Interior inspo: Dining and reading nook

As I wrote in Wednesday’s post on the current situation of my minimalist journey, we have been living with a dining nook in the living room that were in dire need of some TLC. I might exaggerate a bit, but you know how it is. For us, it felt pretty dire, and has been bugging us for a while.

To mend this, yesterday I threw out our clumpy dining table, and rearranged the chair and our “office drawer”. Now we’re left with a pretty spacious nook that consists of a Ikea EXPEDIT shelf turned bench, and a cozy chair and drawer theme. Gone is the dining nook, as it were. 

As of right now, we might not do too much with the space itself, because well, it costs money. And, since we’re not sure what we want from this nook in general, it does not make sense to buy new stuff that we’re not sure we even want nor need. Simultaneously, it doesn’t look half bad with the furniture we do have. Although I’m kind of dying for it to be less black, to be honest.

Small space, big ideas

I think the biggest problem with this nook is our desire for it to room both a dining area with a couple of chairs and a table and a reading nook featuring an armchair and a sideboard. That, and the size of the living room. The living room rather small, and to top it off, the room is almost square in shape.

This square shape does not leave us with much room for a dining nook in the first place, and especially not in addition to a reading nook. But, we want to have both the cake and eat it too, isn’t that the normal way of things? Even if we hardly ever used our dining table, and we rarely have guests over. What about those rare times where we actually fancy a proper dining space? What. About. Those?

Even if we’re currently awaiting to make any new purchases for our dining and reading nook, dreaming about what might be is allowed, right? Below is a collage of a few items I could picture in our space.

Interior Inspo: Dining and Reading Nook

Doesn’t the collage above look much lighter and brighter than the current furniture in the pictures further up? Yes, that’s what I thought. Oh, if only it was possible to decide anything in terms of that godforsaken nook! Haha.

With inspiration from the mood board above, though, I think we might be able to fit both a reading nook and a tiny dining area.

Don’t you?