Layout help - using dining room for a different purpose

[Radders23]

Hello! Can anyone give ideas as to what to do? We have bought a house where the kitchen has been moved into a new extension and the old kitchen turned into a dining room. The dining room is quite dark and to be honest we prefer a table in the front room (modelling a gorgeous house a few doors down which doesnt have a dining room). We did toy with the idea of having it as a study but there are no windows and so any light would be artificial and although you can always walk through the front room mainly to get to the kitchen the more direct route will always be through the dining room meaning it will always be a sort of walkthrough room

Turn it into a playroom, or a cosy snug/tv room

I'm not a fan of losing walls, but in this case I would. If you lost the wall between dining room and living room then there'd be more light and it would be ok to have the table there.

What is to the left? Is it joined to another house?

If not, couldn’t you put a window in the left hand dining room wall? You could have it as a multipurpose room. Surely there is benefit to having the table near the kitchen if you use it like that?

I’d lose the wall too

Thanks for the responses

@dudsville The wall in question includes the chimney so I'm not sure how realistic it is budget wise...

@crumpet would it be strange to have a tv in there as well as in the lounge?

Its a midterrace so couldnt have a window in there :(

Also just remembered we have a mains water pipe running just below the ceiling - I assume we could get this boxed in if we did tear down the wall?

Is the lounge big enough to be a living/ dining room? Ours is the same size and with the fireplace in the same position and it looked wrong and cramped with a dining table in it plus we couldn’t get the sofas and TV positioned well.

@Winenottea To be honest we saw a house nearby which had the same layout and assumed it would work... Would taking the wall up to the chimney make much of a difference? As its the old kitchen there are pipes (water and gas) to consider

I'd probably use it as a library / study. paint it dark and fill it with books and a couple of comfy chairs. but then I have far far too many books.

I think the previous owners missed a trick putting utility and loo at the end and not in the dining room bit. Suppose it would be too much to change that.

Id go for a larger kitchen, maybe a large pantry cupboard up the darker end plus microwave/fridge etc. Then the cooking and prep space down the bottom end.

Radders can you put a table and chairs in it and live with it for a while to see if it would work? Ours is a fairly hefty 6 seat dining set and it looked ridiculous so it’s now back in the dining room, which is where yours is!

We considered taking the wall out that you suggest but our problem is a wood burner on the other side of the wall that we wanted to remove. Stupidly we had it put in before we realised that the configuration was wrong.

I certainly wouldn’t want to remove your fireplace but yes to looking at opening up the wall as far as you can, could you put in a double wood burner to further link the rooms? Obviously that’s more expense but could look lovely.

Ours is like that. We use it as a snug. It's quite cosy in the evening

As a PP pointed out if money were no object I’d put the loo/ utility in the dining room and keep a corridor to the existing kitchen and then open up the entire back footprint to be one large and gorgeous kitchen diner opening out to the garden.

Thanks for all the great ideas! I think we're leading towards a room with bookshelves and comfy chairs. Do you think this would fit with the layout and flow as I know traditionally these are a bit tucked away.

@Winenottea we currently have our 3 seater sofa bed and 120 cm x 70cm table in the room as well as our clothes rail and it seems fine. Unfortunately the last owners dont seem to have been very into forward planning - lots of dodgy diy electrics have been uncovered :|

I'd turn it into a utility room and put a stud wall halfway across to create a corridor to kitchen.

Know out old utility wall and have that as a reading room and turn the door and window into French doors or if funds allow bifolding doors.

Ah, okay. In our living room we have a 3 seat sofa, a 2 seat sofa and a (later addition) big armchair and our table is approx 100cm x 170cm so quite a bit larger.

Yes to making it a reading area, if you have children then perhaps bookshelves, a few big chunky beanbags and a TV?

We don’t have children at home so our needs are very different.

We dont have children but we do work from home every now and again so a quiet space would be good also we have a lot of books :) In the future I could see it perhaps used as a playroom when we have kids. My concerns is if the flow works and if it would put a buyer off in the future?

Also we do plan to get a bigger table but we could perhaps move this back into the dining room if the space doesn't work I guess? But I do prefer not to use the dining room as a dining room

Planning for a bigger table is quite easy, make a cardboard footprint of the table, put it on the floor and then place chairs around it. Does it fit? Can people pull their chairs out for easy access.

Sorry if I sound so negative but our lounge diner was the biggest oversight we made and I don’t want anyone else to make the same mistake.

We are currently doing the cardboard cutout in our kitchen to decide the biggest island we can do.

What a shame the views of the garden are from the utility room and the shower room. Clearly no architect was involved here!

I would open it out fully into the kitchen. And take the wall out as far as you can into the lounge. The whole house must be lacking in light which is a shame. I would either extend the kitchen into it and incorporate dining or have it as a reading area. It’s miserable to have a room with no window though so introduce light by taking walls out and maybe alter the wall where the back door is. Build into the niche and have double glazed doors.

If moving the utility into there and then extending the kitchen into the current utility isn't feasible, I would have frosted glazed doors from the hallway, maybe double doors? into the kitchen dining room, so you get light in from the front door, but you have some privacy. Then it could be your dining room but have more light.

As long as it has a purpose and looks usable it doesn't much matter, in terms of flow and selling. Ours has a little sofa, a TV and a piano. We use the dining table in our lounge diner when WFH, and if anyone wants to watch TV while the other's working, they use the second TV. (The children also use it for music practice and gaming).

We are happy with our lounge diner set up but do make sure you are not cramping the lounge area. A generous main living area with space for plenty of sofa is an important feature if you have older children, and/or have a lot of visitors.

Re the light, if you want to change anything I'd put in a big door with plenty of glass between dining room and hall.

Could you build a conservatory extension? That would brighten up the dining area.

Or you could have Kitchen Conservatory type of an extension...

Or knock a wall down and put a set of bi-folding doors in?

They look like this: www.doubleglazingontheweb.co.uk/upvc-doors/bi-fold-doors/

I personally prefer them in Aluminium!

You can get lights that act as daylight.