Finally Complete!

My dining area, that is!  Here is a picture of it when we first moved in...

Here it is after we painted it...

But wait, I'm not done yet!  We got the painting done at the beginning of August, but it just wasn't complete until yesterday.  Once I decided on black appliances for our new kitchen, I started looking for the perfect dining room table - the table we had before (the one pictured above) has been a great table, we had just outgrown it and it didn't fit very well in our new house in our dining 'nook'.  The problem was, I was very particular to what I wanted and was having a hard time finding it.  First, I wanted a black table.  Then it needed to be round or oval to fit well in the dining nook (our old table was a rectangle and awkward in the space).  Third it needed to be large enough to fit 6+ people.  Last but not least, I wanted a gathering height table.  We have a gorgeous view from the windows in our dining area, but with a standard table we had to stretch our necks to see out the windows - a gathering height would be perfect.  It was so hard to find a table with all of these requirements.  I found one that I liked here but for some reason I just wasn't ready to settle on it.  Then with the help of a local furniture store, we found this table, while it still wasn't just right, I didn't think I was going to find exactly what I wanted, so I was getting ready to order it.  Since it's made by Intercon, I visited their website to view the details on it and show it to David before I ordered it.  While browsing around the website, I found a collection name that caught my attention - Hickory Square.  My kitchen cabinets are hickory, so I wanted to check it out, even though I didn't want a square table.  Guess what I found in that collection - a ROUND table, BLACK, with a HICKORY top, and a 20" butterfly LEAF that makes the table 54"x74" which will easily fit 6+ people!  I was SO excited so I started looking into it and found out that this table is brand new - perfect timing!  So back in August I ordered it, and since it was new they had to build it, so it took a while but I finally got it yesterday!  I LOVE it - it's not exactly what I wanted, it's MORE!  I never expected to find the table I wanted with a top that matches my cabinets, how cool is that!  We ate dinner at our new table last night and we like it so far - I was amazed at the size difference.  It's only 15" longer and 19" deeper than our old table, which doesn't seem like much, but it's amazing how much of a difference that makes - we can actually fit our food on the table with us!  Anyway, enough jabbering - here is a pic of our new table - I think it really completes our kitchen!

For my birthday back in August I got the black bar stools to go around the island - when needed, we can pull them up to our table to seat 10 people total.  Sorry this pic seems a little dark - I took it while the sun was coming up this morning and the pic looked fine on the preview on my camera but is really dark on my computer.  I'll try to get a better pic later today.

Here is the fun table runner that my mom made me for a house warming gift.

And our old table is moving to the basement to serve as a craft table - I'm hoping to make it taller so I can work at it while standing.  Thanks for visiting my new dining area!