Room Tour: The Kitchen-Dining Room

Hello lovelies! I hope you're all well. Thank you for your recent comments - I'm glad so many of you are also enjoying Stranger Things. We've had such a nice few days here; a day out to Mottisfont on Saturday, where the gardens were just so beautiful (I took a million pictures and will do a post about it soon) and yesterday and today we stayed at home, or very near home, pottering quite happily, running the odd errand. I did all my washing today. All of it, five loads, one right after other. The basket was totally empty (for about an hour, anyway), and I did all the ironing too, used up every last coat hanger in the house. I know. Let me just bask in that feeling for a moment... I also spent yesterday binge reading so many blogs and it was wonderful. The rest of this week will be more of the same I hope, doing jobs, staying home, visiting family, blog reading, getting ready for our holiday. 

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I thought it was about time I shared some photos of our finished kitchen/dining room with you. A while ago, I showed you our newly fitted kitchen, but the dining end of the room remained bare and unfinished. We've been working hard on this over the last few weeks and it's pretty much finished now, and in constant use.

That big grey expanse of wall has slowly and carefully been decorated with some framed pictures and prints. The family gallery wall has gone but all four of those images refer to places we've been (honeymoon, wedding anniversary trip, family holiday) and so they remain personal to us.

I'm still not sure about the coastal print on the left - I think the colours are a bit cold for the grey wall. I'd like to make a woven wall hanging from yarn scraps, full of cream, pink, mustard and teal. I think it would look amazing against the grey.

I especially love my little copper hanging planter - it adds a bit of warmth and colour to an empty corner by the door to the living room.

A few weeks ago, John and my Dad spent a day putting up some shelves to hold all our cookery books. We used to have a tall, thin IKEA bookcase here but it never looked right against the off-kilter angle of the chimney breast it leaned against. These shelves are built so that the width of each one follows the line of the asymmetrical chimney breast and it just looks a million times better. (Also - my Dad and John were brilliant and very patient when it came to interpreting my "ideas" into something that could actually be attached to a wall.)

Cookery books were dusted and sorted. This took a long time because I kept sitting down on the floor and reading them.

But look at what they built! Isn't it the most gorgeous thing you've ever seen? Every time I walk past this it makes me smile. I love having our cookery books in the kitchen again. I've mentioned before how much we use them, how frequently they are consulted and read. 

I organised them by colour, for no good practical reason but it just makes me happy.

It's funny to think there used to be a wall there.

This is the view out towards the garden. Those patio doors are open most of the time and access to the garden is easy, which is handy when you're carrying plates of food.

It is a lovely bright space benefiting from lots of natural light, and it's where I spend pretty much all my time during the day. The table is always in use, usually filled with a laptop, pens and paper, homework, magazines, cups of coffee, Lego, Hama beads. Sometimes we even use it to eat. But this is what we wanted so much, one room not just for cooking and eating, but for hanging out all together, warm and busy.