Hi all - we recently closed on our house and I am starting the process of figuring out furniture. The dining room has me stumped...it is 14 ft by 13 ft 8 in, so essentially a 14 ft square. As you can see from the pics, the doorway from the foyer is quite wide (these realtor pics are a bit stretched, but it is an extra extra wide doorway in real life). And there's another doorway that leads to the butler's pantry area and then on to the kitchen.

I would love to NOT do a round table, as I find them impractical when they get to be large enough to seat 8 people. And I definitely want to be able to seat 8 in this dining room. But not sure how to make a larger rectangular table work in this space?

One thought I had was to put a buffet on the wall that the art is on, and then a rectangular table nudged closer to the doorway to foyer (so not centered in the room). This would avoid having a head chair right up against the doorway to the butler's pantry I can have the junction box for the light fixture moved when the fixture is replaced, so the light is no issue. But would that look weird? Make walking through the room too impractical? I don't need to have a buffet, if a rectangular table would work centered in the room that's fine too.

We will only use this room for holidays and the very occasional dinner party. Just want to make sure I am using the space as efficiently as possible, while still having it look nice (since this is what you see when you walk in the front door).

Any thoughts or advice are much appreciated! Thanks in advance.