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?

We have a proper separate dining room. Use it every day. It definitely works for us to sit down to dinner together.
Lunch in the kitchen is ok, but it’s just nice to have a dining room for dinner.

Sitting down for dinner is less of a "thing" for us as we are together all the time as the kids aren't at school. So we don't use dinner time as an opportunity to regroup at the end of the day iyswim. Plus I grew up sat at the table (big Italian family) and just wanted to read my book 🤣

Yes it's used daily for eating the evening meal together. Also used for homework. Jigsaws. Warhammer painting. Boardgames. There's a TV in their with a games console and Fire TV too. Couldn't do without my dining room, tbh.

There's also a kitchen table in the kitchen itself so we eat breakfast there as we all eat at different times.

*there🙄

I only have a one bed terrace, living room with table, small separate kitchen.
Years ago when married had lounge diner, in a three bed house

Ours is more like a second living room. There’s a woodburner, bookshelves, dining table and a couple of easy chairs. You walk through it to the kitchen.
If my children were younger there would have been toys, games and craft stuff in there.

All the time - less so for eating but endlessly for homework / work / games / art etc. one of our most used spaces.

We use our dining room every day for breakfast , for any craft projects that are too big for the smaller area I normally use . Have family meals for 6 when it’s just our children and partners , but then have larger family meals for 12 there .

When the children where younger and had friends round, and now if we have workmen in , it’s my retreat space where I can get on with admin while keeping out of the way of chaos. It’s was also used for several years on a fairly constant basis for both of their GCSE and then A level art work.

I also use it when friends drop in for tea and a natter , so personally I wouldn’t be without it , but even if you use your space as a playroom etc now , you can always change it later on.

Personally I’m not a separate dining room person and would always be in favour of knocking one through or using it for something else.

we have our table in our kids/relaxed/tv living room which is long and thin and we eat all our meals there as a family. If we had a kitchen you could have a table in then we would just use that!

I would have a play/home Ed area in your situation op - go for it!

It’s curious how we all live isn’t it.

our first home nearly 30 years ago had a L shaped living room diner. The dining table we eventually used as a changing table for our child , 😂, but other than when we had friends or family over, it simply sat there unused. A big old ornament in an unused space.

our second home we immediately turned the dining room into a second living room, but we were lucky to have space for a table in the kitchen.

Both living rooms were used all the time, and one contained all the toys,

our third house was our first rental , due to relocation, a little cottage, had neither dining room or space in the kitchen. We didn’t miss it but we were only there 6 months till we bought again.

the fourth house was totally open plan, so we did use the dining table as It was open to the kitchen, we never used it for anything other than eating.

our fifth and current house we immediately made the dining room a second living room, as said earlier, both rooms are used regularly. We host a lot but we eat in the kitchen.

one of my friends has a separate dining room. She uses it when she hosts. Bizzarely I find it quaint and old fashioned, I don’t know why. Every time I’m there I think I’d knock through and just make a bigger living room. She has a table in the kitchen.🤷🏻‍♀️

I think you should use rooms as you wish.
When DC were small I had a sofa and dining table in the kitchen but we atein the dining room most nights. As they got older we gave it over to a pool table. Now it's a study and the former study is a little sitting room which I use for crafts.

We have a lounge/diner that we tried to use but the dining bit was a pain to get to and we ended up eating in the lounge. Our kitchen was tiny.

We then extended our tiny kitchen into the garage and made a huge kitchen diner and now we use the table all the time!

Old dining room isn't used much (just me, dh and dd2 still at home) but I've hatched a plan to make it a counselling room when I finish retraining and put a proper door or soundproof curtain up in between. At the moment it has an extra sofa in it, the piano and yarn storage for me (knitter) and dd (very recently created mad crochet-er!)

Yes, at least once a week with family/friends. Used inbetween for jigsaws, lego and work. Room is generally a bit of a show room with ornaments etc. we don't want the children playing with. Door stays shut unless we're in there.

You walk through the dining room to get through to the living room, and the layout means you can't knock through further from the kitchen

Only on high days and holidays 🤷‍♀️

In my last house we had a tiny galley kitchen with connected but separate dining room which we used all the time. Now we have a large open plan kitchen living dining space with 3 separate reception rooms- we don’t have a separate dining room but are considering in the fixture perhaps (currently music room, adult living room, library/office).

I have a kitchen diner plus a second reception room which I thought I was going to use as a second sitting room.

But we had to move the kitchen table in there when we had some work done in our kitchen and I liked eating in there so much that I left it there.

We use it for most meals and for homework / working from home. Taking the table out of the kitchen has freed up space for a small sofa which I love.

We have a small kitchen and the dining room is next door. We use it all the time and it is lovely when we have company as we can leave the cooking detritus in the kitchen and close the door.

We use ours everyday but we don’t have space to eat in the kitchen as a family. In your situation I’d use it as a schoolroom.

We have the same set up (and family size) and use the second reception room as a "snug" for the kids to game, watch tv etc. Happy to eat in the kitchen, we don't host dinner parties or anything like that! It's more useful as a "breakout" area for our pre teens, and would have been a playroom no doubt if we'd moved when they were younger.

I do look forward to turning it into a formal dining room when they move out though

We eat dinners in our dining room. Lunches and breakfasts in kitchen.

3rd bedroom turned into a dining room when youngest left home, beautiful room but never use it, except to fetch drinks from the cabinet, didn't need a third bedroom and had a large table in the conservatory, so moved the table and put a sofa and small table in the conservatory which is used daily.

It's a bungalow by the way😁

We made our dining room into a second living room as we never used it. We only ever used the table in the kitchen diner.

We’ve got a kitchen diner. We used to have a separate dining room in our old house but we never used it so it became DH’s office and his dumping ground, which I hated.

In your situation I’d use it as a playroom.