Casual dining room/dining area

[memenee]

Care to share anything about yours?

Is it a table in your kitchen? An island/peninsula/breakfast bar? A formerly formal dining room that you converted to everyday use?

Also do you love it or wish for something different?

We are getting ready to do our kitchen reno and this is the last piece we are debating! Thank you! Please share pics if you have any!! Either your own or your inspiration pics!

[tripleshot]

Here’s my floor plan. I really like the breakfast area. We eat all our meals there and it’s a good size. I have a round wooden table with 4 chairs and the table can expand also. DS also does his homework there most of the time. The builder was going to have an overhang for bar stools on the breakfast area side and I changed it. I’m so glad I did. It would’ve taken away so much space from around the table and the countertop. I just wish we would’ve done something different with the actual dining room. We only use it 1-2 a year and it’s right at the front door. Even though we come and go through the garage, the dining room table is DH’s dumping ground and it makes me nuts.

[simpsongal]

We have a dining room and a table in the kitchen where we tend to eat. I love that the breakfast table is a pedestal - it's just easier to move in an out, swing legs to the side, pull up an extra chair for a board game, etc.

[ssmjlm]

I purposefully picked a floor plan with only one seating area. Our formal DR in our last house was a waste, so I just wanted one big dining area. We have a big table that can comfortably seat 10, although we could squeeze 12.

I love it. We eat there daily, dinner during the week, breakfast/dinner on weekends.  This is an old pic from right after we moved in.

[memenee]

ssmjlm love your room! The wall color, rug, light, blue chairs l, everything lol! Just curious - where is your kitchen in relation to this room?

[memenee]

tripleshot good tip about the overhang and seating at the breakfast bar. As for your dining room, do you think you will keep it as is or use that space for something else?

simpsongal I love the idea of a pedestal as well!

[tripleshot]

Jan 21, 2020 13:32:53 GMT -5 memenee said:

tripleshot good tip about the overhang and seating at the breakfast bar. As for your dining room, do you think you will keep it as is or use that space for something else?

simpsongal I love the idea of a pedestal as well!

I think we’ll keep it. I don’t know what else to do with the space. It only has 2 walls and is open to everything else. A sitting room is my only other thought but the great room is right there so it’s not really needed. Oh well, it’s good for thanksgiving. 🤷‍♀️

[ssmjlm]

Jan 21, 2020 13:29:21 GMT -5 memenee said:

ssmjlm love your room! The wall color, rug, light, blue chairs l, everything lol! Just curious - where is your kitchen in relation to this room?

Kitchen is to the left.  I'm standing in our family room for the photo.

[k3am]

ssmjlm, where is your table from?

[ssmjlm]

Jan 21, 2020 13:48:20 GMT -5 k3am said:

ssmjlm , where is your table from?

It's a John Thomas table and chairs.  It has 2 leaves which are stored inside the table.

[Deleted]

We have an Eat In kitchen as well as a formal dining space. The formal space only gets used a few times a year and I’m just not willing to give it up right now. The pictures below are of the Eat In area and then the entire kitchen. The dining room is behind where I’m standing to take the whole kitchen picture.

[sandandsea]

We have a breakfast nook in the kitchen with a 4 person round table. I like it. I like eat in kitchens in general. My dream kitchen would have a built in table into the island.

[mrsukyankee]

We will be having our kitchen table (which is also a pool table) in the middle of our big kitchen (assuming we buy this place - no news yet). We had it as part of our kitchen in our last house too.





We had a formal dining room and never used it but we used this table several times a week. We're not going to have an island in our new house, so this will be our only seating, most likely.

[k3am]

We have have a counter/bar area that the kids eat breakfast at, but all of our meals besides that are eaten at our dining room table. Whenever we talk about renovating our kitchen (which is NOT happening anytime soon after the bathroom nightmare), everyone suggests eliminating the dining room and using that space for our kitchen, which is a hard pass for us.

[memenee]

@sameoldstory love your light fixtures! Thanks for sharing

mrsukyankee you win for best table for sure! So cool!

[nicolewi]

So, if there is room, I would definitely vote FOR the overhang/counter bar in addition to the table area. If you can do both, totally do! We finally got counters. We had waited b/c our counter isn't really quite the right overhang depth for stools, but we wanted to make it work. The kids LOVE IT and sit there a lot now. It's way easier for me to serve lunch or whatever than it would be walking around. I know a lot of people with stools by their islands who love that, too. Depends what your floor plan will be like.

[InBetweenDays]

We have a very open concept floorplan. We have a 4x8 kitchen island that is where we eat breakfast and some dinners. But we have a dining table right behind it where we eat most of our dinners.

I LOVE having the overhang on the island to provide room for stools. As I said we eat all our breakfasts there, kids often eat lunch there, they do homework there while I'm making dinner, etc. We love the set up. We entertain a lot, but rarely have fancy sit down dinners. So this works perfectly for us. A formal dining room would very rarely get used.

Edited to add photo

[aprilsails]

We have space for 4 stools off of our large counter height island. That space will be used for homework (when kids are old enough) and breakfast/snacks. DD currently does all of her crafts at the island, so that should lead organically into doing crafts.

We have a huge dining room table off the kitchen (only other table). It’s adjacent to the living room as well (basically the corner of an L shaped layout). We can comfortably sit 8 at the table and it expands to 12. We eat dinner and any weekend lunches or large meals at the table.

It’s the same layout we had at our last house as well and we wanted to keep it. I think a kitchenette and a formal dining room in the same house is largely a waste of space, assuming you have some kind of breakfast bar or island.

I love the island since we cook a lot and spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen. I can set us DD to work on something and can easily reach across to help her out without having to leave the kitchen. It’s also fantastic for hosting.

[bhnumbers]

Our kitchen is pretty small, but has a nice size island with a bar, so the kids usually eat breakfast there. We have a dining room, but it's location is not convenient for everyday use (and don't even get me started on how much sense it would make to switch our living and dining room areas, but it's nonstarter with DH, ugh.)

So when we added on, we made sure there was space for a casual dining area in that new great room right by the kitchen. I'm happy with how it all turned out. I think it looks nice and it's very convenient. But if I was starting from scratch and building a whole new house, I'd MUCH rather have a breakfast area be more a part of the kitchen like the floor plan tripleshot posted.

[bhnumbers]

mrsukyankee, loooove the dual purpose table! and it's gorgeous!

[Velar Fricative]

We want to do a kitchen reno within a year or two. We have an open kitchen that opens up to the rest of the main floor in our rowhouse, so two tables would be overkill. I do love islands with seating, so we are thinking of creating an island with an overhang for chairs (we have a peninsula now that doesn't have an overhang) and then to maximize space, adding a long dining banquette with bench against the wall across from our kitchen so there's enough space around the island. Can't post pictures right now but Google Images shows a bunch of decent pictures.

[mrsukyankee]

We also had an island with an overhang. It was great for casual meals. I'm going to miss having it!

[k3am]

bhnumbers, I love everything about that room you posted. The artwork is great, the pops of color are great, the woodwork is great. Everything just goes together so nicely without being matchy-matchy at all.

[bhnumbers]

Jan 22, 2020 12:36:19 GMT -5 k3am said:

bhnumbers , I love everything about that room you posted. The artwork is great, the pops of color are great, the woodwork is great. Everything just goes together so nicely without being matchy-matchy at all.

thank you, that's so nice of you to say! I can't take all the credit, I worked with an interior designer who presented me with some really great ideas that I probably would have never considered on my own!

[devonpow]

We use our formal dining room a lot but I try to make it feel casual lol. It’s right off the entry way and attached to the kitchen, so a lot of Legos get done at the dining table, the keyboard is in there etc. I feel like using it for things other than just dinner makes it feel more casual.

If it’s just the kids eating (breakfast etc) they eat at the kitchen island. I WISH we had seating for all 4 of us at the island, but it was a space issue. If you can fit a nook or island that seats the entire family i would definitely do that.

[bhnumbers]

devonpow, holy moly, your house is so pretty!!

[devonpow]

Jan 22, 2020 16:41:25 GMT -5 bhnumbers said:

devonpow, holy moly, your house is so pretty!!

aw thanks! We are slowly redoing - the kitchen was done about 3 years ago and we just “refreshed” the dining room this summer. Now we are finishing up the basement tv room - house stuff is Neverending!!

[scout8]

devonpow, I'm having serious house envy right now. I love everything about your house.

Where is your dining room rug from?

[devonpow]

Jan 24, 2020 21:58:50 GMT -5 scout8 said:

devonpow, I'm having serious house envy right now. I love everything about your house.

Where is your dining room rug from?

Thanks! It’s actually a carpet remnant we had bound into a rug - we needed an odd size (8x13).

[lolalolalola]

We also purposefully chose a house with only one eating area. We have a very large dining area on the side of our kitchen. Our huge counter height island seats 4 as well but only the kids sit there. They prefer it and eat there unless it’s a family meal. They also do most of their homework there.

I ll post pictures tomorrow