Dining rooms - do you use them?

[TrinaLowsln]

We are shortly to be moving (touch wood) to a new house which, downstairs, has a kitchen diner, living room, study and second reception room which is currently used as a dining table. We are only four - me, DH and two DC, and although we do have visitors who come to stay, and host dinners with friends etc, I don't feel that these happen frequently enough to really justify the use of an entire room for a big table and chairs, when the diner part of the kitchen diner is big enough for a table to seat us every day. I would prefer to use the second reception as another living area or a playroom etc. We home educate so I am also quite tempted to use it as a homeschool room to keep the main living room free of "school" stuff.

If you have a dining room do you use it much?

Used as a dining ROOM, not dining table!!

Had one in this house, used it as one for maybe 2 years, probably sat in it about 10 times. Mostly just used the table as a roundabout whilst we moved from the kitchen to the living room.
now it’s a playroom for my toddler and the dining table is in the kitchen, playroom is used daily and house feels bigger.
waste of space in my opinion (if your kitchen is big enough to fit a table)

Our dining room was a separate room and we never used it, we then opened up the wall to make a kitchen / diner and now use it everyday. As you already have a dining table in your kitchen I would be inclined to use it as a home schooling room then a secondary living room for when the kids are teenagers and have friends over.

Yes but its the only place with a table.

I would use it as ether a dedicated play/education room OR an adults only retreat away from toys etc.

Yes and if we find we are not finding time to eat together we soon make the effort to merge back to it. We enjoy the way it brings us together again.

Yes, but

1 - our kitchen is teeny

2 - we walk through dining room to get to the teeny kitchen

It's the most used room in the house. Big farmhouse table and chairs in centre of room so we work, eat, write, draw, read the papers there. Piano and extra storage on one wall. It's used every day as I absolutely loathe not eating at a table. Plus we sit round it with friends, cuppas, biscuits and booze if the time is right. Not a formal room at all.

In your circumstances however, no I'd not have a seperate dining room, but would used it as an additional, flexible family space.

Almost exactly this, except we don't have a piano.

We used it for all meals but we don’t have a kitchen diner. In your case, just change it to the study room for home schooling.

We did, we used it every mealtime when DH was here, it was especially important to us as we were foster carers to some very young children. Now it is just me and a little one who doesn't eat I use it less and less. When DH was here it felt like the heart of our home.

Yes but we don't have a kitchen diner, I prefer a separate dining room. Our is used for breakfast & evening meal nearly every day, plus lunch on weekends.

I love having a separate table for games/crafts so I don't have to clear stuff away to eat.

We use ours lots, as we have got a big family and need a massive table with a lot of chairs. We sit in there too if we've brought work home in the evenings/weekend. We've got an eating area and stools in the kitchen, but I really like having a formal dining room. We've been considering moving but can't find a house with a similar layout, I can't bear the noise from open plan.

No. I've put my dining table in my living g room and the dining room is a playroom/study. Bookshelves, games storage, desk, sewing stuff. Sometimes used for kids sleepovers. Keeps the living room more grown up and less cluttered.

We have a large kitchen diner which we use daily and only use the dining room for Christmas, Easter & some birthdays. Even when entertaining we stay in the main room.

In your situation, I would 100% make it a home school room / playroom. Much better use of your space. We have a playroom and it’s so nice not having a cluttered lounge full of toys.

We do. We have our evening meal in it every night apart from Fridays and always our Sunday roast but that’s because we have a sofa and tv in our kitchen/diner. We have quite a big family so it’s nice to effectively have two lounges especially when we want to watch something different to the kids.

We use ours a lot, but our kitchen is only big enough for a small 4 seater table (there are 5 of us!) so it’s the only place we can all eat together. It’s also used for crafts/homework/jigsaws etc. Also we have a third reception room as well so the room isn’t needed for that.
If we had a large kitchen diner we wouldn’t bother having a separate dining room.

I love my dining room but we have other rooms so can devote one room to a big table. I actually use it mostly to do jigsaws but DH and I like to eat there at the weekend.

We use ours every day but we don’t have a table in our kitchen. As well as eating the large table is used by the grand kids for crafts and colouring/ painting we also play board games and do jigsaws. The table is extendable so mostly sits against the wall in its smallest form, come family gatherings like Christmas it gets pride of place fully extended in the middle of the room. I also love to have the space for a big sideboard. The dining room also doubles up as a second living room/ spare room it has a big TV in it and a decent sofa bed, it’s probably our most flexible space. If my DH or I get ill or infirm we would convert it to a downstairs bedroom.

We have a dining room which has been used for anything that needed a table; when the DCs were at primary school it was used for homework, painting, craft as well as eating. We also have a small desk in the same room with a computer, where I work when I WFH. Unfortunately the room and table became a bit of a dumping ground for any kind of paperwork. We've recently decorated and had a good clear out, but don't often eat at the table.

I'm very glad to have two reception rooms, partly for WFH and home admin, and also as an alternative room if one of us doesn't want to watch TV in our main living room. And our newly-decorated tidy dining room was lovely at Christmas when we had five extra people eaing with us.

Sort of. We have a room with a dining table in it, and we use the table for eating. But we don't keep the room only for dining -it's used for studying, working, crafts etc. It's not a dedicated room only for meals, like I remember some people having when I was a child.

We extended our downstairs last year. Original Dining room now part of open plan kitchen, separate new area/room which COULD be a formal dining room is a separate TV /Gaming room. Which is so handy.
We have 3 DC who don’t have tv’s in bedrooms.

We have one but it's my office.

The living room is big enough to have the table in there so we prefer that.

I'd definitely make it into a home Ed room if you have somewhere else to eat.

When it's just us we eat in the kitchen. When we've got visitors we eat in the dining room. I prefer to keep guests away from all the mess when I'm cooking/mass catering.

We do, however, have another room (converted garage) which over the years has been a playroom, teen chill out room, sitting room and now it's a gym.

We have a back room with a dining table in it but it's rarely used for dining as we tend to eat in the kitchen. The dining table is mainly used for school work, marking, jigsaws, playing games etc. The room itself is used for music lessons and practice and houses the musical instruments. Sometimes there are rehearsals in there but we only eat there for children's parties or when there are more than four people eating.

Same here and when my BFF stays, we spend hours and hours drinking tea and gossiping at the table. It knows all our secrets 🙂

I also use it as a dressing table (harks back to not wanting to wake shiftworking husband).

I'd bloody love a piano again.

It's my favourite room.

But yes, if I had a kitchen-diner, I'd repurpose the dining room.

We do. We do not use it that much, but at least once a fortnight. It would be used more if it were not a pain in the ass to move the toys. I consider it a waste of space. It would be grand if we had another reception room, but we only have the lounge, which is connected to the dining room with glass doors. So they are not independent spaces, which would be so much better imo.

We are moving, I insisted on a lounge, dining room and playroom because we have had a dining room/playroom hybrid really and it just didn't work.