Dining Interior

The clients described the room accurately at the first meeting: a good room, correctly proportioned, that nobody entered except at Thanksgiving. The furniture was inherited, the light was a single fitting on a dimmer that did not work, and the walls were the color the previous owner left.

Why nobody used it

Three reasons, none of them decorative.

• The table was too formal to put a laptop on and too large to sit at alone
• There was nowhere to put anything down, so the room had no secondary use
• The lighting had one setting, and it was wrong for every occasion including dinner

What we changed

We commissioned a new table in solid ash, ten feet by three and a half, with a top thick enough to take abuse and a finish that can be sanded back. It seats ten and is perfectly comfortable for one person with a laptop, which was the actual test.

Along the window wall we built a run of shallow cabinetry, only fourteen inches deep, which is enough for plates, glasses, table linen and a printer, and shallow enough that it does not narrow the room. Its top is a continuous surface at counter height, which has become where everything gets put down.

A dining room used once a quarter is not a dining room, it is a very expensive corridor. Give it a second job and it fills up on its own.

Light

Two pendants over the table on a working dimmer, wall lights on the cabinet run, and nothing on the ceiling elsewhere. Four scenes, set during commissioning and left alone since.

Color

A deep, slightly gray blue on all four walls and the ceiling, with the joinery in the same color. Samples were painted on three walls and lived with for a week. The ceiling was the argument, and it was the right decision.

Outcome

Six weeks. The clients report the room is now in use most evenings, largely by their teenagers, which was not in the brief and is the best evidence the scheme worked.

The table finish

The ash top is finished in hardwax oil rather than lacquer, specifically so it can be sanded back. It has been marked twice in a year, once seriously, and both marks came out in an afternoon with a fine paper and a cloth. A lacquered top would have needed a refinisher and a week without a table.