I have purchased many estates over the years and I have quite a few stories to tell of obsessive compulsive collectors or people that could never throw anything away. Boxes of both trash and treasure stacked to the ceiling with pathways through the house. ItÂs spooky going through someone elseÂs lifetime of possessions. You learn much more about them then you might care to know. I remember one estate in which hundreds of items were wrapped in tissue, then brown paper, tied with string and labeled as to what they were. There were items bought new and never opened, there were many valuable antique items and then IÂd find a package labeled "Panty Hose" (used) or "Cigarette Packages." (Empty) Inside an antique dresser were half empty bottles of Lithium which explained a lot. The worst ones are when you realize the person could no longer take care of themselves and were living in filth and no one intervened. By the by as to my earlier post. I decided to give my mother in law the Iris quilt and sell the butterfly. I think dealing with all of the O.C. estates has turned me off of collecting anything. The fun for me is in the finding.

Oh, I see. You were talking about depth, and I was talking about width. No, if I were to do something against that wall I would want it to be no more than 24" wide. I guess that's called a "chair." It may make sense, though, to pull the table out from the wall enough to be able to seat another person back there (with a chair) should the occasion arise, and to center the pendant (which I prefer the look of) over the table that way. I'll have to play around some more to see how far I need to pull it away, or if I'd rather just forgo the possibility of seating someone back there - since I've seated four people at my kitchen table about 4 times in the 15 years I've lived here.

Well there is one thing I think is pretty unanimous - the doorway between the dining and living rooms will get moved over to the west about 20", allowing the space under the stairs to be better utilized either for storage or a little reading nook/desk spot. Got the toughest decision out of the way first :) I really don't want to mess with the plumbing stack that is behind the built-in.....so unless that's really the only way to make things work, there will be no passageway along that north living room wall. I had thought about moving the heat pump away from the laundry room window and over to the west, on the other side of the garage door, and then converting the laundry room window to a door and having that be our main entry on the back side of the house. I'm afraid it may look funny though to have two exterior doors right next to each other, and I don't want to lose the exterior access to the garage, so that door will have to stay put. I think the laundry room window will need to stay as it is and the dining room door should be the main entrance. We can redo the landscaping & put in a sidewalk that will direct traffic to that door from the driveway. One thing I'm not sure of is if I should do sliders or French doors? Is it weird to have a slider as the "front" door? And how do I handle privacy - the door faces the back yard, there is no house or anything back there that could see in, but I still want something to cover the door at night. Maybe built-in blinds would be best? I love the idea of moving the kitchen to the nook....it would be so nice to look out into the yard while working in the kitchen, but that would mean that we have to use the dining room as THE dining room. I don't think that will work if the dining room door is the entry and even if it weren't, that room is not really suited for a dining room table. It's too narrow and too much of a passthrough room. I tried it out briefly a year or so ago and it didn't work very well. bp's suggestion of closing off the current laundry/kitchen connection and moving the washer/dryer there looks good - we could open up a doorway to the right of the sink and shift the sink/stove/kitchen to the south. Opening up a doorway to the living room from the kitchen would let in light from the big picture window in the living room, so the kitchen wouldn't feel as dark. The rest of the laundry room space (north end) could be used as a mudroom and normal household traffic could go from the garage to the "dining" room and then on to the bedrooms or living room. The one thing I'm not sure about with that plan is where does my pantry go? I would like to have a decent pantry as we do a lot of gardening and canning in the summer and I don't have a basement or cellar to use for storage. Maybe it would have to go somewhere in the laundry area. Thanks again for the terrific suggestions and the kind comments about our little house. It's not perfect and definitely has its idiosyncrasies but it's also got a lot of character and charm - thanks for reminding me of that, I tend to take it for granted sometimes!

These are my new inspiration photos. I definitely want to get a rug with some black in it for the dining room. I want some contrast in that area. Then i plan on getting a large art piece, something that pops. Eventually, i want to get a black and cane credenza, but i might look into DIYing it