Sixteen years ago, we bought an outdoor dining set at The Greenhouse in Bellingham, WA and it felt like quite a splurge. It ended up being worth every penny because it still looks brand new all these years later. We’re ready to get something new though because our current set only seats 4 people, which doesn’t leave any room for having people over. We’ve always just sat around in chairs to eat but I’m ready for an actual table that seats 6-8 people.

Because of where we live, a lot of the wood options aren’t on my list. There’s just too much rain here and I don’t want to buy something gorgeous for our patio and have it look 10 years old after a surprise week of rain in June. Am I being too worried about this? I’ve looked at approximately 476 dining table options and this is my short list.

Option 1

My main likes on this are that it seats 8 people and I like that it’s black. The chairs look like they might not hold up for many years but maybe they will. Their shape doesn’t make me swoon either and the table doesn’t have an umbrella hole. I might be talking myself out of this as a contender. But them my husband just said he likes this one.

Option 2

I love the look of this set but I can’t tell if that’s because of the way it’s been styled on the patio. It’s also got the mesh seating again and I’m not sure how that will hold up over time. The table top is not real wood and I wonder what that means in person. Does it look tacky or does it hold up? There’s also no umbrella hole so we’d have to buy a cantilevered umbrella.

Option 3

Don’t look at the benches because I’d just buy the table and get chairs (they have a matching option). I LOVE this table but my husband is hesitant to buy a wood table with all the rain we get. It does have a polyurethane topcoat and the website says to cover it in extreme weather. No mention of never being in the rain. This would be my pick. What do you think of the rain worries??

Option 4

This is the exact same table as the wood version above. I would go for it in a second except it’s not true black. It’s antique bronze and it’s hard to tell by the photos what that means in real life. It looks almost black in this picture but if you click on the photo, it shows another picture that looks more brown-ish. But it would wear very well, it’s a good shape and the matching chair options are a nice.

Option 5

This option is all weather wicker so it would wear very well in the weather here. I do like the gray color and it would look great agains our white house but the chairs are pricey ($350-$400 each) so it would be an expensive choice.

Option 6

Ignore the chairs. I’d just buy the table and buy better (looking & quality) chairs. This is the cheapest option and because it’s from Target, I don’t have high hopes that it would last a long time but it checks the boxes in terms of looks.

_  _  _  _

Alright that’s it. If you have a better suggestion from somewhere I haven’t looked yet, please tell me!!!  I still want to look around at local stores to see what’s on offer but these are my online choices after too many hours of searching. What would you pick??

xo Bonnie

After living in our home for 5 years, we are finally re-doing the pantry! When we were planning and building this house, we knew we wanted a big pantry with some bells and whistles but we also knew our budget was not as big as the appliances and features we wanted to include. The compromise was to build the pantry and just do open shelves until we could do what we really wanted to do!

Our cabinets should be ready to install at the end of February and I’m really excited to see it all come together. Since I plan to share the finished space when it’s done, I thought it would be fun to show you what it looks like now. So, of course, I had to clean the entire thing to take pictures because it looked like a herd of rhinos had run through it. Or my kids. In my ideal world, it would look like this all the time and I’m under no illusions that even this tidy version is near perfect. I think all the gorgeous photos of staged pantries have poisoned my mind to what a realistic pantry should look like. Thank-you social media! In organizing, I also learned that I may have some food hoarding issues. Apparently I’m very worried about running out of soy sauce and raspberry jam.

Now it’s time to channel my inner Brené Brown values on vulnerability (what are those again?) and show you my ‘before’ photos.

This is a view of my pantry from the kitchen. The barn door is nice for hiding the mess when we have people over but in my real life, this door is never closed. We currently have an extra fridge in there because I wanted the “garage fridge” idea without having to walk to the garage. Good idea, right?

We have very simple open shelves for pantry staples and no matter how many times I try to organize it, it just looks like a bunch of containers and bottlers in colors that don’t match. It’s also turned into a great place to toss my food storage lids. I’m sure you’ve never experienced that special kind of rage when you’re in a hurry, packing school lunches and you cannot find the lid for that certain container. It’s just too much for me before 8am. So now they’re ‘open concept’ on the floor. Those 2 little black things also on the floor are wine fridges, one for reds and the other for whites. They weren’t expensive and made a big difference, especially for the reds, which taste so much better just below room temp at 60 degrees.

This last area with the fridge gets ugly really fast. The way it looks now is AFTER I cleaned it up if that helps. Lol!!! The metal shelf is where anything of interest to my kids is stored and every item gets moved and sometimes spilled in search of the sweetest treat they can find. I basically try to ignore this spot and move on.

And finally, after all the before photos… This is our plan for the pantry!

That weird space above the fridge won’t be there so don’t get too worried about it. The handles, etc aren’t exactly in place either but those are details that don’t matter on the plan. Our current fridge will be sold and we scored a counter depth 24″ fridge/freezer that will be paneled so it looks like cabinets. We’re adding a built in wine fridge and then to the right will be a paneled fridge/freezer drawer unit. I think it leaves us with a little less total space than our current fridge but will obviously be much prettier! The open shelves are disappearing and all the mess will be hidden behind cabinet doors! Anyone glancing in the pantry from the kitchen will see a glorious void of mess. As I type that last sentence, I have to admit that we are who we are and there will probably still be some mess!

My main kitchen is painted ‘Simply White OC-117’ by Benjamin Moore but the new cabinets come from a supplier that uses Sherwin Williams products and the color match was horrible. It looked like that really cheap yellow vanilla ice cream that’s only sold in the 4 gallon buckets from the 1980’s. Apparently paint matches aren’t exact because the base is so different. This is true even of different levels of paint from the same brand. I had to go through my paint chips from Sherwin Williams and find a match that worked as closely as possible. We landed on ‘High Reflective White 7757’ and the new paint sample came back looking so much better! We’ll do counter that matches our island, which is slightly like ‘Mysterio’ Quartz.

Well, that’s the ‘before’ of my pantry. I’m excited for everything to come together and I’ll post an update once it’s all installed! Thanks for reading

xo, Bonnie

p.s. If you signed up for my newsletter (which doesn’t exist yet), please check your junk mail to verify your address. I have several people who have unverified emails right now. Thanks! 🙂