Open Dining Room Storage

I've been thinking a lot about our dining room storage. In our dining room we have a simple white buffet that I refinished late last year. In our buffet I store numerous items: cake stands, platters, champagne glasses, wine glasses and desert plates. While I like that everything is tucked away, I really like open storage in a dining room. I guess its me inner Martha, liking dinnerware to be all pretty, but beyond the pretty is the ease of access to the dinner & glassware. Here's a reminder our how our current buffet looks, although it works fine for our needs. I would like to find a table that's a little longer which = more storage room.

For inspiration, I began my buffet table search at Pottery Barn by checking out their console tables aka sofa tables. I really like console tables that have a drawer and at least two shelves on bottom. I think two shelves would be esstenial in our dining room. On the top shelf I would keep wine bottles and wine glasses / champagne glasses. Since we have limited counter space in our kitchen, having wine bottles in the dining room would free up valuable space. On the bottom shelf I would have cake stands, cook books and vases. I really like the two console tables from Pottery Barn both classic looking { just the wrong color }

Although larger than want I want in our dining room, I love the look of this open storage.

{ via Apartment Therapy }

As you know I love projects and nothing beats finding a great deal, so I've been stalking Craigslist and trolling thrift stores in hopes of finding the perfect console table for our dining room. If I come across a credenza, that would also be a good thing, it would we longer and most likely have a middle door with shelves. I would remove the door and keep wine bottles inside there. Oh the possibilities! Now just need to find the right piece for our dining room on the cheap.

So what to do think about Open Storage vs. Closed storage in a dining room? What kind of storage does your dining room have? And why do I keep adding projects to my to do list.