Thanks for all your advice. I'm so glad that I didn't just rush in and start this. From the sounds of it, I WOULD HAVE ruined them . . . :^0 . . . OMGosh! I need to run all this by DH. He's been encouraging me to call up and order a set I like that I saw in Phoenix Home & Garden magazine spread. I can't imagine ordering anything that big and expensive sight unseen, though. Hmmmmmm, there may be a weekend trip to Scottsdale in the offing ;^) In the mean time, I need to decide whether I want to paint the set a brown first and them give the Gel Stain a go or just leave it as is until I get a new set. BTW, I haven't looked into having it professionally stripped and redone. I probably should. I can't imagine a red or blue table in our dining room, though. I'll have to think about that one.

Hi Wanda- Please, please do not buy chairs from the Internet. Chairs have to be comfortable and sturdy and made to last and support even big people. You are much better off going to charity stores craigslist and tag sales looking for sets of chairs made of solid wood and recovering the seat cushions and painting the wood. These stores have so many of these sets now! It is so easy to cover a chair seat and not difficult to learn how to paint the wood or you can leave the wood the way it is or just sand and varnish it.

You have: WARM travertine tile on the first floor. You have DARK warm wood cabinets. You have WARM countertops. The LAST thing you want sitting next to that BEAUTIFUL WARM coloured stone is gray. No gray. Nothing in your home says "I need gray to make it perfect". Nothing. Your furniture will change. Your area rugs will change. Your wall colours will change. They will all change inside of 15 years. But your PERMANENT stone or tile floors will STAY. If you must use a tile next to stone, I suggest working in the same tones. You can go darker or you can go lighter but stay inside the SAME TONES as the travertine. If you REALLY MUST HAVE GRAY - then rip out the travertine and start again. Gray and peach stone/tile do not like to play nicely together. It screams out, "I didn't want to pay to do it properly." I would recommend finding MORE travertine in a different sized tile and add it in at an angle (diagonal install). You can find a stone that is either a little darker or a little lighter. You can then add a decorative boarder to the rooms where you are installing it so that it looks like you did it on purpose. This is a great way to add more of the high-end stone to a space that already has high-end stone. But please do not add gray in with peach. They just don't like each other. Flooring snobs, like myself can see it right away. We KNOW when something has been done piece meal. We also know when someone did the piece meal NICELY vs. someone who did it without a thought to the overall look of the floor. Compliment the stone you are keeping. Let your area rugs turn the space gray. That trend is quickly dying. It makes sense to throw out a rug in 3 years. It doesn't make sense to rip out a tile floor in 3 years.

In our old layout, I eliminated the formal living room years ago...because of the way we live, it was absolutely wasted sqft. I turned it into a dining room and we used it a lot for birthday parties, making puzzles, reading plans etc. When designing our reno/addition, I for sure was going to keep the dining room but took out the eat in kitchen in stead. We added a larger island with seating for 5 (there are 6 of us...when everyone sits down, we use the dining room). We have enough space to seat 12 in the dining room, and also a 6 seater table on the deck outside the kitchen. This works for us. Nothing is formal, every place gets used by everyone.