4 posts tagged “dining room furniture”

Furniture Store 247 was recently featured in the new series of The Home Show on Channel 4. We were asked to supply furniture for a project that took place in Biggin Hill Kent. The show is due to be shown soon on Channel 4. If you haven’t heard of the Home Show let me give you a brief overview of what the shows about. The show features architect George Clarke.

George comes from a successful business background, he was partner in a architects firm and a property development company. He has presented a number of other similar shows like “Build a new life”, “Property dreams”, “A Dream Home Abroad” and Restoration Man. His aims are to make architecture popular and accessible to the public.

The shows in the home show are designed to improve people’s homes, George is given a budget some shows this is £40,000 others £75,000 and this money is spent redesigning the home to better suit the family. Sometimes this means structural work, redecoration and adjusting plumbing and fixtures and fittings.

At the beginning of the show George arrives to get a feel of the house he stays the night to experience the problems that exist in the design of the house. George is then given a budget, he makes the house into a blank canvas by painting it white and then coming up with a new and improved design. The family are involved in picking the furniture by deciding what furniture they would be, if they were furniture. The family are sent away from the work and return to see the new design.

Furniture Store 247 stock a wide range of living room furniture, bedroom furniture and dining room furniture. So we were only too happy to supply our York Occasional Chair to the Home Show.

If you have seen the show and are looking for similar living room furniture why not check out our website, Furniture Store 247.

Invitations
Send out Invitations early to give your guests a week to RSVP and also give a date to RSVP by. This will give you time to finalize the menu and seating arrangements. But, don’t send out the invitations too early otherwise your guests may forget about your event by the time it takes place. A good solution to this could be a quick email or phone call to remind them

Decoration
Keep decoration tasteful, one colour and white always works well and make sure everything matches. A flowery old tablecloth is not the best answer to dinner party decoration. Try to have matching cutlery and plates. The quality is not as important as long as it matches it tends to look ok. If you lack matching cutlery you could try a theme of mismatched items and possibly try something mismatched with the menu like an unusual combination.

Dining Table
Try to ensure that the dining table is of an adequate size as overcrowded guests may be unhappy guests and the dining table needs room for serving, if space is an issue you could make use of a sideboard as a desserts table. Alternatively consider investing in an extendable dining table which can be used for family dining day to day and extended for dinner party use.

Menu
The best advice is to keep it simple, there’s nothing worse than a host fussing over food and leaving the guests to fend for themselves. Prepare a desert and starter if possible earlier in the day and leave only a few things to do once the guest arrives. It is usually expected that the main course will require some cooking but again ensuring you have prepared as much as possible leaves you free to spend more time with guests.

Seating
Ensure you have enough dining chairs to seat all your guests. Sitting on the stool from the kitchen is not fun. Plus the unfortunate guest ends up appearing taller than ever. Consider a seating plan to avoid a talkative and quiet end of the table, encourage new people to talk to each other; an interesting centrepiece could be an icebreaker for communication.

If you have run through this quick checklist and discovered an extendable table is the answer to your dinner party needs or you are looking for a new dining set then have a quick look at  http://www.furniturestore247.co.uk/Default.aspx with a great range of furniture options.

It has to be said that when we look around houses built recently there seems to be something missing… A dining room. Dining rooms are commonplace in old Victorian style properties but seem to be lacking in the building of modern houses replaced by a space in the corner of a living room or kitchen. Many people now don’t even own a dining room set, they are content to eat their meals from the kitchen counter or sat on the sofa, a lack of a dining room means people can’t physically eat at the same time due to lack of space. Mealtimes used to be a social time, a catch up of the days events. Without a dining room the chance to discuss the day and chat disappears into watching the news or a soap.

When they do exist Dining rooms raise issues for homeowners. Should they furnish it within the style of the property using Traditional style Dining tables or use a modern style dining room set or even a breakfast bar.

When furnishing a dining room, people often think what else can I put in the dining room apart from a table, the space is often seen as a wasted space. Sideboards fill this empty space, look good and provide handy storage for all the cutlery and plates while they are not in use. The sideboards provide space for the display of ornaments and family pictures which would look out of space elsewhere

A lack of a dining room can often be problematic for homeowners, often there is no room for a dining table. One solution to this problem can be the use of extendable tables. These can be opened out for meal times and folded away to save space in the corner of a kitchen or living room. Another solution could be the use of a breakfast bar which are generally smaller and take up less room.

So, if a dining room exists there exists a great deal of choice to fill the space and if there is no dining room, extendable tables provide a great alternative to sitting on the sofa and eating your meal off a tray.

Dining room chairs. They’re very simple and standard piece of dining room furniture; a core part really. If you have a dining room (and yes, some people don’t) then you’re going to have dining chairs and if not well you’re probably going to need them.

So what choices are there out there? Well that’s the thing, there are so many. Assuming you don’t need an entire dining room suite and you have the dining table already and maybe even sideboards, then you need the right chairs to compliment them.

Surely it can’t be that hard though? Well that’s the thing; buying new dining chairs can be easy, assuming you aren’t to concerned what they look like. The thing is almost all of us do care. We all tend to have very specific tastes and want our house to look like our ideal image. So much so that we’ll often not buy that matching dining table and chairs as we only like the look of the dining table, or the dining chairs.

One such influence on why we have these newer ideals is media input. Shows we see on TV demonstrate different ways and styles to make you home look special and unique, or even ways to spiritually harmonise your rooms.

Back to the dining chairs where do we start? Well you have your different materials to start with; wood or metal? If it’s wood are we looking for hardwood, ash, oak, pine beech or something else, even within those there are different types of oak and hardwood, and of course do we want these veneered or natural?

Metal has a few less choices as typically it will be a chrome effect or perhaps a brushed aluminium finish. Of course there are also combinations of metal and wood dining chairs, just to make things more varied.

Then there is the upholstering. It’s rare a dining chair is going to be simply wood or metal. You have various materials such from leather, suede and cotton, to leather-look and faux leather.

Finally the design, do you go for classic, contemporary, modern, retro or something in between? The amount of designs available in dining room chairs in almost limitless, so having an idea of what you want will always help point you in the right direction.

So to sum up, yes it can be daunting finding the right dining chairs, but the reason is because the wealth of choice and having such an open palette to choose from can only be a good thing as it allows you to add that individual stamp to your dining room.

For a vast range of dining chairs visit www.furniturestore247.co.uk. Our stock includes wooden and metal frames, with various styles upholstery (our leather look Guinness Chairs are one of our best sellers and very popular) and chair designs to suit your needs.