Apartment Makeover - Part 2, Dining Room

Unlike during my time living in Munich, where I was only ever in temporary rental agreements and pretty much had to take whichever flat I was offered - and worse, with whomever! - moving to Nuernberg with my partner was the chance to be a bit more selective. 

As we both love to entertain friends and family, our main prerequisite for the new place was to have space for as big a dining table as would fit (and we could afford!) 

The predecessor of our flat, also liked to have people over, however she had turned what was the dining room into the guest room. 

As we still have a guest room as well, we of course reverted it back to a dining room.

Apart from terribly hung curtains, it was the only room which was a "natural" looking colour. Nonetheless, I wanted to start with a clean slate, so this room like all other rooms (including the previously green lounge) were painted a crisp white. 

This was my original collection of ideas/mood board:

As I love to decorate the table with colour, and there was already a beautiful, warm wooden floor to work with, I wanted the room and furniture itself to remain a classic and neutral mix of black and white, while also mixing timeless new furniture with vintage bits and pieces.

As you can see, we actually ended up inheriting our predecessors chairs...

...as well as a cute little IKEA shelf where Mr SoulFood proudly presents his collection of local brewery glasses :) 

Another thing we couldn't understand about the previous use of the room, was not being able to make use of the door between the two rooms, which now lets us peek between the lounge and dining area.

Which also gives an added view from the lounge onto what I would call our two greatest artworks, the world, and a vintage Thonet chair which I snapped up on eBay for a bargain :)

This map - which unlike most maps of the world features one of my home countries, New Zealand, smack bang in the middle of it - was in fact brought over to Germany from New Zealand by my partner, who ended up bringing the 2m long poster roll as part of his luggage.

My favourite part of the day is indeed the afternoons until sunset as we get the evening sun on that side of flat, and the sunlight comes streaming in.

When we open the windows it almost feel like sitting in a wintergarden.

We recently made the addition of the buffet as we found that when there were more than four people at the table, the almost 2m table still wasn't big enough to hold all the sharing plates I like to serve. 

So apart from handy storage for decoration and tableware, I imagine this is where I will set up a little buffet for the next party. 

Until then it also holds my Euro 10.00 Nespresso machine which I also nabbed off ebay, after getting back into a habit of treating myself to a 3pm espresso on our recent trip to Palma De Mallorca.

As you can see from the first image, even our transformation has come a long way since we moved in. 

And while I am still thinking about painting the wall behind the map a neutral beige to make the map "pop" a bit more, we look forward to hosting many more friends until the Fraeulein has made up her mind about that! ;)

What do you think about the beige: yay or nay?! :)

Yours truly,

Fräulein SoulFood x