Entertaining at Sans Souci Part 2: A New Dining Room

Today, we are moving on to the FABULOUS new dining room at Sans Souci. To catch up on how we got here, you can read our welcome back post here and the library post here. The library is in the place of the old dining room. 

So, then the question became: where do we put all of the china? Here are the first ten or so boxes I unpacked in the old family room.

The house is symmetrical, with a formal living to the right of the front door, and a family room with library built-ins around the fireplace to the left of the front door. We had originally decided that the dining room would move forward into the formal living room when we took the dining space as the library. However, it occurred to us that 1) the family room is actually connected to the kitchen, 2) there are already a ton of built-ins, and 3) I had already unpacked china boxes in that room. You can see how the family room led to the breakfast area before the remodel of both rooms.

The built-ins were being emptied into the new library...

With a nice bottle of Educated Guess in the Lismore Waterford, already empty on the table in the foreground, the swapping of books for china began as the books found their way to the new library.

The sofa was moved out to the formal living room, and in goes the china cabinet and the dining table...even though the side table and lamp were still there.

 The first night we were able to have dinner here was October 11. Scallops! Yum! 

It was ready for the fall and our first Thanksgiving in the new house!

It's also seen an at-home winter wedding...

Birthdays, dinner guests, baby showers, and so much more. Father's Day was very special for this wonderful man who took on a handful of a wife and three children all at once!

Notice we took down the very expensive (but very dated) draperies in the before pictures. One bad thing about those: you couldn't actually open the shutters. We prefer this because of the natural light.

You can see the color of the curtains better in the formal living which has really become the family room. These curtains are also on the back French doors leading out to the solarium. The wall in the dining room is a different color than that in the the living room below. The living room and the library walls are the same color, and the curtains match the color of the paint inside the library bookshelves. We couldn't really change the wall color in the dining room (former family room) because all of the trim was stained. We decided it wasn't worth it at this time to move to anything darker than this creamy off-white shade that was on the walls when we got here.

One of the more fun things I have had here was a baby shower for a dear friend who once hosted us in Germany a few years ago on our travel adventures. We have known each other since third grade. Maybe earlier? We can't remember!

You may have seen her picture in an earlier Tablescape Times Three Blog. You will definitely see it on a post this fall on our sister blog, Here's What You Do (Travel) on a week-long do-it-yourself trip to Germany.

Next up will be how we updated the formal living into a great family space, transformed the kitchen with a fraction of the cost, and have created and re-created the solarium AND made a dog-heaven for our new puppies out back.

Andrea, Steve, and family

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