is currently. (as is one of your ideas) In a small home, I actually prefer this type of arrangement than making a kitchen that is too big for the house... (there should be a balance of rooms in a given house) Do you have places for young toddlers/school aged kids to go and play on a rainy/cold day? Where will the toddlers eat? (I had a small toddler table next to my kitchen island for couple years until my kids were old enough to climb the stool easily. The booster chair streapped to the stool did not work for us as well.) Do you have places for teenagers to hangout and have some privacy? Do you have a place for adults to have a little quiet and solitute from one another. (Bedroom is fine for this if you design for it) Do you have a place for occasional overnight guests? How do you enter the house? Where to you drop your stuff as you enter? When I look at your LR, it looks underutilized to me. i would close that opening, and put a wall there so you can cluster the seating arrangement next to the FP. Then you move the kitchen where the DR is now. You create some storage in the garage that stores all your large occasional kitchen stuff. The dining room should have a large opening to the LR which makes the rearranging for large parties easy. You can see into the dining and you feel more connected to the family. (if you DH watches TV and he won't budge from that, then you need to be able to see the TV from the kitchen to feel connected to the family) The couch should face the FP and you can have a console behind the couch which will create a space near the front door a sense of entry. These are some ideas to get you started.... Good luck.

Started to post yesterday but wanted to think on it a bit… firstly, your granite is Stunning with a capital S and is a beautiful choice for Craftsman style! It looks almost like an oil painting, and the few vertical striations make it so interesting and move your eyes around the whole surface. Thank you! It's even more gorgeous in person. I just want to hug it every time I see it. Secondly, I like that you are also installing pendant lighting at the two windows as well as the island, and I do think those should be the same. I keep going back and forth about that. My thinking is the island lights are in the middle of the kitchen and might be better off as more prominent? My initial and immediate gut instinct was to say go with the first fixture, but I kept going back to look at the second from the Old California Lantern Co, which is why I hesitated in posting yesterday. I think I’m going to be the voice of dissent and go with the Old California fixture over your table. Now you know my dilemma! LOL Do you feel the Old California goes with the pendants? For 10 ft. ceilings, I’d choose the larger 12” pendants to accentuate that lovely ceiling height. Smaller pendants would seem undersized IMO and experience. I'm thinking of doing the larger pendants over the island and the 9" pendants over the two windows. Perhaps it’s just my own preference for vintage and uniqueness, and I think the Old California Lantern Co chandelier is more interesting… so: I find comments others make help me decide my own mind… here are just a few: Do you feel it’s important the fixture over your table match identically or closely with the pendant lighting? I can see that the Old California chandelier has a patina and the metal coloring is different than your pendant choices – again, does this affect your decision? The picture is just what's on their website. I can get a finish that is almost exactly the same with the same glass. Because your granite is clearly the stand-out, do you want a fixture that will hold its own with the countertop, or do you feel the Old California might compete while the Huntington might compliment the granite and your style of Craftsman? I'm confused. I like them both. I do love the Old California but don't want it to compete either. I have a lot going on in the kitchen so I'm thinking the Arroyo Craftsman one may sit back a bit more with everything else going on. In the dining room niche I have a beautiful buffet and I'm planning on an subtle wallpaper just for that wall. In the kitchen where the glass is in the backsplash, that will have a stained glass piece. Subtle, but still another element.

The PB Lucca chandelier is a knock off of the Currey & Co. Saxon chandelier. The Saxon is larger but both have the wispy arms. The measurements on both state the length and width as the Same which would make them round chandeliers. 49.75” for the LucCa would put it well past the 38” depth of your table. HOWEVER it might be possible that the arms on the chandelier can be moved/swivelled to create a more oval or oblong shape with 3 arms on each end rather than around. I don’t recall if that is the case on the Lucca or not. Since you’ve ordered it and you like it , it might be worth a try to see if that is the case. Hopefully you live close enough to a PB to be able to return it To the store if it doesn’t work. I highly doubt you will get any information from customer service on it. Especially this time of year . Many of them will be temp extra hire for holiday overflow.