On another note :)

We're still working on endless renovations. My husband decided to make the kitchen a little bigger, but in doing so, the layout of the main floor of our home became.. in my opinion.. a complete disaster. Being the hormonal clomid crazy person that I was when this all happened, I came home and after DH's dad left, I bawled my eyes out at the monster that had been created. :(

Here's what happened.
This floorplan is what the original area looked like before we made any renovations:

When we moved in, this was the layout. We had barely any working counter space in the kitchen, because instead of finishing the other side, they put a dinette in instead. Our kitchen was small, and very dysfunctional.

The furniture we bought for the dining room was too big, unfortunately we didn't see that as a the problem

in the beginning, until we got it in there and realized that with the table even open at a regular size, it was hard to get in to the kitchen...

The living

room wasn't bad, but because of the way the wall was shaped in the kitchen, it made the kitchen smaller, and created a space in the living room that we had no use for. Our TV room etc.. is in the basement, so it is/was literally just dead space.

This was DH's idea:

And, this is also what I came home to. They straightened the wall in the kitchen/living room, BUT.. they also moved the door from the dining room over to the

other side, in the living room......

DH's idea was to swap the dining room and the living room (not shown here), but he didn't realize that in doing so, the dining room area was too small and awkward to house the couches, and the living room area was too big and strange (with huge picture window) to house the dining room furniture.

I absolutely HATED where the kitchen door now was as well, because it completely cut the kitchen off from the rest of the main floor. You walk in the house, and it just looks like a GIGANTIC strange box in the middle of the room.

We were going to try and leave it and just find furniture that fit, but after some discussion, DH and I both agreed that it looks awful, and it's way too awkward to work, even though the kitchen was now much bigger.

We sat down, and we finally came up with something that we think will work:

So, this is what's going to happen so we can fix what had been done. We're going to move the kitchen door back to

where it was, but we're going to leave the wall straight between kitchen/living room. That will allow us to finish the counter easily on the other side, and make for a nice sized, completely functional kitchen. We had sliding doors in the kitchen that led out to the patio, but we are going to reduce that door to a single door so that we can have that extra corner of counter space.

Though the dining room will remain the same size, we are going to fix that by buying a dining room table that will better fit the area. (The dining room table we're thinking of is shown below).

On the living room side, instead of having two couches, we're going to get one 3-person sofa, and two chairs to put at either side of the room and possibly a coffee table in the middle. (This furniture also shown below).

We both agree that this will work, and that it will make the house look more modern. With smaller furniture, it should also open up a lot of space. We'll also add accent shelving in the dining room at some point as well.

Now, on to the furniture!

This is the dining room table we're looking at:

I've posted multiple pictures of the same table because this is the different ways in which the table can be shaped/expanded/reduced. We really like it because it's the only table we've found that offers us complete flexibility of how we want it to be in the room.

Next, is the chairs that we will have to go with the dining table. They are green as an accent color. The walls in the living/dining are all gray, with white as the contrast. The floors will be a very dark/almost black cherry. We're throwing the green in there just to spruce things up, and when we add shelves, they will be white, with green items on them to accent. :)

For the living room chairs, we're thinking:

And last but not least, for the sofa, though we're still not totally sure of this yet:

And there you have it. We're going for a very modern feel as what we have now is just that crappy stuff you get when you first buy a house. Can't wait to get rid of all that, and get the new stuff in!

Anyway, I'm glad we were able to come up with something we'll both be happy with. My first thought to the "new" kitchen the other day was.... OMG.. WE HAVE TO MOVE.. lol, but now I think we'll stay! ;)