Oh C'mon V Richards...every epoch has its treasures. B4 you make a mad run for it stop a while and consider the period and the reasons for the style...it can be extremely enlightening....unless its not the period you want to escape from but from some of the opinions. I spent many years of my youth outside of Australia living surrounded by old ruins in Europe. I forgot what it was like here. When finally I returned to Australia and found myself living in some of the 60s and 70s places..I found much to admire and wonder about. I may not have fallen in love with much of it but there was a certain mistique and a feel that I can still conjure when talking about certain places. Not saying that it was all romantic and pleasant but it conveyed something of the era and the kind of Aussie from those days.

I agree with most of the above and especially that you need height. At the moment, the only "story " that's being told is that the cabinet is your dumping ground. If you have sentimental things, they need to be "honoured" by having space dedicated to them, otherwise they are background clutter. If this is the space you have allocated to them, then never put your daily chores such as paper work and general dumpiing there. If you don't have space to spare and have to use this area as a dumping ground, perhaps elevating the sentimental to another level, as previouslly suggested with shadow box, or grouping the photos on the wall, or you could do a floating shelf above the cabinet to hold your sentimental items. I would make the shelf shorter than the length of the cabinet. Then you can still use the cabinet top for the other items. If you group the items that belong together, so the wine, decanters and glasses on an attractive tray, they then look like they belong and tell another story and apppear as one item rather than five. If you really need the bench for the dumping site, perhaps get an attractive container with a flip top lid to dump them in or otherwise something attractive that groups the "dump stuf"f and contains it, that way it looks ordered rather than cluttered. Less is definitely more, remove anything unecessary such as candles so that you can have some empty space. At least this is an easy makeover!

Just a thought about the shelving unit switched with the dining setting might be enough of a change. Painting it could also be quite a job so moving it might give your husband a nicer outlook through the windows as he has brekkie. Sorry if this is a silly thought or the space won't work that way. If you do move things around then a lovely hanging pot plant or small buffet between the entry & the table & chairs would off set the a/c along with some art work. :))

Also love the buffet....it could be the "hero" of the room. It is beautiful and they are so hard to come by at a reasonable price. I have a much cheaper style mid century buffet and initially had the TV on top of it, but now the TV is wall mounted above it. The distance between the wall and the couch wall is about 4m and we have no issues with the TV being too high...you definitely need to factor that in if you wall mount it though...luckily I had a handyman friend helping me, otherwise I would have put the TV too high. With the TV being mounted, it actually makes the buffet more of a feature and anything that is put on the buffet is now "displayed" instead of being part of clutter with the TV. It looks great and I know yours will too if you wall mount the TV. That is the great thing about the mid century buffets...they seem to fit in just as well as modern furniture as they do with the classic furniture....and because your is "classic", it will never date...a great investment.