Dining Room Update

Last time I posted about the dining room it looked like this:

But with the in laws coming to stay with us last weekend, I had to kick it into high gear and empty all those boxes onto the shelves. I'm sure there will be lots of tweaking (and of course seasonal changes!), but here are the shelves now:






The sliding door between the shelves leads to what will someday be our rec room complete with pool table and bar. Right now it's our "wreck" room, complete with piles of garbage, good stuff that won't have a home until further remodeling, and crap that may never have a home since we gained house square footage in our move but majorly downsized the garage.


And the whole dining room currently:



We didn't continue the wainscoting around to the wall on the right because we plan to widen that doorway to the kitchen when we do the kitchen remodel.

Things left to do in the dining room:

• Hang a curtain rod and curtain panels above the sliding door before Thanksgiving. This view doesn't scream "relaxing meal":

• Upgrade the dining set. That's Mark's bachelor table and chairs, and while it serves its purpose, it's a completely different style than the rest of the room. I have what I want in mind and as soon as we can afford it, I'll be doing a switcheroo.
  
• Maybe an area rug, but I don't know how I feel about a rug under the dining table. When I think of spills and crummies and another thing to vacuum, it seems like an easy no. But then again, when I'm sitting on the couch watching tv, I'll sometimes see a beach ball-sized dust bunny tumbleweed blow by under there and that's not really appealing either.
  
  

I ask you, area rugs under dining tables: yay or nay?