Formal Dining room?

[Janeway]

I thought I already made a post but now cannot find it. 

 

What thoughts does everyone have on formal dining rooms? We have one. But I have noticed that in newer houses, the formal dining rooms are often skipped. I have even noticed that on shows on TV where they show house flipping.  I EVEN noticed that in old old houses, there was often no eating area in the kitchen and the dining room was used for every meal. 

 

I like my formal dining room and figured I would never part with it. But now, I kind of wonder if I am being short minded. We barely use the formal dining room as a dining room.

[zoobie]

In my dream house, the formal dining room would double as a library with shelves to the ceilings and rolling ladders. In reality, our formal dining room is where our dogs' crates go. They look lovely against my hutch filled with not-china. :rofl:

[Carol in Cal.]

I love having a formal dining room.  But I don't just use it for that.

 

In my 1920's house, the formal dining room is also the main pathway between the front door and the kitchen, and the dining room doors between the hall and the kitchen don't form a straight line--instead they form a diagonal through the middle of the dining room.  So if we had a big table permanently set up in there, we would have to edge around it every time we needed to, say, head to the bathroom from the kitchen, or head to the kitchen from the living room.  So I have it set up as convertible.  The dining room table is closed up small and in one end of the dining room.  The other end is set up like a family room area, but the table can be turned around and leaves added to make it big enough for 14 people.  I love that.

[AnnE-girl]

A formal dining room was one of my requirements for our new house, and I love having it now. I'm trying to use it at least once a week for a more formal meal. We'll use it more often as the kids get bigger and for company. I love hosting holidays and had no space to in our old house.

[Cinder]

I've never had a dining room, but at this point in my life if I had one it would be used as a craft/sewing room. Unless dh claimed it as his office/library.

 

The families I've known with formal dining rooms only use them when they have enough guests that extra seating is needed--and/or as their school room. Or it's used as a place to set out the buffet of food for larger gatherings. When space is cut on floor plans the dining room is first to go. My sister has a teeny townhouse that doesn't even have an informal dining space--they just sit at the bar (ETA--it's part of the wall dividing the kitchen and living) to eat.

 

Edited August 12, 2016 by Cinder

[ThursdayNext]

I was sure we would never use our dining room, so we turned it into a library. The walls are lined with bookshelves. I was planning on adding a rug, stuffed chair and lamp, but plans changed.

 

The kids kept wrecking the more-out-of-sight homeschool room, so it now has 2 tiny kid tables and one smaller regular height table. Someday, when I can find a good deal, I'd like to find a table with leaves to seat 10 to put in our dining room. If a table that long will fit - our dining room is small.

 

How big is your kitchen eating area? Ours only fits a table to seat 6, and we do have people over often enough that we want more seating.

 

I saw one with doors that was turned into a Lego room. The littles were kept out, and the big boys were still in the middle of the house. Way more useful than a room used just once a month for company.

[Arcadia]

Our formal dining room is currently used as our music room and also holds all our kids lab equipment as the dining room gets the least sunlight. It used to be their school room. When we bought, we were thinking of using it as the kids bedroom.

[Bluegoat]

Lots of people find they don't ue them, so they are falling out of favour.  I think the main thing I, you can really only eat in one place at a time.

 

Personally I prefer a separate dining room but no eat in kitchen.  I would prefer to use kitchen space maybe for a desk and computer, recycling area, maybe even an area for a baby to play.  Or just a space for more serious kitchen work like canning.  I also use my dining room for homeschooling, and I prefer for eating with guests than in a kitchen or nook.

[lynn]

Ours has been a computer room then a school room. Now it's a piano/playroom. I'm planning on getting a lazy boy and setting up a reading area. i had a formal dining room set up but it was wasted space better used for something else since we only used it a few times a year.

[marbel]

I used to have a formal dining room, but I don't now, and I miss it terribly. But we have people over a lot, and it was nice to fit at the table instead of scattered around the living room as we are now. (Our kitchen table only seats six comfortably.)

[happypamama]

We have a country kitchen style kitchen, a big room that has our dining table in half. It's not at all cramped, so we feel no need for a formal dining room (except for like twice a year when I wish we did). The room that "should" be the dining room is our playroom, which we want to enclose into a family room eventually. I think a formal dining room is overrated, mostly, and a space you so t use except for a couple of times a year is a huge luxury. If you can use the space differently, go for it!

[momacacia]

Our "formal dining room" is our schoolroom. :)

[MooCow]

we have a formal dining "space" in our formal living room. We use it as our school room.

[Happy]

We used our formal dining area as a school room for many years. The only true negative was that room is open to the entryway and is the first thing people see when entering the house. sigh...we were not neat homeschoolers. :)

 

Once we were done hsing, I wanted a pretty dining room--and got it. We have people over from time to time so that works. My greatest pleasure is it's a room that is easy to keep clean and tidy--even more, it's fun to decorate for the season in there.

[cjzimmer1]

Unless a house is all wood floors, the houses I've seen that have formal dinning rooms have carpet in them.  I have no desire to mix food and carpeted rooms so I have no desire for one.  I would turn the room into something else if my house had one.  And even if the flooring wasn't an issue, it's still wasted space in my book because really why do you need two different places to eat your family meal.

[Sherry in OH]

The builder of our current house offered two options for our floor plan – a home office or a formal dining room.  We chose the home office.   The breakfast area, adjacent to the kitchen provides more than adequate eating space.  It also serves as the central homeschooling and craft area. 

 

We normally have four chairs around our table.  We can add two more chairs without extending the table.  On the rare occasions that we need to seat more than six people, we add leaves to the table.  We can seat up to 14 comfortably.  If we needed to seat more than that, we’d have to set up tables in the living room.  But, if we had opted for the formal dining room, we’d have had to do that anyway. 

[redsquirrel]

FWIW, when my mom remodeled, she got rid of hers.  She had an eye towards resale, and they are falling out of favour.  People would rather have a bigger kitchen or open living space than a separate dining room that only gets used a couple times a year. And people don't entertain like that any more.  TBH, when I was growing up it always felt like wasted space. It was more of a laundry folding room than anything else, lol

[gardenmom5]

your house - do with your formal dining room as you wish.

 

I have a separate one which is open to my living room, but my kitchen eating area is quite small.  my dd has no kitchen eating area, so her's is her only eating area.

[Janeway]

We have a nice dining room set. It was bought after we moved here and has a great buffet. But in looking at new houses, a lot don't have dining rooms. Currently, the kids do their school work at the dining table. I wonder if when we move, if it would be better to sell off the dining set and just get a bigger kitchen table. On the other hand, I hope to have the kids home on the holidays and big family dinners and so on. So it might be foolish to rid of this nice dining room set.

[Carol in Cal.]

The thing a formal dining room or something that can be converted into such does is allow you to entertain big.

This is a family custom issue.

In our family, my grandparents used to have everyone over for holidays.  We would have a long, extensive, non-stuffy but somewhat fancy experience involving maybe 12-20 people.  It would bother me a lot not to be able to do that, even though I don't do that kind of thing very often right now.  So I have to have that capability or I feel deprived.  YMMV.

[Farrar]

Ours is the largest room in the downstairs. I have often thought about flipping it with the living room even though that would mean walking through the living room to get to the dining room from the kitchen but now it's the homeschool room too, so it's in heavy use that way. Ours has a giant, beautiful, heavy antique table and floor to ceiling shelves on one wall and a sort of buffet that came from China. There's also a fireplace, but a fake one - original to the house, but fake. I have pretty educational themed art framed on the walls. Like this poster: https://www.etsy.com/listing/103906512/wonder-science-poster-art-print-wall-art?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=wonder%20science%20poster&ref=sr_gallery_1

 

If I had unlimited money, I might knock in the wall between the kitchen and dining room, move the bathroom and reroute the venting - thus opening up the space. But it would be really cost prohibitive for us to do all that. Thus we're stuck with the wall and the bathroom in the former pantry. Such is as it is...

[AnnE-girl]

The thing a formal dining room or something that can be converted into such does is allow you to entertain big.

This is a family custom issue.

In our family, my grandparents used to have everyone over for holidays. We would have a long, extensive, non-stuffy but somewhat fancy experience involving maybe 12-20 people. It would bother me a lot not to be able to do that, even though I don't do that kind of thing very often right now. So I have to have that capability or I feel deprived. YMMV.

This a big part of why I wanted the dining room too. My grandparents used to host everyone with all of Grandma's best dishes and I loved the specialness of that. Edited August 12, 2016 by AnnE-girl

[prairiewindmomma]

We have two dining spaces, but we also entertain quite a bit. It's nice to have sit down space for 20.  In our old house, we regularly hosted 40+ people. This house is quite a bit smaller. 

 

If I were to build my own home, my favorite house plan has a dining area off of the kitchen that is still properly in the kitchen. Having a formal dining room is not a must-have for me.  I just need the eating space to have good dimensions and flow.

[Bluegoat]

Ours is the largest room in the downstairs. I have often thought about flipping it with the living room even though that would mean walking through the living room to get to the dining room from the kitchen but now it's the homeschool room too, so it's in heavy use that way. Ours has a giant, beautiful, heavy antique table and floor to ceiling shelves on one wall and a sort of buffet that came from China. There's also a fireplace, but a fake one - original to the house, but fake. I have pretty educational themed art framed on the walls. Like this poster: https://www.etsy.com/listing/103906512/wonder-science-poster-art-print-wall-art?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=wonder%20science%20poster&ref=sr_gallery_1

 

If I had unlimited money, I might knock in the wall between the kitchen and dining room, move the bathroom and reroute the venting - thus opening up the space. But it would be really cost prohibitive for us to do all that. Thus we're stuck with the wall and the bathroom in the former pantry. Such is as it is...

 

We use what is supposed to be the living room for dining.  It has a big table, china hutch, piano, and a bookshelf for homeschooling stuff, and a comfy chair for me to sit in while the kid work.  It's our only eating space, so it gets used a lot.

 

Our living room is about half the size, which is smaller than I would like but workable.  I'd like to open the space between them too, though as it is the little kids can make some noise in there even while the big ones are working, so maybe that would be a mistake.

[My3Munchkins]

Our house has a formal living room/dining room combo and then a separate family room. When we first moved in (before kids) this is how we used the spaces. However, after having kids we realized that the front room (formal area) was rarely used. We moved the TV into the formal living room (still keeping the formal dining room with formal dining room table and china cabinet) and turned the family room into a playroom (and eventually a school room). 

 

Last spring I decided I was tired of wasting space on a formal dining room that was rarely used. I bought a less formal china hutch, which I refinished, and a large square, less formal dining table.  I LOVE the space now!  We now have a large table for schooling and a large table for dinners, instead of the small kitchen table. 

[HeWillSoar]

I have one and it is furnished nicely but we never use it. I would be fine not having one in the next house.

[kewb]

Growing up we had an eat in kitchen and a dining room that we rarely used. At some point in my teens my mom got rid of the kitchen table and we exclusively used the dining room. At first it was weird but I came to love it. When we bought our house I did not buy a kitchen table. We use the dining room.

 

I would want my home to have one. However, I understand the appeal of using the space for something else if you are not using it.

[Amira]

I think this is the first time I've lived in a house with a formal dining room (I choose neither my house nor my furniture). It has seating for 12, a hutch, and one of those side tables that I can't remember the name of). We put our extra lamps in there (because the house was furnished with an excessive number of lamps) and don't use it for anything else. Once the rest of our stuff is delivered, I'll probably use the hutch as a pantry, at least the lower part.

 

If I could get rid of the table, I'd stick some comfortable couches in there along with some book cases and keep our games in there too. But since I can't, it's just a pointless room that no one goes in.

[Bluegoat]

I think this is the first time I've lived in a house with a formal dining room (I choose neither my house nor my furniture). It has seating for 12, a hutch, and one of those side tables that I can't remember the name of). We put our extra lamps in there (because the house was furnished with an excessive number of lamps) and don't use it for anything else. Once the rest of our stuff is delivered, I'll probably use the hutch as a pantry, at least the lower part.

 

If I could get rid of the table, I'd stick some comfortable couches in there along with some book cases and keep our games in there too. But since I can't, it's just a pointless room that no one goes in.

 

A sideboard?  I get a lot of storage out of my sideboard/hutch, all my dishes plus things like vases.  Could you use the table as a games table?

[Denisemomof4]

I have no desire for a formal dining room. We added a nice addition to house our kitchen set when we increased our kitchen size. I also have a rattan set out there and a fireplace, assuring it was never considered a formal dining room. We still don't use it a lot. We have a massive island in the kitchen where we eat. The addition ia used fir eating only on holidays.

 

I do do puzzles back there so I guess it was a good investment. :D

[Guest]

I have one and I like having it.  It's not that we are always eating at it, but I do use it for formal occasions about 6 times a year.  And the rest of the year, it serves as a projects table (right now, it has on it a Macintosh amp my dh is refurbishing, an old computer I found in our stuff and which I am going to get the data off of, as I think it has some of my missing photos, and the collection of my son's swimming "you showed up" trophies which I am going to photograph and then toss.  :0)  There would be no other room for staging this kind of thing in our house; having a formal dining room means that it gets cleaned off a few times a year...

[J&JMom]

The room designated as the formal dining room on our floor plan is currently our media room with big screen TV, couch, recliners, and video game consoles.  We used it as a formal dining room at first, but was more functional as the media room for the past decade.  We have a breakfast nook with a table to seat 6, but is currently my teacher's desk and painting studio. I have counter chairs where we eat our meals with another camp table set up in the living room for school work.  Works for us!

 

[Amira]

A sideboard? I get a lot of storage out of my sideboard/hutch, all my dishes plus things like vases. Could you use the table as a games table?

I just went down to look at the sideboard (thanks for reminding me of the name) and I think I could stash a lot of food in there. We nearly always sit on the floor to play games, but now that you mention it, we really need a place to do puzzles. I'll move the lamps and get one going. :)

 

Thanks for the ideas!

[Pawz4me]

Our former house had a formal dining room. It worked well as extra storage space. It didn't look great being used that way, but it worked well. :lol:

 

As well as I recall someone actually ate in that room two times -- once when we had a large group of friends over and once at a family gathering where a couple of bodies wondered in there. Obviously we aren't much for formal entertaining. :lol:

 

This house has a separate dining area (separated from the kitchen by a wall) but it's not really formal. I like it much better.

[Joshin]

We have a 1940s home. No eat-in kitchen and a semi-formal (?) dining area. It's just a small room sandwiched between the kitchen and living area, with an open entry into each. It doesn't really fill formal and the biggest table that fits comfortably is one for 6. It is designed in a way that would allow one to put up a large table stretching into the living room, if desired, I guess. Our entertaining usually takes place outside around a grill or in the living room, so I haven't really thought about it.

 

I lived in a house growing up that had a very formal dining room, a casual dining area off the living room, a breakfast nook in the kitchen, and bar seating at the kitchen island. It was overkill and it was my job to keep all the crap in all of these rooms dusted and cleaned - and my mom loves crap! My motto now is less rooms and less stuff, and now I think know why! :lol:

[Sk8ermaiden]

We have a large formal dining. I think originally it was meant to be split formal living/dining, but we have no need for a formal living room. We have a big ol' table. Up until this year we've only had meals out there about twice a year, though this year we're starting more dinner parties. But We use it all the rest of the year. I've hidden our Lego storage out there and I use it for sewing and DH for making models. It's one of the most-used rooms in the house. 

[kitten18]

All the houses in my area (90% are less than 30 years old) have formal dining rooms.

Our formal dining room is the train room. 🙄

[Guest]

Our current house doesn't have an eat in kitchen but the dining room and living room are together. It is what it is.

 

Our new to us place we are moving into has a dining room next to the kitchen, separated by a wall. It's a formal dining room in the sense that it is its own nice big room but the kitchen does have a breakfast bar area. Unfortunately since there are more of us than can fit at that bar it isn't an eating area so much as a homeschool instruction area. The dining room is the only space we can spread out for homeschool work and eating, both, so it serves both purposes. The nice thing is it is twice as big as our current dining area and has a bigger table, so we can fit 12-16 people around the table AND have storage for our daily use homeschool materials.

 

I'm kind of glad the kitchen isn't an eat in and the house has walls instead of open concept. I do wish the kitchen had more visibility of the living room and dining room but it's not a big issue and keeps everything looking visually uncluttered.

 

So the short answer is that we have lived with informal great room dining that we homeschooled in, and now we are moving into formal dining room we will also homeschool in. No eat in kitchen but the storage and size of the formal dining room is so much better than I'm really glad we have it. With an eat in kitchen it may have been redundant, though.

[lanabug]

Our previous house, which was new construction, had a breakfast nook and a formal dining room.  The nook was only big enough to seat 4, so we did use our formal dining room fairly frequently.  

 

Our current house is 40 years old and has a dining room, but no eat-in space (unless you count bar stools at the island).  It's a slight hassle to carry dishes/food down the hall to the dining room, so

 

My next house will have only one dining area, but it will be large and open to the kitchen.  I'd like it to be big enough for a table for 8-10.

 

Lana

[greenbeanmama]

Our formal dining room (in our house built in 1910) is centrally located and is used as the playroom/homeschool room.  It gets walked through constantly, and I can't imagine having to walk around a big table and lots of chairs dozens of times a day.  We added floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, the piano sits against one wall, and the play kitchen is in another corner.  When we have lots of people over, we get out the large folding tables and play board games, but do most of our school on the rug or at the kitchen table.  So the main part of the room is wide open for whatever crazy game my children think of next.  It works for us!

[Guest]

Our previous house, which was new construction, had a breakfast nook and a formal dining room.  The nook was only big enough to seat 4, so we did use our formal dining room fairly frequently.  

 

Our current house is 40 years old and has a dining room, but no eat-in space (unless you count bar stools at the island).  It's a slight hassle to carry dishes/food down the hall to the dining room, so

 

My next house will have only one dining area, but it will be large and open to the kitchen.  I'd like it to be big enough for a table for 8-10.

 

Lana

 

 

This is sort of what we had in my former (wonderful) house.  The only thing I would have changed is that I would have had some sort of ... I don't know how to describe this...raised counter? something that would have given a bit of visual separation between the eating area (which was big enough to have a table to seat 10) from the kitchen area.  That way, when we are all together eating, I'm not sitting there looking at the kitchen and all that has to be cleaned up.  There is something to be said for beauty.  :0)  

 

The only flaw in the floorplan of the previous (wonderful) house is that the formal dining area was a little odd in that the pathway through the house ran through one side of it.  I know why the builders did it that way (to take advantage of wonderful views in as many rooms as possible) but it still was a flaw.  If I had it to do over, I probably would have used that area for a library/sitting room (or homeschool room) and just made the eat-in kitchen area the main dining area...bigger table and so on.  Now we have downsized and I am stuck with a beautiful but enormous dining table AND a good-sized kitchen table, and I can't use them both.  But we don't know that we are where we will finally be, and the dining table really is beautiful (solid cherry, very modern) and so we can't separate ourselves from it...yet.  

 

Oh well.  Such problems to have.  LOL

[redsquirrel]

I am realizing that while I sit here thinking that a formal dining room is fairly useless for many families, I am sitting in my own dining room, lol.  My house was built in 1860 without an eat in kitchen.  Now, having lived here for almost 15 years...I would LOVE an eat in kitchen. 

 

My house layout is so weird. You walk into a big room. It is almost the biggest room in the house and it has...no purpose.  My kids call it the 'walk through room' if that gives you an idea of how useless it is.  The dining room is separated from that big room by a couple of columns and a beam across the ceiling acts as a boundary.  The back of the house has the kitchen and a full bath.  If you come in the front door and take an immediate left and turn a corner you can see the living room.  That is at the front of the house.

 

My poor dining room. It has the piano and is where we do all our homeschooling. The piano is up against one wall and the homeschool bookcase is on the opposite wall.  And I sit at the table and use the computer. 

 

It's just an odd layout, but not uncommon for it's age and the area.  I suspect the 'walk through room' is supposed to be the dining room.  So people walk in the house and in the dining room.  The room off to the side, that we use as the dining room, is prob supposed to be a family room. And then maybe the room at the front of the house was a parlour?  That is also where the stairs are to go to the bedrooms.  But a house so small (1300 sq ft) doesn't really need two sitting rooms.  And who wants to walk into a house and have to avoid a dining room table?  it's just weird and awkward.

 

We can easily seat 6, but have a family of four. On occasion we seat 8 with no problem.  If we have more then we just spill out into the rest of the house.  But even if I did have to host a big family event, our family isn't that big. Even if both my kids get married and have two kids of their own and come home with partners then it will still only be 10 of us. 

[happypamama]

 My house was built in 1860 without an eat in kitchen.  Now, having lived here for almost 15 years...I would LOVE an eat in kitchen. 

 

My house layout is so weird. You walk into a big room. It is almost the biggest room in the house and it has...no purpose.  My kids call it the 'walk through room' if that gives you an idea of how useless it is.  The dining room is separated from that big room by a couple of columns and a beam across the ceiling acts as a boundary.  The back of the house has the kitchen and a full bath.  If you come in the front door and take an immediate left and turn a corner you can see the living room.  That is at the front of the house.

 

 

I hear you!  My house was built in 1830 and has two front doors, very common in PA farmhouses of that era.  The one on the right leads into a large room.  The one on the left leads into a small room.  I hear that those used to be two different sorts of living room areas, one larger and more formal, one smaller and less formal.  But in today's world, it is a little odd.  The smaller room has a large doorway (most of the wall) to the room behind it, which is what was probably supposed to be the formal dining room.  We use that as the playroom/family room, and the small front room as, um, nothing right now; it holds the toy vehicle collection and the kids' practice dummy.  Both the large room and the playroom lead into the dining area of the kitchen, which is pretty much the entire back of the house.  The large room on the right at the front makes, IMO, a terrible parlor or living room.  It's big and not cozy, and it has doorways into the small front room with the toy vehicles, the playroom, and the kitchen, plus a lot of windows, so when you start arranging furniture for a living room space, it just has an awkward flow.  Plus we aren't living room sorts of people; whenever we have people over, which is really rare, we end up hanging out in the kitchen anyway.  (That's why I'm planning to enclose the playroom into a family room, though, to provide a quieter hang-out space for teens.)  However, that big open room with all the windows makes an excellent schoolroom, so that's what we use it for.

 

But yeah, old houses often have a flow that makes no sense to modern living!

[Ellie]

I thought I already made a post but now cannot find it. 

 

What thoughts does everyone have on formal dining rooms? We have one. But I have noticed that in newer houses, the formal dining rooms are often skipped. I have even noticed that on shows on TV where they show house flipping.  I EVEN noticed that in old old houses, there was often no eating area in the kitchen and the dining room was used for every meal. 

 

I like my formal dining room and figured I would never part with it. But now, I kind of wonder if I am being short minded. We barely use the formal dining room as a dining room.

 

I love my dining room. I don't ever plan to give it up or repurpose it. I also have an eating area in the kitchen, and I love that, too.  I have made it a point to use my dining room, although it may go unused for several months at a time. I can seat eight people comfortably, which I cannot in my kitchen eating area. And who wants to eat a lovely beautimous Christmas dinner with the china and cloth napkins and the whole thing while overlooking the kitchen sink? :-)

[KungFuPanda]

I use my dining room a couple times a week. It seats 8 and my kitchen seats 4. There are four of us. I'm not the best at clean-as-you-go, so I like to eat in the dining room if I've trashed the kitchen. I guess mine is an informal dining room. It's part of an L-shaped LR. It has a wall of library shelves, but we dig the library look. My family room is empty and used as a dance studio. I can move tables in there and seat up to 24 before it's too squishy for DS to drive his power wheelchair around in there.

 

Ummmm . . . We may spend too much time sitting and eating in various parts of the house :-/

[The Girls' Mom]

In every house we've had that had a formal dining room, we've used it as a school room/office.  We are more the eat in kitchen type.  

[bolt.]

I don't have a dining room. The open concept main floor includes the kitchen, an eating area, and a living room.

 

The eating area can seat 12 to 14 people with the table at its largest. For thanksgiving and pot lucks I bring out the card tables and set up the living room with a second table. This makes space for 22, which is limited by furniture (and dishes!) not floor space. With a third table and chairs, 8 to 10 more people would not feel crowded.

 

That's what "open concept" does for me: the whole level can be a dining room any time I need it to be. (But, yes, we can all see the kitchen sink the whole time, and the buffet of food is served on the island right in the kitchen.)

[ktgrok]

I'd think the "walk through room" is your formal living room, your dining room is your dining room, and the other one in the front of the house is an office/study or a family room. 

I am realizing that while I sit here thinking that a formal dining room is fairly useless for many families, I am sitting in my own dining room, lol.  My house was built in 1860 without an eat in kitchen.  Now, having lived here for almost 15 years...I would LOVE an eat in kitchen. 

 

My house layout is so weird. You walk into a big room. It is almost the biggest room in the house and it has...no purpose.  My kids call it the 'walk through room' if that gives you an idea of how useless it is.  The dining room is separated from that big room by a couple of columns and a beam across the ceiling acts as a boundary.  The back of the house has the kitchen and a full bath.  If you come in the front door and take an immediate left and turn a corner you can see the living room.  That is at the front of the house.

 

My poor dining room. It has the piano and is where we do all our homeschooling. The piano is up against one wall and the homeschool bookcase is on the opposite wall.  And I sit at the table and use the computer. 

 

It's just an odd layout, but not uncommon for it's age and the area.  I suspect the 'walk through room' is supposed to be the dining room.  So people walk in the house and in the dining room.  The room off to the side, that we use as the dining room, is prob supposed to be a family room. And then maybe the room at the front of the house was a parlour?  That is also where the stairs are to go to the bedrooms.  But a house so small (1300 sq ft) doesn't really need two sitting rooms.  And who wants to walk into a house and have to avoid a dining room table?  it's just weird and awkward.

 

We can easily seat 6, but have a family of four. On occasion we seat 8 with no problem.  If we have more then we just spill out into the rest of the house.  But even if I did have to host a big family event, our family isn't that big. Even if both my kids get married and have two kids of their own and come home with partners then it will still only be 10 of us. 

 

[TABmom]

We use our dining room, but there is no eat-in space in the kitchen. It's an old house, the kitchen was added on at some point. It's really nice and big (at least I think so!) I love having the dining room separate from the kitchen. I actually love that our house has lots of rooms instead of a big open living area. We do not all have to be in the same room all the time! I'm a serious introvert and I need my space!

[Guest]

My paternal grandmother had something of a walk through room at the very front of the house off the entryway. It was the formal dining room and the living room had an informal dining room. We only used it on holidays but it was where the 'adult table' lived, whereas us children ended up in the informal dining room at our own table until were about thirty ;)