Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

There is one house we like its a cape with an eat in kitchen. I am not sure how thrilled I am without a dining room. We really only host three things a year easter, Christmas and my DD biorthday ( just family). The eat in kitchn is not that big either. Is it really a pain to not have a dining room?

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

I do not have a dining room but we have a HUGE eat in Kitchen. It can fit a sideboard and dining room table. It is also very open to my living room, so it I needed to extend anymore, I could. I expand my table ALL the time. We just did it on halloween. We had about 20 people back here for pizza after Trick or treating. I would hate to have to say I could not have them to my house could we could not fit. KWIM?

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

We rent a small ranch...but there is no dining room. The kitchen can fit a table...but then we can't have our tall storage unit in there since there aren't many cabinets lol. I hate not having a dining room! For us, after living here for close to 2 years, when we do move and have a nice dining room, I will eat in there each night lol. I miss sitting at a table to eat dinner. Right now we have a small bar type table in our living room... with 4 stools. But we mostly just sit on the couch to eat ...it's horrible. DS is still in his high chair so it's OK...but once he's done with that... we'll all be sitting at this small table LOL. I don't think I would be able to buy a house without a dining room UNLESS the kitchen had enough cabinets and plenty of space of a decent sized table... Also, if there was a way to expand a dining room in the future. But thats just me LOL.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

grew up in a cape with no dining room kitchen only and it was rather easy to have family over. The kids usually ate in the living room with the tv so it gave space for the parents (unless they were babies)

Depending on the size of the cape we had one living, den (which was a bedroom at one time) and a tiny bedroom on the first floor. My mom was going to turn the living room into a dining room originally but then expanded out for a open kitchen (eat in) with a dinning room attached.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

I have a Levitt house with a small EIT. No dining room!

Yes, it's a complete PITA. I can't have guests to have dinner. 2 more people and that's it. So 5 people . We are packed with 7 (nobody can move around the table).

We are doing an extension in the Spring so we can blow the back of the house and have a DECENT DR area when my LR current is.

I just can't take those cramped quarters anymore.

Message edited 11/17/2010 10:22:37 AM.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

I have an EIK and I hate it. I havent bought a new kitchen set bc its so small i dont know what will fit. I can only have 4 people eat there and it stinks.
I love to entertain so I can really only do appetizers in the living room

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

I'm not sure mine would count as a dining room. It's more of a space open to the kitchen (we have an open floor plan downstairs, no walls). Now it's not that small but I can't stand it. I can't wait until I have a formal dining room. For the next house we look at, it's a must have. I like to entertain.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

For me it was a deal breaker. I didnt look at a house without a DR. We had a small EIK in our condo and it just didnt work for big dinners.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

growing up we had a dining room but my mother never used it. our EIK was big enough to host people. when we looked at houses, i considered those w/o dining rooms as long as it had a big enough EIK. I think if the EIK is large enough you should be fine.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

My ILs have a cape. Before they did the extension it just had an EIK. They hosted Christmas Eve every year and yes it was a huge PITA when everyone was over. You basically had to eat in shifts.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

I have a "dining area" that is between my kitchen and my living room (in an L shape - the dining area is the corner). I have a table that maxes out at 6 people (and it's tight). I can add a card table to the end to seat more but it's not comfortable and difficult to get around it then.

However while I like entertaining just fine, I don't really cook, so we're more of a "come by for drinks and dessert" type or we entertain in the summer so we can grill and eat outdoors.

Our family is so large that we knew we'd never be the ones to host big holidays anyway. Hopefully this is just a starter home for us though so we will have more space someday...

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

I grew up in a cape with no dining room & a small EIK.
All of our family birthday parties were at home & we hosted about 1/3 of holidays.
Food was in ktichen, buffet style. adults ate in living room on couches & folding chairs, with folding snack tables. Kids ate at play table in the playroom.

They did that for about 10 years & then dormered & the master bedroom downstairs became the dining room , with a wall opened up.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

We have a HUGE EIK and I don't miss not having a dining room. Growing up, we had a dining room that never got used (except for holidays)...we bought a dining room set and it's in our kitchen. Our LR is also connected to kit, so we can extend into there if needed. We do alot of parties, and it's worked for us.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

we dont, we made it a play room instead thinking it would get more use. And it does.

Our basement is finished so for holidays we plan to set it up as the dining area.

I'll let you know how it works out next week.

Message edited 11/20/2010 2:36:04 PM.

Re: Thios who dont have dining rooms... question

We don't have one in our house, but we have a decent sized kitchen that I can expand my table into if I need extra space. I didn't grow up with a dining room, since my parents opened their dining room into the kitchen to make it a really large eat-in space.

For us, it wouldn't be a deal breaker as long as the kitchen was large. I actually don't want a dining room in our next house, because I know that for us, its not really something we would use. We would probably use it for something else! As long as we could accommodate people in our kitchen comfortably, I would be fine.