Check out the Home Decorating Forum. This forum is mainly about noisy neighbors or difficult landlords.

Are you going to paint the grandfather clock too? Don't be so quick to create a monotone room. I would darken the coffee table top with a gel stain so it works with the darker end tables and clock. HERE is how one person did it. I might also darken the dining chairs. I'm confused as to how the end tables have the perfect width, but you want them to look larger! Perhaps you are overthinking the design. It looks balanced to me. Live with it for a while.

Finding suitable extra chairs is not going to be easy, but test a few out once you have table, so you can get a sense of how (or not) they work. The table should suit the living room and kitchen and the 2 types of chairs; perhaps a modern black oak table with simple lines could work. You may have to include modern elements to find the right balance with living room especially You said you are stuck with the chairs and going to design around them. Seems a shame to restrict table choices and have non-matching chairs. Could end up with an odd mix that doesn’t quite complement rooms either. Maybe consider selling the chairs and you could probably get at least 1/2 their original cost and then start fresh. It will be easier to start with the table and then chairs. Good luck.

Stone is beautiful in part because of it's variation in tone which gets completely obliterated with paint. In my personal opinion, painted stone fireplaces generally look cheap or dated. Instead I would recommend trying a greige/taupe wall paint color that is more harmonious with the stone of the fireplace and the warmer carpet color. Additionally, you can always repaint the painted walls if you don't like the color, but you can't really go back once you ruin stone with paint.