No dining room, just a table in the kitchen?

[Clementiness]

FTB in expensive SE. Many properties within our budget seem to have a smallish living room/front room and then a dining area in the kitchen, rather than a separate room. Is it weird to have all family meals, including Xmas in the kitchen? I always had a dining room so feels strange but maybe it’s just me?
Would you consider this type of layout?
Space in the kitchen is enough to sit 6 people comfortably, 8 stretching a bit (but almost never have 8 people as it’s usually DH, DC and I + a couple of guests max)

A separate dining room would put me off a house, I think. It would feel weird to put food on plates and then carry them to somewhere else, where that room is only used for meals. But I grew up with a table in the kitchen, and that's what we have now, so I suppose it's what I'm used to.

Exactly. Your kitchen doesn't really sound great (or usual).

I used to have a fairly small kitchen and fairly small dining room. I knocked them through and now have a lovely decent sized dining kitchen with a lovely big table. Wouldn't have it any other way. I've always loved the kitchen being the heart of the home and if I move it would be to a house with a much bigger kitchen so I could have a comfy sofa or at least an armchair as well.

This sounds heavenly!!!

@KaiserChefs That was very interesting! You were describing my own house in many ways - 1906 Edwardian semi - and also my grandmother's house in Cardiff of about the same era. In my house, though, there are two back rooms - a dining room and a kitchen, with a utility room going off the kitchen. In the past that utility room was the actually kitchen, apparently - it's big enough for a utility but I wouldn't want to cook in it and the room that's now my kitchen was called the morning room. As you say all the preparation of food would have been done in another room - in my case the morning room.

This is what I aspire to!

We have a kitchen diner and it's the heart of the house! I'd never have a separate dining room

You don't use pans or trays etc... when cooking?

Are smells and steam the result of 'messiness'?

I'm wondering if you have ever cooked before because its bizarre you are questioning this as if its unusual.

Please share how you cook without you know 'cooking'?

The extractor fan does little to nothing and no once again like MILLIONS of people no I don't have the luxury of a dishwasher (money wise or space for one).

The middle class-ness and fuax understanding of reality on mumsnet is bloody hilarious on par with Hyacinth 'what you DON'T have a dishwasher??? or a dedicated room for dining??? then where do you host your dinner parties'.

Even with a dishwasher do you not soak pans etc...

We only had a table in the kitchen for 25 years! It absolutely never bothered me, we had lots of dinner parties with everyone squeezed round.

I moved away from the South East and now have a separate dining room and I absolutely love it.

I am not middle-class. I grew up in a tiny house with no indoor toilet, and a living room that just about fitted a sofa and an armchair. We always ate in the kitchen. Which is also tiny — the people at table with their backs to the room were about two feet from the cooker and sink. No extractor fan. You opened a window or the back door if it was excessively steamy or hot.

Your weird prissiness suggests you’ve got some kind of lower-middle-class hang-up about eating where you cook. Huge numbers of people do this on a daily basis while somehow tolerating the presence of pots and pans and cooking smells. Are you somehow unaware of this?

Honestly, @housethatbuiltme , you started all this by asserting that you hated kitchen diners and declaring dining rooms a waste of space.
Then you go on the attack because nobody realised your lack of a dedicated eating space / dishwasher was in fact due to lack of space and cash, not choice.
Wtf?

I have it. Not keen but it's what I could afford.

I'm very much working class and poor at that. My mum brought me up on her own and our house had no heating except a gas fire in the living room until I was well into my teens. During winter it was several blankets on the bed, and hat, scarf and gloves on top of pyjamas.

We had a longish living room with settee at the front and dining table at the back. I lived in various house shares and bedsits until I was in my 30s, then moved to a terrace with a little extension off the living room with a dining table. My next house was larger but still had the living dining set up.

I've never liked the living dining set up!

I once visited someone much more well off than me who had a lovely dining kitchen with log burner and sofas!!! Oh, it was magical! So I've tried to recreate that in my current little terrace, as much as I can.

Before knocking through, I had a miniscule kitchen, with a small dining room that had a table up against one wall and that couldn't fit more than 2 people at it.

I bought a dishwasher with my credit card earlier this year (my first at the age of 56!) and it's been a game changer in terms of stress levels.

So we're not all posh folk in massive houses who can't imagine not having extractor fans and dishwashers!

@Clementiness those in properties that still have dining rooms often use them for something else, e.g family room or study, and work the dining table into the kitchen area.

Growing up we had a separate dining room and a small round table in the kitchen that we used most of the time for informal meals. My parents now live in a house has no dining area in the kitchen. The dining room is next door to the kitchen and I actually find it a pain carrying plates and food out of kitchen door and into another room. I prefer our kitchen / diner, it's much easier.

I like a dining room and think it's only souless if it's never used, we had a small kitchen in our last house and so used the dining room every day. But there's no point if you have a large kitchen diner which is well designed. Having said that I am toying with putting a wall between the two halves of our very long kitchen diner to separate the two rooms to give me more privacy in the kitchen.

I never realised dining rooms were such a rarity. Ours is used every day but it is right off the kitchen so we're not exactly traipsing around with plates. It's also not at all formal. Just a big table with a bench one side and chairs.

Our kitchen also has an island and stools so people can sit around there when I'm cooking.

I personally am not bothered either way but would prefer to have a home with a space for a table somewhere - whether that's kitchen, dining room or living room.

Totally fine

I love my kitchen diner. We've got a farmhouse table that sits 8 and it's possibly one of my favourite things in the house.

I've got a couple of friends with a tiny kitchen and a lounge diner and they always say they prefer my cosy lounge.

Out first house had a separate dining room- we just used it is a second living area. Second house had a living room diner and our current one has a kitchen diner. I much prefer the kitchen diner, it just feels right 🤣.

We knocked ours through. Hated a separate dining room.

Much prefer a kitchen diner - it's nice to chat whilst preparing food and you don't have to carry everything through either!

We had a through lounge diner, and put up a dividing wall about five years ago. That “dining room” is now my eldest son’s bedroom. We have a folding table in our front room which is more like a sideboard, half pulled out when I am working from home, only fully pulled out into middle of the room at Easter and Christmas. We have a galley kitchen, so meals are eaten on trays on our laps. One day I’ll get a permanent table back, but at the rate of the cost of living increases the kids won’t move out until they’re 30….

All properties we have looked at including the one we currently live in ( in Liverpool) have the same layout smallish living room and kitchen with space for a table and chairs however we’ve got an American fridge freezer that would have to go in that space so the house we are buying we’ve agreed on a few years to get an extension to the kitchen so we can have a kitchen diner.

Buy what you can afford comfortably. IKEA do some great TV table trays for dinners. Dining room in a kitchen is fine if that’s what you can comfortably afford. Xmas is once a year!