Are kitchen diners always a good thing ?

Tigsteroonie

Personally I prefer a lounge/diner with a kitchen that can be closed off - like others, I like to shut away the smell, the clutter, the noise of the washing machine. There's also the safety side of things when it comes to our son.

But it doesn't seem a popular option these days, when we were house-hunting I had to wade through lots of kitchen/diner setups to find the arrangement we wanted.

EssexExile

Corona wrote: »

He's thinking about when he retires (in about 5 years) and it will be much easier to sell (he thinks) if we've done this (IF we move of course).

Don't ever re-design your house to suit the next owner, they'll want to change it. I think it's obvious from reading all the posts so far that we are all different. Lots say they never use the separate dining room but we (just the two of us) use it for breakfast & dinner every day. On the other hand we often rent open plan houses on holiday & we like that too. There you go, that was a lot of help.

[Deleted User]

Thanks everyone who replied Lots of very good points - for and against.

Of course, I still can't decide .... !

marmitepotato

We have a kitchen diner. Just the two of us. We have a breakfast bar which we use all the time. The large dining table we use for family and entertaining. Also we have a sofa in the kitchen/diner. All the family love it along with our dogs! I'm so glad we knocked down the wall to create this wonderful space, it's a real 'social' space and all our family and friends love it. As long as you can shut the door to your living room I'd go for it, you won't regret it.
P.s. We didn't lose any wall space as extra storage was created under the breakfast bar.

Snakey

If I was going to knock through one wall or the other I'd sooner have a kitchen/diner than a through lounge.

I don't have dinner parties either, but I can imagine it might be nice to not be shut away in the kitchen even when it's just the two of you. I'd be thinking about breakfasts and lunches more than dinner - weekend daytimes and summer evenings and so on. Unless you're telly addicts, life can just as easily revolve around the kitchen as the living room. One of you can be doing whatever at the dining room table while the other is making the coffee. Presumably both rooms are at the back, so if you also have sliding doors into the garden then you have the extra ventilation options and BBQ on the patio/eating outside. And if I'm understanding you correctly and you have children who've recently-ish left home, they may come back for visits - which will tend to involve feeding them (while not wanting to miss out on seeing them).

Isn't it just as difficult to heat your current large living space? You'd benefit from not needing to worry about that.

pollypenny

We had a large kitchen-dinner when we moved into our house. Thebfirstnthing we did was to build a stud wall to separate them.

That meant that whoever was cooking, usually OH, could have the radio on, while I marked essays and DS did homework on the dining room table.

We are tempted to open it up again, since it's just us two, but where would the units, one full of books, the other of crockery and glasses go?

Open plan must mean loss of storage space.

Furts

pollypenny wrote: »

We had a large kitchen-dinner when we moved into our house.

We are tempted to open it up again, since it's just us two, but where would the units, one full of books, the other of crockery and glasses go?

Open plan must mean loss of storage space.

This was my conundrum when I designed our kitchen and utility room. Open plan would have looked nice but at a significant loss of storage and practicality. One little wall was introduced, only around 1800 long. This gave three wall cupboards, a large shoe rack. a hat and coat area, plus a recycling point.

hardy1976

I'd say if your not doing it for yourself dont do it, unless it will add loads to the sale value of your house, perhaps get an estate agent in to give you an idea or check out the local house that are for sale.

We have a kitchen dinner and wouldnt be without it now we have two little ones; the abililty to see what they are doing whilst cooking etc is invaluable.

Also I'd guess there will be a serious amount of dust etc from knocking the wall down so bear in mind the impact on the other rooms in the house.

Good luck!

ed110220

Different people prefer different layouts. I live in a BISF house of which there are several hundred locally and thousands nationally. With a few exceptions, they all had the same layout originally but now just about every combination of open plan kitchen-diner, living-dining room, living room-hallway and even totally open plan downstairs exist. As all the internal walls are stud walls the only restriction is the pair of steel pillars in the centre of the house and so changing the layout is easier than in a traditional house.

Having seen them all, although many look nice, I'm not sure I'd like to live in them.

Ed

pollypenny

It's a difficult one, but I don't think designers allow for noise.

Kirsty Allsopp redesigned an awkward house in Yorkshire to give 'a huge family space'.

However, she thought one could cook, another could do homework, while someone else practised the piano - all in the same open space!