Eandhl, I know the standard "rule of thumb" I was taught by designers was 24" for chairs; personally, I prefer your 36" suggestion. I think "rules of thumb" are often too minimal. I like to err on the side of "graciousness" when I'm able. I would also like to caution that any rug that will underlay a dining table should accomodate the expanded table by at least 24" on all sides. The rear legs of the dining chairs should remain on the rug at all times, esp. when the chair is set back to accomodate seating the diner! When I ordered my sideboard from PD his website was different than it is now. At that time he had an excellent tutorial on round tables and the space they ought to occupy. I don't know if that bit of advice was culled when the new site was brought on line. I certainly hope not because it was very useful. I think allowing 24-36" around the perimeter of a round/oval dining table is certainly adequate for the comfort of diners.

Since your room is square vs rectangular, a round or square rug would look great and really reinforce the overall proportions/shape of the room. How lucky you are, I love square rooms and round tables(so graceful, and they make it much easier to see everyone)!

First, something to think about: We are having a round table made and I initially wanted a smaller one with a leaf or two. My options were extremely limited (want a counter height for out room) and I thought I was going to order an Amish one when I found a local woodworker. He and his wife both said that if you want a pedastal, they would do everything they could to talk me out of extensions. They said they are great initially, but because of the weight and construcion of the table, they will always wind up having trouble. Now, he's building solid wood tables that should be around 100 years from now. If' you are buying something for the next 10 years, maybe you won't have any issues. Their advise was to go with the largest size round that fit the room and keep it stationary. That would allow you to have a rug that always fits too. No worries about storing leaves, changing finishes, etc. Are you going to have a buffet, server, china cabinet or other furniture in the room? The placement of other pieces could impact the size and shape of your rug. Search for photos of DRs with round tables. You basically have three choices -- no rug, fit the table with a round or square that is a minimum of 3-4 feet larger than the table (8-9 ft) or the rug essentially a room carpet. The size would then depend on whether you have other furniture in the room and how you want to define the space.

The one thing that I would change, if possible, are the solid doors in the upper middle of the cabinet. Is there any way you could have them changed to glass? I think they distract from the display of your lovely pieces, as the doors are the dominant things, to my eye. It would then give you more room to create a pleasing arrangement, with more variety, while still showing some of your place settings and stemware. It may be fairly inexpensive to have glass added to the existing door frames. If that's not possible, then I think you can display some of your glasses, some of your china, but remove most of them and add other things with more color/texture/interest. You might think about adding mirror to the back of the cabinet (or wallpaper, or other paper for color) for sparkle and brightness. This is pretty busy and too full for my taste, but I like the way they interspersed the china and glassware instead of just lining it up, and have added other accessories for interest:I think this one veers back into store display, but would mix up what you're doing now in a more interesting way. And the cabinets are closer in size to yours. I'd still add some more variety, myself. Maybe you could do something like this on a couple of the shelves and add a variety of things on the other shelves: