formal dining room

[gigi1976]

What do you use your formal dining room for? We have friends that use it for a playroom, a dining room, a formal living room, an office, a second TV room. Is there some other option I am not considering? We need a playroom and a space for scrapbooking, but I'm not sure that I want those right when you walk into the house.

 

[ancestry]

My husband uses our formal dining room for his office. However we have a eating area that is part of our kitchen which is larger than the formal dining room. The kitchen area accommodates a table for 10-12 people so we don't really need to the dining room at all.

 

[RachaelA]

We use it as a formal dining room. Its been used once, but my dining room set and hutch are pretty

We also have a formal living room (along with a family room) that has 2 old couches in it. That room will probably be used as a playroom once we have kids. Thats the room that is seen right when you walk in (you enter in the foyers and the stairs are to the right and the formal living room is to the left).

 

[mumto3girls]

Ours is currently being used as a playroom and has been for the 10 years that we have lived in this house. In the not too distant future though, I would like to remodel my kitchen and this space at the same time and turn it into a larger, eat-in kitchen. Right now I have a galley style kitchen with no eating area that is open to the current playroom/dining area.

We have a large rectangular living room off of our kitchen that is somewhat narrow, but long enough for two seating areas. In the area closest to the kitchen we have a nice wood table that seats up to 8 with a server. It looks good with our living room furniture so I am fine with it for now, but eventually I would like it to go into the kitchen/dining room area and use the area where it is now as a home office.

 

[ncmickeyluvr]

Ours is actually a dining room. It does have a computer desk/hutch in also. The ancient desktop is used very infrequently and I would love to ditch it!

Currently, the table is used on major holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter ) and Birthdays. The rest of the year, the table is our catch all for anything that doesn't have a home or someone is too lazy to put away. I will be dealing with that lovely mess tomorrow so that we can eat on Sunday.

 

[mom0299]

I voted "other" because we eat in it every day so it isn't really "formal". We eat breakfast and lunch in the kitchen, but have dinner together in the dining room every evening. On special occassions I get out the tablecloths and china and then it is "formal".

 

[nsmith]

We eat all meals in the dining room. The dining room is right next to the kitchen . When the kids were little I had a little playskool table and chairs set up in the kitchen for them to eat at for snacks and drinks. Now I have a cafe table and two chairs in the kitchen. It makes the kitchen so much bigger and we never have to look at the dirty counters and pots and pans while we eat. I have my china closet in the dining room and pull out the "good stuff" for entertaining, otherwise we use place matts for every day.

 

[peanut12392]

We use it as a formal dining room. Its been used once, but my dining room set and hutch are pretty

QUOTE]

LOL me too! We use it for overflow, when we have too many people to eat in the kitchen.

 

[DawnM]

It was a formal dining room, but we have now moved our dining room into our sunroom and are transforming out formal dining room into our office/school room.

Our former office is being converted into another bedroom.

Dawn

 

[pam95]

We use ours as a formal dining room. We have family from out of town that often visits us during the holidays, and we have an expandable table in our dining room that can accommodate them all. For everyday use, we have a smaller table in our kitchen. When we don't have family visiting, I use the dining room table for scrapbooking. It's a convenient place to spread out all my things. When family comes, I move my scrapbooking materials to an upstairs closet. I'm hoping someday to have a space in an upstairs bedroom devoted to scrapbooking.

 

[meriface11]

we have a formal dining room and set, but we barely use it for that purpose. we don't have any other place to sit to eat, so when people come over (which is rare), that's where we sit, but DH and I usually just eat in the living room watching tv. our dining room is right off the front door, so it's usually just a place to keep the mail!

 

[SFWife]

Mine is my sewing room. People just have to deal with it when they come over. I'm a busy bee in there!

 

[StephMK]

We eat all meals in the dining room. The dining room is right next to the kitchen . When the kids were little I had a little playskool table and chairs set up in the kitchen for them to eat at for snacks and drinks. Now I have a cafe table and two chairs in the kitchen. It makes the kitchen so much bigger and we never have to look at the dirty counters and pots and pans while we eat. I have my china closet in the dining room and pull out the "good stuff" for entertaining, otherwise we use place matts for every day.

This is what we do too. I was tired of being in the kitchen & never using the dining room. So I moved our nice kitchen table into the dining room and put my grandparent's small table (formerly our craft table) into the kitchen. It gives us more space to get outside and a great place for homework, snacks, etc. while I fix dinner.

Our dining room has my buffet & a piano so it works for a few purposes. One day I want to create a bigger space from kitchen doorway to the dining room & add a pantry.

We do not use our formal living as a formal place either. It has 2 couches & the computer desk so it functions as a quiet talking space & office, if we close the french door.

 

[mom2val]

In our old house we used it as a playroom for our dd. Personally i never cared about people seeing it as soon as they came into the house. In our new house which we built , we had the formal dining room changed into a study by adding french doors and a wall. For us a formal dining room is a complete and total waste of square footage. We are not formal dining people- to stuffy for us. We have a huge kitchen island and table in kitchen. We like to eat and entertain from the kitchen.

 

[dd50]

Mine is set up as a dining room but we only eat in there on holidays usually. I use mine every day to fold laundry. I do use it for scrapbooking occasionally. My dog brings his biscuits in there every evening so as least someone is eating in there. When I move into a new home I will be looking for only one area to eat instead of two.

 

[QVCshopper]

I have a dining room table and hutch in there, but it's mostly my kids craft room, my space to dry laundry on a clothes hanger, and my plant room. We only eat in there when we have guests over, which isn't very often. Really, I should probably just use it as a toy room, but I don't have anywhere else to put the big table.

 

[SookieStackhouse]

We don't have one, our dining room is just at the far end of the kitchen. We do not actually use it for anything besides storing, a table and chairs, china cabinet, and wine rack in it. More decorative than anything else. We only use the dining room if we have company.

 

[a1tinkfans]

Just a dining room, usually for guests...
we eat in the kitchen that has an eating area.

 

[bluezy]

When we were coming up with plans for our house before we built it we knew we would never use a formal dining room so we had the builder/architect turn that space into a bedroom which is used as the guest room. That also gave me more cabinet space in the kitchen as there was supposed to be a doorway from the kitchen leading into the dining room. We didn't need that opening (there's also a door from that room leading into the front hallway) so I was able to put a floor to ceiling pantry cupboard there. The "formal dining room" has gotten way more use as a guest room than it ever would as a formal dining room. We have plenty of space in our breakfast nook for a big table so there was no need to create a duplicate space that would only get used *maybe* once a year.

 

[pixiewings71]

I'm sitting in my dining room right now, on my computer. Our dining room really isn't big enough to use as a formal dining room so we have the computer in here along with 2 bookshelves and our 75 gallon fish tank. I like it much better this way, we feel like we have more room.