Oh, boy, you are going to smack me, but here goes. Have you ever considered moving the DR rug to the LR? The DR rug seems very heavy compared to the soft tones and curves of the wallpaper, and the LR rug is really too small for the seating area, imo. Plus the LR has the piano and other wood furniture, as well as the pink tones in the furnishings, that might be wonderful with the DR rug. I would then think about the yellow rug for the DR. I think it would be amazing with your dining set and wood floor, working wonderfully with the wallpaper as well. Then maybe the existing LR rug would work in the entry? I think the yellow rug you show is so pretty, but may feel kind of blah against the strong black and white diagonal tiles (which I love!).

Thanks mtnrdredux! The circle one is actually from LLBean but does look similar to that cat's paw one. I guess I was hoping the informality of the family room rug would be okay because it is a family room and the dining room/living room are more formal rooms? The rooms have a small doorway opening into each other. Maybe I should have considered a more formal rug for the family room as well? We have 3, almost four children under 5 so I do need to consider what will be practical! It is an old house with lots of separate rooms but they all have connections to each other and I'm finding it hard to tie things together. It is really helpful to hear from others! I think the mistakes I have made have come from getting lots of individual pieces I like without considering how they will work together.

I probably owe everyone an update to the thread. We're not done with the space yet. And as some folks pointed out, we probably under any circumstances have a little too much going on here in terms of function to have a totally "pulled together" look. But here's what we have now with a few of the ideas discussed upthread. 1. We flipped the piano. 2. We added a chair for sitting (currently experimenting with two chairs from other places in the house - we could use one of these, or buy a new chair) 3. We added pretty storage baskets for the kids' flotsam and jetsam. 4. I kept the rug - it seems to make things more comfortable for the kids, it seems to warm up the space, and it hooks into some of the other warm colors in the space. 5. We're not sure what do with the art / possible window treatment, but we're experimenting with the mantel and for now I tried pulling the existing art into a tighter grouping at least. (The kids added some summer artwork too - not permanent.) Anyway, it's maybe not great, but I wanted to come back and say some of the suggestions made here seem to be offer some improvement and some steps in a direction. I think the baskets helped a lot! The room is perhaps a little busy, but I kind of like all the layered textures / repeating colors, and it feels cozier. For the kids, there's a lot of places to "go" in there - and they're spending a lot of time here thanks for school in our area being 100 percent virtual through at least January. It's really turning into the kids playroom / study, so maybe that's theme I need to keep trying to emphasize. With chair / basket combo 1 With chair/basket combo 2 View from the other line of approach to that room:

Good questions. I'm the primary cook, and there is a second occasional "cook." I'm used to cooking with a high powered gas range and an electric convection oven. I do lots of multi-rack baking, occasional wok-cooking, frequent searing in cast iron, etc. I'm planning on a rangetop (not a range), a small steam oven, and a normal size convection oven. I'm interested in a second sink because me and the other people in the house (those who are here f/t and those who are here for long stays but sporadically) tend to interfere with each other's tasks, eg, I'm baking or prepping a meal, and someone else is trying to access the sink for other reasons, or in the same area using the toaster oven or filling a coffeepot or grabbing something from the dishwasher or making a snack or watering an orchid (sigh). Or someone is emptying the dishwasher (thank you!) in the middle of what is now my prep space. (In my current kitchen, there is no choice but for those things to be positioned as they are.) My thought was to have a second smaller sink on a counter-run where many of those other tasks could be funneled-- the drinking water, coffeepots, coffee grinder, toaster oven, and maybe even the microwave--to keep that stuff out of my main prep area. I had thought it would be nice to keep the kitchen partly separated from the other entertaining rooms b/c of noise/smell/mess. I will be working with a kitchen designer to try and get the layout of the kitchen itself right, but at this point I'm trying to figure out whether it would work at all to put the kitchen in that west end of the great room as opposed to where it was (or someplace else). It would be closer to the pantry space, but i wonder if it's otherwise a bad idea that creates problems.