Dinner is served

Quite a while ago we swapped over the dining room and the playroom. On the basis that we do very little formal entertaining as the kitchen is such a sociable room. So it seemed crazy to keep the larger room for the rare occasional use and keep the toys crammed into the tiniest room downstairs. The boys play all the time in the playroom and I am very grateful to have a room I can shut the door on all the toys at the end of the day (although there still seems to be toys and books everywhere).

The dining room had become a bit of a dumping ground/dog den. It's where the dogs sleep at night as they like to be confined into  cosy space over night and the table was a great place to store bits to go up in the loft, rain covers for the pushchair, you name it - any bit of junk was on it!

We realised one of the problems and the reason we didn't use the room very often was because quite simply we didn't like it very much!

It is small and our large furniture was overwhelming. The sideboard was a museum to our wedding gifts, some of which haven't seen the light of day since the John Lewis delivery 7 years ago.

We decided out with the old and in with the well, old!

I saw a lovely painted table on eBay and a painted sideboard in a friend's shop, Simply Gorgeous!

My sister is having the table and we managed to sell the old sideboard for 75% of what we paid for it 8 years ago - not bad going! The new sideboard only set us back £20 on top. I won the table as the only bidder for £99, which for a solid wood table that seats 6 is a great buy.

We have a renewed love for a tired little room and I just need to sort out some curtains which match our old mirror. Orange and grey may seem a strange combination but I love it!

My husband has convinced me to be brave and put our leather chairs up for sale and go for Eames replicas! Brave or stupid, what do you think?