Dining room or Second Living Room?

Learpholl

Hello...I'm first time buyer and I'm looking for some advice on what people find more useful, a large dining room or second living room/family room or whatever you'd like to call it.

The house I'm purchasing has a very large living room and kitchen, however there is also another room you enter with double doors from the kitchen. At the moment, it is tiled and has a fireplace which needs replacing. However, myself and my partner are unsure which would room would be more useful in a family home?

The room in question has nice double french doors which open out the room to the back of the house which I imagine would be nice in the summer also, so we're trying to figure out the best way to use it. Any other ideas?

paddy147

Learpholl wrote: »

Hello...I'm first time buyer and I'm looking for some advice on what people find more useful, a large dining room or second living room/family room or whatever you'd like to call it.

The house I'm purchasing has a very large living room and kitchen, however there is also another room you enter with double doors from the kitchen. At the moment, it is tiled and has a fireplace which needs replacing. However, myself and my partner are unsure which would room would be more useful in a family home?

The room in question has nice double french doors which open out the room to the back of the house which I imagine would be nice in the summer also, so we're trying to figure out the best way to use it. Any other ideas?

Open plan it.

One giant room with kitchen and dining area and also 2nd living area/tv area in it.

Open plan is very modern and works well.

Thats what I did.

Daisy M

Personally I would leave the doors on, but you can keep them open or replace them with concertina doors so you have the option of having it open plan or not. Do you have or plan to have children, if so it could be a play room/den/family room. We have a family room off our kitchen which we use everyday. We also have a second sitting room, kids mainly use this or if any of us have friends over its handy to have a room where you can hang out in peace. I would love a dining room but the reality is we would only use it a couple of times a year. Perhaps you could have it as both maybe get a corner suite of furniture and a table that folds so you can convert room if necessary.

Learpholl

Thanks both for your suggestions. Don't think we can afford the work involved in knocking walls to make the area open plan at the moment but food for thought anyway.

Daisy M wrote: »

Personally I would leave the doors on, but you can keep them open or replace them with concertina doors so you have the option of having it open plan or not. Do you have or plan to have children, if so it could be a play room/den/family room. We have a family room off our kitchen which we use everyday. We also have a second sitting room, kids mainly use this or if any of us have friends over its handy to have a room where you can hang out in peace. I would love a dining room but the reality is we would only use it a couple of times a year. Perhaps you could have it as both maybe get a corner suite of furniture and a table that folds so you can convert room if necessary.

No kids at present but plan to in the near future. Its because of this we were thinking a second living room/family room would be useful. Think we would use the dining room more than a couple of times a year though because at the moment the kitchen only has a breakfast counter and not a dinner table so all our meals would be ate in the dining room. However, if we were to make it a second living room/family room then we would remove the breakfast counter and use that area for the dining table.