Kitchen & Dining Room Ideas For Our New Home

I recently shared some of our new home with you all. If you missed that post you can catch up here. The kitchen/dining area was included in that post and today I thought I'd share an inspiration board I made of what we'd like to do & accomplish in the space. 

For a reminder, here's what the kitchen & dining space currently look like.

Not too much going on right now. But hey, this is real life.
One thing I didn't show originally in the tour post was this blank wall across from the stove.

E's art easel & craft stuff is temporarily camping out in the kitchen. It works great to have it here for the time being as it's something she'll play with when I'm busy in the kitchen. But, eventually, I think we'll move it downstairs once we get that all set up. And as you can see, we don't even have a stand for our phone right now. I guess the floor is working OK for the moment.

If you look closer (well, no, it's pretty obvious) there is annoyingly six different obstacles on the wall (outlet, phone hook-up, thermostat, lights switches & whatever else that blank one is). SIX. Randomly placed and not at all uniform. Like I said, annoying and definitely not pretty. There was a wall between the kitchen & dining space at one point in the home's history, so granted these weren't all in the same room. But still. Even though they weren't, they definitely weren't uniform in their own spaces to begin with. Hopefully once we get something on the wall it will disguise (that's probably a reach) them in some way.

Ok, now on to more important things. Here's what I'd like to see happen in our kitchen & dining space:

Paint - We've pretty much decided on paint colours for the house, we just have to get painting. And while that task seems daunting at the moment, I think it will completely change how the space (actually, the whole house) feels & looks. We're definitely looking forward to getting that out of the way & complete. So, painting. That's the first task.

Art/Wall Decor - Once the painting is complete it would be great to get some things on the walls. I have at least one sign I'll be putting up that I found a couple of years ago. And then I'll be on the hunt for a few other things to add to the walls.

Island/Sideboard - It would be nice to have some sort of island or side board for the kitchen. There's definitely the space for it (although it may not seem that way from the photos). Bonus points if the sideboard or island has wheels (how perfect is the one pictured above?!), that way it could easily be in the center of the space or pushed up against the wall. Although, I am leaning more towards having something that's pushed up against the wall. It would serve as another work space/counter top & ideally have some extra storage in it. Plus, it would be great to have a little coffee station at it. Just sayin'.

Open Shelving - I would love to put some open shelves on the wall across from the stove. However, it may not be possible with all the outlets etc. that are all randomly placed. So if we can't make that work then we will definitely be adding some art of some sort on that wall. And then maybe I'll try and squeeze some open shelving on the blank wall by our table.

Light Fixture - Lastly, I'd really love to get rid of the light fixture over the dining table and replace it with something else. I'm keeping an eye out for something that's a bit prettier and more our style.

And that's that. Little things here and there that we want to work away at. It won't all happen at once, but it's always good to dream & scheme of where you want to go with a space. Stay tuned for updates!