Dining room

[DawnM]

I have sold our buffet we had in our last house.   It was too wide and our dining room is smaller in this house.   I need something narrower, although I am toying with the idea of a tall corner unit instead of something along the wall.   And then I started thinking of a long narrow china cabinet all along that one wall in there.   

It got me wondering what everyone else has in their dining rooms for storage if you have anything.

thanks for playing

 

Edited January 28 by DawnM

[Laura Corin]

We keep plates etc. in the kitchen where we eat most of the time. The dining room will also be a morning room  with seating area and book shelves. 

[Innisfree]

Heh. Keep in mind that we like old stuff here, including old china…. We have a china cabinet, and a sideboard, and a corner cupboard. The first and last have glass doors (on top, closed storage on the bottom), the other one has capacious storage behind wood doors.

Edited January 28 by Innisfree

[73349]

Our dining room has built-in cabinetry, so the only furniture we added is the table and chairs.

 

[Ginevra]

We have a built in set of cabinets for a “China cabinet”. The top set has glass-fronted cabinets and built-in lighting. There is a bar sink here and non-glass cabinets below. 
 

We do also have a separate buffet/server that was my MIL’s. I keep liquor and other beverages (ie seltzer, mixers) in here. 

[Carrie12345]

Our “dining room” is the game/puzzle/lego room, so I’m no help, but I love our game/puzzle/lego room and like to get the chance to say so. 🤪

IKEA cabinets with glass door uppers and their tower storage bins. 😉

[Kassia]

Our dining room is DH's office.  We've never dined in there, but we have our first dining room table in there (no other furniture) and DH uses that as his desk.

[scbusf]

We have what we call a sideboard. It has 3 drawers and baskets underneath. 

[DawnM]

1 minute ago, scbusf said:

We have what we call a sideboard. It has 3 drawers and baskets underneath. 

I think that is the same as a buffet, isn't it?   Just a different name for it?

[Lecka]

I have kept my grandmother’s China cabinet and table, but the previous owner had a corner bookcase in one corner, and then a metal bookcase where my China cabinet is now.  I thought it looked great and fit the space well.  

[TheReader]

Our dining room isn't big enough for more than the tables, but the tables themselves have storage. 

Tables? Yes. So, when we built this house, we were just back from Brazil, and needed *everything*.  We wanted to be able to seat our family comfortably, but also space for when family would come for Thanksgiving and such - generally a max of 12 people at a time.  In all the options we looked at, that would do that *and* fit in the space (it wasn't a custom build, just a "pick this floorplan" build), *and* fit our personalities, the best option ended up being to get a pair of pub height tables, each with one leaf to extend the size. 

Since they are pub height, and pedestal style sort of, there are 2 shelves set into the legs/pedestal, on each table.  I've put fabric bins & baskets on the shelves, and we use those to store all of the various dining room holiday decor, as well as there was at one time a basket for each kid where I could dump "this doesn't belong here" stuff and have them go through it at the end of the week (or when the basket got full, or when they came down looking for whatever missing thing) and then they could relocate whatever to wherever it belonged. 

We started with the 2 tables, w/o their leaves, pushed together and it made a nice sized table that seats 8, plenty for us and if we had over a friend or something. Add a leaf, we can seat 10, add both leaves, we can seat 12. When Covid hit and DH came home to work (he's still home), we moved the tables apart, took the leaf out of one, put one leaf in the other, and turned one into the "desk" (shared by him & me; we sit across from each other), and one into the dining table (we moved one chair out, so it seats 7 at the moment, but can slide a chair over and it would seat 8). 

Dishes and that, we store in the kitchen.

 

[marbel]

Well, we don't have a dining room, but in our living room we have a buffet and a corner china cabinet with shelves behind glass on the top, and shelves behind doors on the bottom. 

[Tap]

Buffet, but it isn't used for dining room items. It is used to contain dd's puzzles, tech and bits/pieces she leaves down stairs. 

[ScoutTN]

Buffet and a small corner cabinet.

[Annie G]

I have my grandmother’s China cabinet that was purchased right after WW2 and it’s small.  I also have a Hoosier cabinet. 

[stephanier.1765]

We have both a china cabinet and a buffet. Granted, that doesn't leave a lot of room around the edges, but they store more than just dining ware. The drawers in both are where some of my craft stuff is stored.

[Ali in OR]

I have my grandmother's old china cabinet, passed down to me when my aunt passed away. It's a smaller scale than such things are typically built today. Needs refinishing too, but it does come in handy for holding all the stuff.

[scholastica]

We have both a China hutch and a side board.

[Melissa in Australia]

Other

We don't have a dining room

[mmasc]

I don’t currently have anything, but in my next house I’d like to get this. Someone on this board recommended it quite a while back, and I’ve wanted it ever since. 

[Bambam]

Other - we have a dining room, but we've never used it as a dining room. It was a school room. Kids are adults now so it is a library, holds the exercise bike, and temporary cat's litter box/toys. Will it ever be a dining room? I doubt it. We have a breakfast area with a kitchen table that is big enough for everything we've done.  I don't have fancy china and crystal, nor do I want any. If we ever decide to turn it into a dining room, we will have to make due with our current white corelle, regular silverware, and bentley tumblers - which is our everyday dishes. I may get out the fabric napkins though! 

[TechWife]

We have an old China cabinet from ??? when they were still hand carving feet. Early 1900’s maybe? Anyway, it has glass top to bottom with a curved door. We keep our formal China and crystal in there. 

[fairfarmhand]

I'd do a corner cabinet in a heartbeat and get rid of my buffet and hutch. We had one in the first house we lived in and l love it.

[knitgrl]

Our house has a built-in china cupboard. Then my dad gave us a china hutch and side board. The hutch holds mostly dishes, but also one shelf of books. The side board is devoted to homeschool materials. And then, because I had no place to put tablecloths and such, there's a dresser. The bottom drawer holds stationary supplies. In reality, it's too much stuff, but in my defense, I was raised by pack rats. It is challenging to let go of the mind set, and all that goes with it.  Baby steps, I tell myself.

[KungFuPanda]

I have a china cabinet/hutch but it’s only about 4 feet wide and 18” deep so it doesn’t have a colossal footprint. 

[Faith-manor]

I have an antique corner cupboard in the corner. It was my husband's grandmother's cupboard. I keep some of my Ruby Thumbprint and Royal Copenhagen China in it. That is my only dining area storage. I have a cupboard in our hallway which is very wide so the landing accommodates furniture. I keep tablecloths and the candles in there. I have a small marble topped side table with two shelves behind doors that is on the side of my island, and I keep the cloth napkins I. there.

[MEmama]

Along the wall behind the table we have an IKEA bookcase on its side. It used to house homeschool and scrapbooking supplies, now as empty nesters it's evolved into a liquor cabinet 🙂 

 

 

Edited January 29 by MEmama

[Farrar]

Buffet (Chinese antique sort of thing). And lots and lots of bookcases. It's also the library.

I find china cabinets so fussy. I could have taken one from family at a couple of points, but no interest.

[Miss Tick]

Two built in china cabinets and a midcentury modern buffet in the alcove between. A midcentury dining table and IKEA chairs.

[Eos]

29 minutes ago, MEmama said:

Along the wall behind the table we have an IKEA bookcase on its side. It used to house homeschool and scrapbooking supplies, now as empty nesters it's evolved into a liquor cabinet 🙂 

(the David Hasselhoff photo is from a recent visit to the Hoff Museum in Berlin 🤣)

Can I come visit?

[Eos]

We have what we call a kitchen dresser - it's old with a cabinet below with a latch where I put table linens, a flat counter area then two shelves, then the top which I also use for pretty thing storage.  It's not really a hutch or a china closet or a sideboard.

[MEmama]

4 minutes ago, Eos said:

Can I come visit?

Of course! Any time! 🙂 

[Ellie]

This is the first house where we've had an actual dining room, as well as a "nook" in the kitchen area. So I have actual china, used for special occasions and guests and sometimes just Mr. Ellie and me, and daily dishes. The china is displayed in the china cabinet, with linen napkins in the drawers, and stored in the buffet in those quilted fabric thingies. Daily dishes are in the kitchen. I love having a dining room so much, even though we don't use it frequently. (We also have a family room as well as a living room, and I use both.)

[Clarita]

I have no such furniture in my dining room, but I want something there.

I want a buffet with a little extra table space I pull out when I'm doing a big dinner party type thing, but stow away in the cabinet all the rest of the time. Shelves underneath to keep some homeschool stuff in. 

[prairiewindmomma]

We have two Trofast units with Youngest’s schoolbooks and supplies as the dining table is now the school table. This house doesnt have room for a buffet or china cabinet. I have some things on two shelves in a kitchen cabinet, but the rest has been donated or packed away. 

[SKL]

We have a "china cabinet" in our "dining room," but we don't really eat in the dining room, and the dishes we have in the china cabinet are ones we almost never use.  😛

The "china cabinet" came with the house.  The lady who moved out wanted to sell her furniture, and agreed to adjust the house price to include it.  We love the design (which matches the other furniture in the room), but we might not have bought a "china cabinet" if we had furnished from scratch.

[bookbard]

We don't have a dining room. Our main door opens onto the living room/kitchen. We've stuck a dining table half under the kitchen counter as it's the only place that will fit - it fits 4 with the 4th a bit squashed against the wall (smallest kid gets that spot!). Our plates are in a kitchen cupboard. I grew up with a dining room which had a sideboard with the china plates and lace tablecloths, and the piano and the telephone. We only ate there on Christmas day! The main table was next to the kitchen. I don't mind having a small house now as an adult, as there's less to clean. If we entertain, we use our verandah and people help themselves from the table on there. I've never hosted a formal dinner party and doubt I ever will! 

[Junie]

We have a small dining room with no room for any sort of storage.  A table and eight chairs is all that will fit comfortably. 

[DawnM]

I am hoping to find a good deal since they aren't so popular anymore, so I am looking on FB Marketplace.   My husband says, "I will only go to whatever is closest!"    I explained that the cheaper ones I was finding were further out.   He said, "I will PAY more to stay close to home!"

That is when I know my husband is exhausted.   He is a bit of a penny pincher.

😂

[teachermom2834]

We have a huge trunk that my great grandmother brought on the boat from Italy when she was 15 yo. In that I have my grandmother’s China and crystal that I inherited. So it is stored there but not on display. I only get out the china and crystal every couple years so it is rarely opened and not really practical storage. It is of sentimental value and there is no where else to put this big trunk. All I have in my dining room is our table and chairs and then this trunk in the corner. When we have company the trunk does tend to serve as storage for purses and junk that people drop as they come in.

[Carol in Cal.]

In my FOO we have a tradition of using fine china for special occasions, but also not displaying it.  I've just now realized that, in thinking about this thread.  To me, displaying my china just seems odd.  Like, who wants to look at it and not use it?  Or to see big blank cabinets in the dining room when you ARE using it?  It just has never made much sense to me.

My mother had a built in hutch in her 1910 Craftsman home, and she made curtains to install inside the glass to hide the contents.  My grandmother kept her china in high cabinets between the kitchen and its breakfast nook. 

I have a small back bedroom that has an odd entrance off the kitchen, down a tiny hall with one of those slider closets along the long wall (you know, a clothes closet that has two sliding doors over it.)  Since we don't use that room as a bedroom, we had shelves built into the closet--deep at the bottom and narrower from about 2 feet up to the ceiling.  I keep my china in those big cloth storage bins in the bottom shelves of this structure, where I can get to them easily but they are not in the way.  The crystal is also there.  Then the more accessible shelves are full of cookbooks and garden/travel books, and the very top ones with games that we seldom use.  I'm gradually culling my cookbooks and probably will also get rid of most of the garden books and games over time, so this is going to become more efficiently used.  I would like to keep some of my 'annually used only' pans there instead of in the kitchen--like my gingerbread house molds and such.  

Our dining room is usually a family room, and converts into a dining room when needed.  So for storage there I have lots of bookshelves plus one big credenza.  When we want a big dining room space, we open up the table to seat about 12-14 people with extra leaves.  The room is big so this works fine.  We have the other furniture always against the wall out of the way, or easily moved to that kind of position.  This is a big compromise for me.  I would far rather have a big dedicated dining room, but houses here are too small for that to be reasonable.

[dsmith]

We have a china cabinet, but we also have two corner built-ins. The top has glass doors and grooves to display china, the bottoms have solid doors. We also have a cabinet built over the radiator, and to each side of the radiator there are doors with shelves. It's actually a good amount of storage space. Someday we will probably get rid of the china cabinet and replace it with something more modern, as well as modernize the built-ins. I kind of swing between wanting something more modern to loving the old-fashioned look of the built-ins. 

[DawnM]

UPDATE:

I have decided to put a smaller china cabinet against a short wall, so it has to be 41" wide or narrower.   It will not be a corner cabinet.   The reason is that I have decided that the china cabinet/discplay case that my grandmother had is exactly what I want.   I have always loved it.   My aunt has it now but I don't need the actual cabinet she had.   I can find them on marketplace.    There are a couple there now but they are too far away.   I will keep looking.

It it like this.   I really want one WITH the lion heads as that is what she had.   

I am being very intentional about what comes into this house and only things that make me really happy get to stay!

[TechWife]

Dawn - you have good taste. I’m the third generation in our family to have this China cabinet. 

[DawnM]

1 hour ago, TechWife said:

Dawn - you have good taste. I’m the third generation in our family to have this China cabinet. 

I am drooling!   That is exactly what I am looking for, and I want wood shelves,like yours, not glass.   

Do you deliver?   😜

[Pam in CT]

heh indeed.  I RAISE YOUR HEH:

On 1/28/2024 at 7:33 AM, Innisfree said:

Heh. Keep in mind that we like old stuff here, including old china…. We have a china cabinet, and a sideboard, and a corner cupboard. The first and last have glass doors (on top, closed storage on the bottom), the other one has capacious storage behind wood doors.

My grandmother both collected and MADE ceramic plates, and both my parents and husband&I went through a phase where we routinely went to New England estate auctions as entertainment. My *kitchen cabinets* are mostly glass so as to see all the inherited ceramic plates (partly decorative, but mostly so there's a HOPE that things get put back where they belong) and thus I can see from my seat I have 11 sets of 8+ "regular" dishes in the kitchen;

...and then we have both a curved china cabinet that was my parents' wedding gift to us, and also a sideboard that we later acquired at one such auction, in the dining room to hold the "good" china (one from the wedding registry, one that I acquired later because I liked them, a third that was my great-grandmother's on the other side that eventually came  my way).

And I STILL need to store overflow in the basement.

 

!!!

4 hours ago, DawnM said:

UPDATE:

I have decided to put a smaller china cabinet against a short wall, so it has to be 41" wide or narrower.   It will not be a corner cabinet.   The reason is that I have decided that the china cabinet/discplay case that my grandmother had is exactly what I want.   I have always loved it.   My aunt has it now but I don't need the actual cabinet she had.   I can find them on marketplace.    There are a couple there now but they are too far away.   I will keep looking.

It it like this.   I really want one WITH the lion heads as that is what she had.   

I am being very intentional about what comes into this house and only things that make me really happy get to stay!

 

Here's the one my parents gave us as a wedding present 31 years ago:

[Innisfree]

7 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

I RAISE YOUR HEH:

 

7 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

11 sets of 8+ "regular" dishes

😁😁😁 Okay, I fold. Though I count something like eight sets here, including “good” and everyday, old and merely vintage (because evidently I am also vintage now), and still regularly drool over gorgeous sets that I see going begging. Storage is the perennial issue, not the furniture, because we’d happily acquire more of that, but the space to put the furniture. My mother and grandmother both liked antiques, and the same grandmother painted a bit of china herself. Thankfully only a bit, as far as I know. So, yeah… and dh and I still love poking in antique and secondhand shops…

That’s a lovely china cabinet. Your parents, @DawnM, and @TechWife do indeed have excellent taste. Great windows for plants, too.

[TechWife]

58 minutes ago, DawnM said:

I am drooling!   That is exactly what I am looking for, and I want wood shelves,like yours, not glass.   

Do you deliver?   😜

Ha Ha. No! Mine. Mine. Mine.  🤣 🤣 🤣

[TechWife]

30 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

heh indeed.  I RAISE YOUR HEH:

My grandmother both collected and MADE ceramic plates, and both my parents and husband&I went through a phase where we routinely went to New England estate auctions as entertainment. My *kitchen cabinets* are mostly glass so as to see all the inherited ceramic plates (partly decorative, but mostly so there's a HOPE that things get put back where they belong) and thus I can see from my seat I have 11 sets of 8+ "regular" dishes in the kitchen;

...and then we have both a curved china cabinet that was my parents' wedding gift to us, and also a sideboard that we later acquired at one such auction, in the dining room to hold the "good" china (one from the wedding registry, one that I acquired later because I liked them, a third that was my great-grandmother's on the other side that eventually came  my way).

And I STILL need to store overflow in the basement.

 

!!!

 

Here's the one my parents gave us as a wedding present 31 years ago:

Dishes & pottery are so lovely! I'm determined not to get more stuff than I'm willing to dust/wash at this point, though. Your china cabinet is lovely!

[Pam in CT]

13 minutes ago, TechWife said:

Dishes & pottery are so lovely! I'm determined not to get more stuff than I'm willing to dust/wash at this point, though. Your china cabinet is lovely!

Yours as well!

My plants actually go a bit Little House of Horrors over the winter, sigh. Most of them belong outside, but, not til April 15.  Someday I'll live in your zone.