Banquette Seating In Our Breakfast Room!

Our breakfast room now seats our entire family of 6!

Y'all, for years we've had just a 4-top square table in our breakfast room.  It was our old dining room table from when my husband and I were first married.

We ate all our meals in the dining room because the breakfast room table wasn't big enough for all of us but the breakfast room table was used a ton.  It was ground zero for homework, after school snacks, every project, pumpkin carving, cookie decorating, lego building, and countless crafts.

That table endured a lot but, it was still too small to really be best.  I had an extra folding chair off to the side that I'd set up to sit with my 4 kids while they had afternoon snacks and to look through their school folders with them.  But, we couldn't figure out how to make a bigger table fit in the space.  I certainly wasn't sacrificing the locker shelves we use for shoes/backpacks/jackets that also shares that breakfast room! 

Then, I started seeing all these pictures in catalogs of banquette seating (you know like a booth in a restaurant?).  And I thought how awesome that is for small spaces because you don't need to allow room to pull out a chair!  Also, often banquet benches offer extra storage underneath, which we could certainly use to stash kid sports gear. We debated trying to get something built-in, and then I found this sectional that seemed to be just the right size!  I choose an indoor/outdoor upholstery option, hoping to repel stains, and paired it with this table.

The long bench top flips up for storage underneath (it is not organized but hey, that's the beauty of hidden storage, right?):

We've been using the new set-up for a month now and we love it!  It is so cozy to sit on the couch and do work at the table!  It has become a prime gathering spot in our home.

And as you can see, it fits perfectly with the shelves still in the room!

(Madeline, the ever helpful dog that she is, was barking at me in that picture.)

***I am not compensated in any way through the links included in this post, they are just there in case this solution would help anyone else, you know where I found the furniture.***