Black and White Family Dining Room
I truly love our dining space! It's a small room just off of our kitchen with Japanese-inspired black and white shoji screen doors, hard-wood floors and a beautiful view of the city. The room is filled with bright light in the mornings. On summer nights, melodies from musicians playing on Old Arbat can be heard. Every time I'm in this space, I'm filled with memories of delicious dinners with family and friends, crafts projects, game nights, and teaching our boys counting, their ABC's and reading. Many of life's fondest memories and built around the dining room table.
In our previous home, we had a very large, dark reclaimed wood dining table. We love our dining table, but knew it wouldn't fit this space (size and style-wise), so we put it in storage. This meant I got to buy a new dining set! I love shopping for new furniture and was excited to see what the shops in Moscow had to offer!
Before heading to the stores, I had to think about what furniture would best compliment the adjacent kitchen and interior space. Our kitchen had modern, glossy grey cabinets, dark grey countertops, and a black granite raised bar. The floors are laid with grey granite tiles in a geometric pattern, with a black granite border and small black squares at each intersecting diamond.
After going through many furniture stores and testing many tables for comfort, durability (we have two small boys) and size, we decided on a simple, frosted white glass table with minimal shiny, steel table legs. I knew we only needed this table for this apartment, so I didn't want to spend too much money and I wanted the option to be able to reuse the furniture pieces in our apartment in Germany (if we ended up moving back in a couple of years.) This table was the perfect fit and keeps the room feeling light. The white leather, low-back chairs also blend nicely and don't obstruct your view, which would make the room appear smaller. Our table and chairs were bought at IKEA and will be re-used as our craft table in our next home.
In addition to the table and chairs, we bought a black and white geometric rug. I love how it gives the room a pop!... and hides food stains beautifully. :) I loved the rug so much, I bought another one for our living room. In the alcove, we placed a minimalistic, dark metal rack with glass shelving. Both are from IKEA as well.
On the walls, we hung vintage prints I bought from various locations that we've travelled. These pictures have been with us in our past four houses, and I'm sure I will find a place for them in our next home. I find that by hanging these in each of our homes, we feel 'at home', even though we are in a new space. This is a wonderful tip if you move a lot.
Here are a few more pictures of our dining space. Feel free to share and subscribe if you'd like to read more about how we set up the rest of our home. As well, you can see more photos from our pre-war penthouse here.
