I am wondering if you really have room for chairs and stools on the long side of the table? Seems like having both would make walking through there almost impossible. If you do have room, I would be inclined to do stools and chairs that match - they are so close to one another, in the same room, and it all feels like a part of the kitchen space. Having two completely different styles and finishes there would be too busy, imo. As for the stools, I would not do anything backless, unless no one is really ever going to sit there for very long. The ones you chose that have the wooden 4 posts on the corners of the seat can be uncomfortable for people who are not skinny - you end up with their legs on those wooden post corners. I don't think I recall any black in the kitchen area or in the living room, which is quite open to the eating area if I am remembering right. I would think black stools and chairs might look kind of disconnected to the overall floor plan. Could you bring home a stool and chairs to try before you commit to all of them? I think that would be the best way to know what you want.

Hi, thanks for the nice words! prill, the paint is "Pumice" by Restoration Hardware. I found the rug at HomeGoods, of all places! We looked all over the place for rugs and I happened to be shopping for candles and it caught my eye. gwbr, we're going to play with the placement of the dining table this weekend. It's a heavy table so moving it is a pain, but I agree with you the alignment isn't quite right. We just had the movers bring it in and plop it down and we haven't had a chance to find the right placement yet. ummm, thanks for the tips! The dining table was custom made by a LA carpenter who makes dining tables out of re-claimed wood. As for your tip about painting the "brown table", were you referring to the little red table? We don't have a brown table except for the small round table b/t the two chairs.

Hi Officewench. I see two issues here--the cabinet itself, & the the general level of (as you put it) matchy-matchyness, which is a dismissive term I don't like, even if I don't care for the over-coordinated look, either. It's the same difference between saying that a room that's been decorated gradually over a long period of time--a historic house, say, or maybe my own place--has an undecorated look and saying that it's a jumbled mess. At Malmaison in France, everything has been designed within an inch of its life, and the woods & the gilt-bronze hardwaree and the silk lampas fabrics are all perfectly consistent, but the results are gorgeous, not "matchy-matchy". Thus endeth the screed. OK, now that we've finished with semantics, let's get on to your actual question. If the cabinetwork in your entire house--except for this bath--is already done in white shaker cabinets with recessed-panel doors, I hardly think that adding one more cabinet in the same style is going to sink the ship. After all, if you like the all-white look, there can never be too much of it, and if you're already having second thoughts about having so much of it, I hate to say this but it's already too late, anyway, so don't expect a single cabinet to correct the balance. This has nothing to do with that. So, now that we've established that what goes on in the bathroom stays in the bathroom, you can forget about what's going on in the rest of the house as you choose your bathroom's vanity. It's time to focus on the here-&-now. Here's the thing: cherry's a funny wood. In bright light--and if the wood is in a fairly light-color stain--cherry can be absolutely beautiful, with a wonderful, shimmering, satiny luster that you otherwise only see in things like birds-eye & curly & fiddle-back maple veneers and (sometimes) in sycamore. On the other hand, in its darker colorations & without strong directional light to highlight its occasional chatoyance, cherry can also look dull & lifeless, with nothing but surface shine to add any sort of visual interest. That's why, in a very small room with no natural light, I might hesitate to use cherry: it won't show off to its best advantage, and, added to the fact that it will be the only time the wood shows up in your otherwise all-white decor, your vanity could end up looking like something you picked up merely because it was a good deal--rather than something you bought because you loved it--or worse, that it was a mistake, like the wrong cabinet showed up on the truck & you didn't have time to exchange it for the right one. face it: we live in a complicated world, and stuff like that sometimes happens, but when it does, there's no point advertising the fact, and there's even less reason to make it look like that's the case when it really isn't. You'll know which is the right answer. Regards, Magnaverde.

I see that one of your kids is still in high chair mode. I have a round table, similar to yours, but mine is a real 1900 antique. I have had it since I had a highchair sitter and a toddler. I also didn't like the sea of oak, so I painted the pedestal of the table ( and have regretted that almost daily since about 3 years after I did it!) and painted the oak chairs that went with the table. Well, the chairs soon looked awful from kids pushing them into the table and chipping the paint and generally "using" the chairs. My advice would be to get tie on chair cushions to break up all the "oakey-oak" and when the kids have a few more years on them, then find new chairs or paint the old ones. I now have black Hitchcock chairs with my table....and they are now looking like they need some help!