do seperate dining rooms add value to your house?

Well, this is our experiences. Our house in Guernsey has a seperate dining room, which realistically we only used when we had guests round. The rest of the time it was a dumping ground for papers etc.

Here, we now have an open living space and whilst I was always disparaging of them before, I now get it. In our old house we used to eat our diner off our laps using laptrays in front of the TV, but here we can still have the TV if we want, but we are now sitting at the table. Yes I know, we could have had a TV in our dining room but we didn't want one. Plus, the formal dining funiture which we spent thousands on is now being used every day rather than sitting there like museum pieces.

So my vote is to get the sledge hammer ready. ?

We've done pretty much what you describe - and we now have a larger room with doors onto the garden, a sofa in one corner, table for meals etc and then a smaller living room. We love it - it means that we can cook / prep food together - one of us usually lounging on the sofa (MrBoop) while the other one cooks, then we eat at the table, clear away and use the living room for the rest of the evening. We don't have children but the rules for the dogs are that playing is fine in the large room, but the living room is a no play zone - works for us. And has apparently added value to our house over and above what we spent on it.

Thanks WL, certainly when I lived there before I just ate all my meals at the kitchen table which is also family sized beast of a table!? Why we couldn't have bought neat tidy stuff is beyond me.. It does make sense knocking through and utalising the room on a more daily basis but then I still like the thought of my christmas dinner room (which is stupid as its one day!)..

thanks boop, it sounds ideal..

We currently have separate kitchen, dining room and living room. We are looking to move house and we now want 2 living rooms and a lovely big kitchen diner, as we love to entertain and Id like to be able to intereact with my guests as I cook, so the houses we are viewing must have 2 reception rooms and a kitchen diner or the scope to extend the kitchen to add the dining bit onto it.

Id say, knock the wall down and have a lovely big 'social room' I know Id totally love it, and it seems to be the in thing.

I think combining all the living space certainly works where the kitchen is already part of a larger eating area but our house has a small kitchen at the back so we've kept the three rooms separate to offer versatility. Have the dining room at the back of the house or the living room at the back - we've already swapped them over once since we've lived here. Some of the houses on our road have knocked through their living/dining rooms into one big space with the small kitchen at the back but as the houses are only two bedrooms, they're not really designed for families and I can't see it adding any value. But in your scenario where the house sounds bigger - it sounds like a good idea and would potentially appeal to a wider market than our smaller house could.

Get the sledgehammer out I say! ?

Re the Christmas Dinner room - we did Christmas at our place this year for the first time and it worked so well. I was able to still be part of conversations etc while making gravy or whatever and didn't get disconnected from it all like I do when it's at mum's and the kitchen and dining room are separate. I could also ask for instant help rather than shouting into another room if there's a crisis I can't manage on my own ?

I think your all right, a big space sounds great however I may regret having to have the kids in the same room as me as I try and follow a delia recipe after a gruelling day at work!!! , its a big house (5 bed) so its got the room sizes to make a fairly decent area, I'm thinking corner sofas and moving radiators already!

We've got exactly that arrangement in our house. Initially I said that I only wanted a house with a seperate dining room but in actual fact I absolutely love the way it is. We use the dining table for most meals and we have more properly cooked meals as no one feels isolated.

We have deemed the sitting room as an "adults only" space so Zoe won't be throwing toys all over it.

I think that generally the trend is towards larger multi-purpose spaces rather than separate kitchens/dining rooms/lounges. Certainly it works better for us - we knocked throuhg a wall to have a kitchen/diner and already had a lounge/diner, so effectively have two big multi-purpose reception rooms rather than 3 separate ones and a kitchen.

We're looking to move and I'm much keener on houses with kitchen/diners, than with separate ones. We do also like the idea of a grown-up lounge and separate playroom but would sacrifice that for a good kitchen/diner/family room type thing

If you can fit dining and living area in it then definitely !!

But then, my view has changed completely since having a child.

(and what is it about buying a big dining set (we have sideboard, table and cabinet) all sitting in an area that isnt used, which could be used better for toys! ? And we could eat at the dining area in the kitchen with the family area in full view).

Well we have both - a large kitchen/diner family space and a formal dining room.

The clincher for us what teh lovely large kitchen family room. I think as long as any potential viewers can see an arrangement working for a family then I don't think anything would cause people to be really put off. Plus it will be on the agent's particulars so you're not going to get anyone coming if they desperately want a formal dining room.

I don't know anyone who has a formal dining room. We've turned our dining room into a playroom and eat in the kitchen/diner

Thanks everyone, It would make a fantastic play room with the french doors straight out onto the garden by the swings, but my H has some loyalty to a frickin huge chunky 6ft country pine kitchen table stylee dining table and matching chairs and welsh dresser (all look like they belong in a castle rather than a house) as it was his families and he bought off them... If we got a new kitchen table, we could do that Hecate, eat all our meals in there and move the kids through to the room next door, at the moment my lovely kitchen table is being used at this house as a painting/playdo/colouring in/bashing/race track/digger area by my son so its not looking very well at the moment.

Our first house had a separate dining room and we barely used it. Then we moved somewhere with a lounge/diner, and we weren't great about using the dining table then either. When we moved 2 years ago it was to be our long term house and I was adament that I wanted a big family kitchen/diner and a much more open house than what we'd previously had, especially since we've now got a child and I thought this would work better. I was put off by houses where dining was separate or where the house didn't feel 'open', but then I suppose it's a personal choice and that's just me!

Anyway, our house has a lovely big kitchen/diner and we always sit at the table now. LO has his playroom/conservatory off the back with the lounge at the front of the house with double doors so it can be closed off or completely open. There aren't actually that many rooms in our house, but they're all pretty large and we use all the space without feeling there isn't enough, so I'm ever so glad we picked the house that we did and learnt from our previous house-buying mistakes! So I'd say knock through!!

In our old house we had no room in the lounge or kitchen for an eating space which was a real pain. I always said I wanted a sep. dining room when we moved.

Then friends had one and it never got used apart from at Christmas, and it just seemed like a waste of space really.

So when we moved and renovated the house, we went for a kitchen with breakfast bar and a lounge/dining room. We love it!

My MILs is kitchen open to lounge open to dining room which I'm not so keen on as the cooking smells get everywhere and if there are dirty dishes in the kitchen the rest of the house looks a mess!