Dining area + movable dining table

It was a pleasure to be invited back to Vine Cottage to help solve another space issue, this time it was the large dining area.

More often than not we move into new homes or spaces and find that furniture gets brought along and put into areas where we feel they either fit or would/should work well. This can often lead to the creation of random pockets of space with awkward obstacles to manoeuvre, we then try and retro fit additional furniture around them to make the space work. This is what was happening in this room. It was a very generous size though with existing furniture in place it simply wasn’t working for what the family wanted it to be used for.

The brief was more storage, more seating, more floor space as well as the capacity to host friends and family for dinner parties and gatherings.

We designed all of the seating around the edges of the room, we built the seating to be storage trunks for ‘store cupboard staples’, winter clothes, seasonal shoes and boots and made them all accessible with lift-up bases. We added two sets of drawers as well as a flexible bookshelf for quick and easy access to the essential cookbooks as it faces the kitchen.

There was a 1.5m radiator under the window so we designed a backrest to cover this, it can be removed so that the radiator can be adjusted while the slats added the ventilation to allow the warm air to circulate.

The dining table is large, no, it’s massive! The top is made from beautiful 24mm Birch plywood and the frame is made from laminated layers of 18mm Birch plywood. Set on castors it allows the table to be movable giving a lot of flexibility for access to the benches as well as allowing for two directions of use.
When the table is across the room it gives space easily for 12 diners and then it can be rotated 90 degrees to offer a more intimate dining experience for when it’s dinner time for the kiddos and their friends. This also makes the side bench into a chaise style seating for some relaxed, feet-up time.

Project Inclusions

Bespoke design, build + installation