Gearing up for our big downstairs remodel to start on January 5th (woohoo!!!) and trying to get some details ironed out.

I'm in love with banquette seating, but I'm thinking it might not work for my dining area, which is totally bumming me out. Or maybe, with a little bit of vision I can figure something out (hopefully!).

Basically our dining area is open to a long hallway on one side. I attached a (horrible) photo looking in from this hallway (please excuse the mess). So looking in from that area there is three windows across the way on a slight curve. This would be the ideal spot I'd think, with the deep bench at the middle of the set of windows, right where the table would be, and then the bench tapering out in depth to make it a straight line across from the front - make sense? The middle of the bench would have a seat 20-22-inches at it's deepest, so plenty deep enough for sitting at a table and I could easily get 2, if not 3, people there.

My question is, would it look weird to do this and have our table pushed back in the room for no other reason than to have the bench seating? I think the bench seat would look awesome given the shape of the wall along the windows, but not so sure about pushing the table back and not having it centered in the room. The table above is pushed back to about where the table would be for a bench seat. The new table is a 60-inch fixed round table so it will come out to where the table leg marks are on the floor (there is a one just above and slightly right of the book) (and the floor is out of here to be replaced with wood all downstairs - so the fact that the carpet won't break the room off from the hallway like it does now might make it work?).

My other idea if I can't make a bench style seat work would be to get a custom bench seat from Ballard Designs Conventry collection to just push up to the table. I'm really after some fun seating in this room and that might fit the bill. Our table is a fixed 60-inch round table, which will fit beautifully in the room since it is pretty much square in shape. If I went the bench seat route what sizes would you get (they have 48, 36, & 20) and how many? I'd like to also add a few regular chairs. I was kind of thinking two 20's and then three regular chairs. But I'd prefer something that would fit two people at least, and be able to get 6 people around the table without having to search out other chairs. Man, what I'd love, love is to be able to find a bench seat similar to Ballards Conventry collection with a curve to go better at a round table, but I'm not having any luck at all.

I did find this on overstock.com that sounds like it would work good, but I don't want beige of any kind (we are moving away from all brown colors so I'm looking for grey). There was the same one on ebay in graphite for just a bit more. Hmmm...

http://www.overstock.com/Home-Garden/Hilton-Button-tufted-Curved-Loveseat/4849883/product.html?refccid=WT6JIUDD7XSLC42CKIPT3ICNGM&searchidx=14

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'm so very excited to finally make this home ours after 7-years of not-so-patiently waiting.