Dining Room

Our dining room is not really a dining 'room' but more of a glorified walkway.  I am not complaining about the size but I did want a way to define it as its own space.  Also, the room is walkway between the kitchen and living room and master bedroom so I didn't want the table to be smack dab in the middle.
To start with, we wanted the room to feel bigger so when we replaced the mirror in our master bath we took the old mirror and framed it out and hung it on the wall.  It made such a huge difference. 
I followed this tutorial below the chair rail and that also helped to define the dining room.

Like I said, I did not want the table in the center of the room since you have to walk through this area to get to other parts of the house.  Enter the bench idea.  We have taken all the closet doors off in our house because they did not work and I didn't like them.  I thought they would make the perfect width for a bench.

J cut two down to size so they meet with a seam in the middle. To attach them to the wall he screwed a 2x2 into the studs (At least I think it is 2x2.  Is that terrible that I am not sure?  Look at the picture, you get the idea.;))

Then he screwed the doors onto that.  We used the raised panel doors to make the supports underneath.  We still need to add a trim around the edge to hide the screw holes and gaps in between the bench and the wall.

So here is the whole room put together. Just to the left is the door to our bedroom and behind where the picture was taken is the living room.  The kitchen is on the right (you'll see that in a following picture).

I finally got smart and covered my chairs in oil cloth fabric so I can just wipe them off instead of having to change out the fabric every so often.

The table was one of the first things we bought after we were married and opens up into a big circle.  The chairs are from CL.  It was a happy coincidence the woods matched.  The picture is one my sister painted, of course.  And the centerpiece is pinwheels I made out of map paper in a mason jar we got from J's grandma.  If you have any questions just let me know.

God bless your week!