We had a '70's ranch from 1979 til 2002. Now we have our dream home this 1890 Victorain Bungalow. In both we were able to have a meal in the kitchen and had a formal dining room and living room. There was also a separate den in each. We ate all our evening meals in the DR back then and we still do. I agree with all you said about defined living areas. There was a thread recently about folks in NYC going back to closed kitchens. I think we all need spaces that say "this is what we do here" . I think it generates a greater sense of peace if you retire to your bedroom for sleep ( no office allowed). Or enter the DR to dine , as you so beautifully put it. Our kids behaved differently at the table when we were in the DR than in the kitchen. I think that is a good thing. Just my opinion for sure. Our society has lost so many of its boundaries: everyone is connected at all times to each other and work and the media via all the electronics that have become "necessary" . I think returning to a sense of respect for each others space is a good thing. So that said our kitchen remodel which we are in the middle of has the defined kitchen and the area is adjacent to the sunroom where there will be a small table for 2 for AM coffee. The DR is staying separate as are all the other spaces. No open floor plan for us. I hope you decide to keep that old fashioned division in your home too. Styles come and go and I think the open plan is on the way out...slowly but surely. Again JMHO> Caroline

My 2 cents for public consumption, you must know that when it comes to kitchen remodels I'm right on top of it.
Anyway, I agree open floorplans are creeping their way out. I know of a couple that bought an open floor plan house in my neighborhood and started putting up some walls to divide the space. They said that when the grandkids were staying over it just got too noisy. Besides, the open plan houses have been around long enough for people to have tired of them and want something else. It's the people who've been living in box like rooms all their lives that dream of wide open spaces.
I think an older home with a small period styled kitchen and cheerful, convenient dining room would have appeal.
Yes, I know I've bashed down a wall to open my kitchen into my dining room, but in our case that just seemed the logical thing to do considering the changes in our family over the last 9 years. Besides, I don't have an old house, I just want to go back to living in one.

Hi Girls!

We will have to compromise.....
Our house is a pre-civil war farm house that had a major remodel at the turn of the century. Simple Georgian floorplan with Victorian details. That said, we didn't have a kitchen- it was out back! Our current kitchen was taken from dining room space (it's all of 8 1/2' wide including the counters) and 15 feet long. Truely a galley.

Our future plan is to bump out the long outside wall 4' and include an octagonal eat-in. This will preserve the dining room, fit the house better, (all other rooms are 21X17 in size) and give us a place to cook and do homework. Not really open since it doesn't combine other spaces and definately a little more room.

I think we are erring on the side of caution, when it comes to trends. A friend of ours, "tacked on" an entire wing. She has the new house and the old house connected.

I'm hoping ours will be so true, no one will know we added it!

Oh yea, right now we eat in the foyer!- dining room is being gutted!

Heather

We restored our 1700 farmhouse.Our dining room & kitchen combined we didnt like because I had large farm table,antique seed cabinet so we enclosed 1 of 4 porches made this our kitchen.I love the way the roof line ceiling is,cabinets are in line with shape,we put 5 windows butting up against each other across counter.we put in wormy chestnut cabinets,we got wide pine flooring and cabinet wood from a company that does restoration,We had a black smith make our hinges.We put in an Aga stove.My washer & drryer are behind doors.I really like the way itturned out.alot of changes all atonce but well worth it.

We are in the process of renovating our 1850's farmhouse.

The kitchen was an afterthought in the early 1900's. The area that 'is' a kitchen was a bedroom before. The kitchen 'is' not even 8 feet wide 24 feet long with 5 doors and a window!

We knocked out the one wall and are putting an island with breakfast bar. The dining room is clear on the other side of the house. I anticipate it will be used for when friends are over, and when we have a family dinner. However, with what we anticipate our lifestyle being (farming full time - DH will be in the barn well before me or any future kids get up for breakfast) it didn't make sense to have it as our only dining area.

That said - opening the living room and kitchen, we are trying not to toally ruin the 'feeling' of the old house. Not trying to make it feel like a great room in a new subdivision.. jsut trying to make it work for us.

I have an old house with a separate kitchen and dining and living rooms, and wouldn't have it any other way. I have only a simple place to eat in the kitchen, more for just sitting down and having a cup of tea in the midst of cooking than for dining.

My feeling about guests in the kitchen and the whole "but everybody winds up there anyway" rationalization is that you need to just redirect them, and plan your entertaining so you're focused on your guests and not preoccupied with your menu. I think it is rude to go into your host's kitchen (which to me is a very private place) and it's rude to expect your guests to hang out with you in the kitchen. But I recognize that here in the US, I am probably the oddman out on this question. (Though I was surprised on a recent thread on this topic on the kitchen forum how many people also shared this opinion.)

When I am on the Kitchen forum I feel a real dissonance because so many people seem to have combined their kitchens with their living rooms (and dining rooms). I think because these latter two rooms normally have fancier decorating styles, that then they have to make the cabinetry of the kitchen look as if it belonged in a living room. So we have fancy, multipanel cabinet doors, with carvings and corbels and luxury surfaces and lighting fixtures. And not surprisngly, the cost of a kitchen remodel is soaring. I was stunned when I started looking at kitchen cabinet styles: so much ornate paneling and pseudo-case piece design flourishes. The idea of a French Provincial or "Tuscan-style" (what ever that means) sink cabinet or dishwasher cover panel cracks me up!

But aside from the decorative incongruity of it, I think whenever you turn away from a natural aesthetic driven by the intended use of an object you run the risk of straying into dangerous territory; style-wise, taste-wise and certainly, cost-wise.

To my mind a kitchen should be a working place: efficient, comfortable, easy to clean and productive, but not all-consuming of a household's decorative investment. It certainly is not the "heart of my home" - an idea heavily promoted by shelter mags and home improvement mavens. If anything, the heart of my home would be the sitting room, where we all gather to talk, socialize, and share our days' experience together. It's the place where we can relax and focus on each other, not on food we are preparing, or some other chore.

For old house owners, the question often comes up because sometimes older kitchens were located in the least desirable place (from the point of view of convenience or exposure) in the house because the orginal homeowners never went there. I think that situation can be corrected by moving the kitchen to a more attractive location, without abandonning a separate dining room or living room or succumbing to living in one multi-purpose "great room". I find it particularly astounding that in new houses of modern proportions - three thousand square feet and up - with separate rooms devoted to gift wrapping or exercise equipment that the occupants appear to want to spend their communal time together holed up as if they lived in a one-room (though large and very grandly decorated) tenement.

I wonder if old house owners have as many issues with resale as modern development house owners. Perhaps we don't move as often, as we are never "finished enough" to put it on the market.

This is just my opinion, and not meant to be hurtful to anyone else's taste or choices. Fortunately for our national economy there are scads of different viewpoints so we are destined to keep changing and altering our built world, for ever.

Molly~

Well, we'll never have an open floorplan...what we have in this old house is TONS of doorways and tons of windows...and I do think it's plenty big for a really old house (3100sf).

At first, I wasn't thrilled that we never had a chance at an open floorplan, but now that we have the whole house opened up and have access to the back half (had a tenant before), it really feels like a great set-up. I attached my 2-minute rendering of our first floor plan--and just realized I forgot the bathroom (full bath off the back side of the playroom--jutting out into the right side of the kitchen).

I love that our dining room and kitchen are connected through two open doorways, with the back staircase in between--having two entrances is going to be nice with a super-busy household like ours...we should put one-way signs up during holidays :) I am slightly jealous of the open floorplans in newer homes, just because we are very informal and tend to gravitate to the kitchen to help, but I wouldn't trade our old house for anything. And I do agree that this trend is starting to go back towards separate prep/living areas....

The only thing we're doing with our remodel that changes the structure of the building is opening the kitchen up into the playroom (it originally was called the playroom, even back in the 40's and 50's when my DH's grandpa lived here). We need closer access to the one remaining bathroom on the first floor and I need to be able to get quick access to fighting children or pass sippy cups/snacks in. We figure when the kids are older, it'll still be a good hangout with comfy chairs and the older TV. Eventually, we plan on making it into a den/bar area. So no matter what, being connected to the kitchen is ideal.

Here's our "floorplan," such as it is...no opening up anything here!!

Sarah

Our 1906 farmhouse has the kitchen at the far end, with dining room next to it through an arched doorway. Through yet another arched doorway is the living room and separate study. The kitchen isn't particularly small (probably 10'x12'), and we DO have a small table and chairs in there, but that's usually just for taking a break while cooking.

Personally, I LOVE that the kitchen is at the opposite end of the house from the sitting areas-- since our house isn't air-conditioned, when I'm cooking in the kitchen, the heat stays in the kitchen and we don't feel the heat in the rest of the house.

I agree that open floor plans are way over-ratedI love having my "own" space to be in when I want it, and that guests can have their own spaces depending on what's going on. I wouldn't have it any other way!

I would never agree to an open floor plan. We'd have to remove the beautiful built in china cabinets in the dining room or some other "great" feature original to our house.

Frankly, sometimes I need to be alone...

I remember when the kid's were young (we bought this big old house when our youngest was 16 months old) and clearly remember I'd have to tell them everywhere I was going... ("Upstairs to make beds,"..."Down to the laundry...," running to get the mail... etc.) Nursery monitors were a must.

Parenting daily for 36 and a half years - half that time in this house - the youngest is now moving out for college. Early on, the walls were a bit of a hassle but as time went on, I've appreciated the walls more than I can say. Ha! (There were many times I'd rather we not be in each other's face.)

I am convinced parents of young children are creating/designing all these open floor plans. This too shall pass.
GoldDust

I love all my walls, especially when I'm hosting a large family dinner. When the whole group (usually 15-20 people) congregates at my sister's house, with its modern openness, the crowd noise gets pretty intense. But in my house with all its separate rooms, we end up with a few people per room, all having different conversations. It is so much more enjoyable that way.

And, I like that if my kitchen is messy, people in the living room cannot see it. ;)

I have been debating this very issue for over a year. My house is a 1920's Dutch Revival with seperate rooms and a good sized entry way. I like the open kitchen/family room combo very much so that the "living" area of the house is open to each other. I am a kitchen person and do not like my smallish kitchen in the back of the house open to nothing.

I have beaten myself over the head trying to figure out a way to make this work without building on. Because of the layout of the house it just is not going to happen. I could remove the wall between the kitchen and dining rooms but truthfully that is not going to do much except lose the formal dining room which is not something that bothered me. I really do not like to have a dinner party in full view of my dirty pots and pans lol.

I would love a bigger kitchen so that I could incorporate an island but it just is not going to happen without an addition. I am not excited about that idea because of the cost as well as losing the integrity of the house. I do not want to lose the pretty roof line of this house.

So I came to decide that I was attracted to this house because of the beautiful details the gambrel roof line, the half moon windows, beadboard soffets with corbels holding them up, french doors, interior columns...the house is what it was meant to be, a 1920's colonial built solid and with pretty detail. My feeling is if I want an open floor plan house I should be looking at newer construction and leave this house alone. Since I do not want to live in a McMansion or a overcrowded subdivision (we live on 18 acres in a veeeeeeeeeery small town population of 500) I will just leave my house alone and find space elsewhere. We decided to have a contractor build a staircase to our attic and use that space for either a new master bedroom suite with a side artroom for myself or just one huge artroom!!! I am so excited about this project that I forgot about my kitchen being so small and closed in! lol

I have a large bungalow, too (5500 sq ft), and the original kitchen was smallish. We wanted a slightly larger kitchen, and took space from an old butler's pantry and the old basement stairs. I think we got the best of both worlds without compromising the living and dining rooms. I've lived in many styles of homes, and I do like the separateness of the rooms. One poster mentioned all the "walls and doorways". I do struggle with that. I hardly have a wall to hang a picture on in this house.

Housekeeping: I agree with you about the kitchen forums. Some of the kitchens are indeed breathtaking, but beyond anything I could justify. My modest kitchen doesn't "rate" over there. But I'm very happy and feel it compliments the style of our home. I will not be "updating" it again in my life time, so I hope it stands the test of time.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen

Joyce do not be so modest. Your kitchen is as nice or nicer then any kitchen I have seen on the kitchen forum. Your cabinets are stunning and I especially like the display areas on the top of them. They look like cherry in a mission style which is exactly appropriate for a bungalow home. You did a wonderful job putting your kitchen together and you should be proud. Your color choices as well as style were very clever as they are timeless and will certainly last a lifetime. So many people who do over their kitchens opt for trendy which in the end puts them into the situation where they date their project and are unhappy a few years later when colors and styles change. Great job!

I am getting ready to attack my own kitchen as we speak. I went to pick out granite today. I hate that it is so overused today but I wanted granite when we bought the house 8 years ago and I don't want to change my mind because everyone else is going that route. My aunt had them in her house when I was growing up (she had a 1700's restored colonial) and the counters were spectacular. She taught me to roll out dough on those counters and it has sentimental meaning to me.

BTW all you old home lovers, my aunt's house was the second oldest home in her town. It was absolutely beautiful. My uncle butchered it in the sense that it had a regal staircase that was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, he removed it as he split the house into a two family. The house had 5800 SF and it was just my aunt and uncle with no children. Being "frugal" he thought making a small apt on the side would make sense so out came the staircase. He sold it to a curator from Sturbridge Village for a home he was restoring in the area. Anyway, my aunt and uncle are gone and the house had to be sold for the estate. A man bought it wishing to make condos out of the house. Well if that was not bad enough he decided since it was a very large lot and he was able to purchase the lot next door which was also a big lot, he built 20 condos which meant tearing down not only my aunt's house but the 1800's house next door. I want to cry every time I drive by there and see those fake houses!!!! I wish now that we had bought her old house. I had thought about it but would have to do some renovating to get it back to a single family and I did not want to bother. Also as most old houses are, it is in the center of the town which although has not turned into a slum like many town centers are, it is a very busy area and I did not want my daughter on such a busy street. I could kick myself now though. The house had 14 foot ceilings and a 20 foot wide center hall. All the sills in the house were marble and it had a mahogany library with pocket doors with a gorgeous marble fireplace with a carved mantle. Had I known they were going to tear it down I would have willingly paid for salvage for some of the structures in the house. Sadly, I was not in the area often and happened to drive by and the house was not only gone but the first two condo buildings had already been put up and were being lived in. It makes me sad to see so much history around us slowly being eaten up in the name of "progress"...I suppose progress is a subjective thing.

joyce: your kitchen is absolutely beautiful . I can't imagine a more timeless and tastefully done area. Your kitchen fits beautifully with any of the ones in the Kitchen Forum. If you post it over there it will be archived and there are many who would benefit. At least think about it ....you did a wonderful job. Caroline

We have an 1840's Greek Revival that had a very ugly narrow 1960's kitchen addition. When we replaced that, we expanded to incorporate the old outside fountain and made a round room that was just off the new kitchen.(It will have a banquette/table/and upholstered chairs....more sitting room than dining) So now we have a semi open floorplan where the kitchen/round room are open to one another and they are just down two steps from the formal living room. We love this, it's really the best of both worlds. We have the private rooms of the rest of the house and yet, if you're in the kitchen you can be connected to family and guests in the round room, look through to the fireplace in the living room and I always have live music from the piano there.(Sons and DH play) But most of all, I believe the kitchen actually does double duty, it's the heart of the home and being large and open, it's as if the house is opening itself up to all comers. My kitchen matches the gracious spirit my house must have once had before someone decided a kitchen was just a workplace.

New addition:

Kitchen from living room:

Kitchen from round room:

Round room from kitchen:

Stone wall and fountain now incorporated:

And furniture like kitchen because it's open:

Wow...Ramses...I feel so priviledged to see all the rest of the house! Never saw that on the Kitchens forum!! And, again, your kitchen is FABULOUS!! Love the story behind the wood on the cabinets too!

And Joyce, DEFINITELY contact starpooh over on the kitchens site and get your kitchen into that finished kitchens blog!! With all of the nitty-gritty details! That is GORGEOUS!! If that's a "modest" makeover...wait until you see ours!! My favorite board to post on is the appliances board...because I spent 6K on ALL of my appliances...while most are discussing whether to get the $6500 Sub-Zero or the $7500 one!! I guess this teacher is way out of her league...but I don't care!! I'm the girl that fans through Pottery Barn and then finds an EXACT replica in the Penny's catalog for 1/4 the price!!

:)

Sarah

Joyce, your kitchen is stunning. I wish you would post it over in Kitchens as it would be a fantastic inspiration.

You know, for me it wasn't modern open vs old house style that was the struggle but rather normal size kitchen vs the trend towards huge kitchens. I see the pics from the K forum and have friends who have two or three islands and I just can't imagine it being a great work space or very inviting.

Our house is a 1925 Mission Revival bungalow of 2,600 square feet. The layout is standard bungalow: Living room across the front of the house. Down one side is bedroom, bath, bedroom, sleeping porch/office bedroom. Down the other side is dining room, butler's pantry/breakfast room, kitchen, laundry/mud room. A 40' central hall divides it all. So, the kitchen is far from the social rooms in the house. I like it that way.

Our kitchen is actually a decent size for its vintage -- about 15' x 12'. There is plenty of room for two of us to work, although it is a "tad" awkward to have the dishwasher (portable, but permanently attached to a giant utility sink) across the room from the kitchen sink. But the ca. 1956 Geneva metal cabinets are great. I suppose one could expand into the breakfast room, but why?

I like having the noise, heat, smell and light of the kitchen far from the rest of the house. And I love that I can close the doors to the room. Sometimes it seems to be a hassle to trek from the living room back to the kitchen to check on something, but the pros outweigh the cons.

We were at DH's sister's home last month and she has an open plan. The kitchen and dining area are on one side, with the living room on the other, divided by a short bank of cabinets in the center. (Imagine the toddlers riding their bikes around the circle . . .) So, one group was watching a (loud) movie in the darkened living room (as dark as it can be with the kitchen lit up like a landing strip) and the other group was baking and chatting in the kitchen. Each group was annoyed by the other. This is not a problem that occurs in a 1925 bungalow!

I much prefer the old style -- w/rooms & spaces dedicated to specific functions and needs. Doesn't necessarily have to mean confined and claustrophobic at all. Those open spaces can be visually chaotic. Designwise it can be hard to define your spaces. Walls can be a good thing-- for pictures, shelving, defining spaces.

Love the old fashioned kitchen-- much easier for me to work in a smaller more efficient space rather than having everything sprawled all over the place.

I wouldnt worry about resale value. If your new kitchen works, is well designed, functional and beautiful w/ adequate work space, then it will have plenty of resale value. And you have to figure that the old house person-- people who love the proportions and features of an old house-- will consider a more authentic beautiful kitchen as a plus and pay more for it.

Instead of tearing out whole walls some people just cut an opening or pass-thru into the dining room and call it a day... is that a possibility?

msscarlet,
You wrote:
"We decided to have a contractor build a staircase to our attic and use that space for either a new master bedroom suite with a side artroom for myself or just one huge artroom!!!"
This is one option that my husband and I are considering to expand our 100+ year old farmhouse. He thinks that it will save money (vs. adding on), but I think there will be structural issues that will make it just as expensive. Could you comment, from your experience?
Sorry that this is Off Topic!

Hey all, new member here. I've been lurking around the forum for a few days and decided I ought to put my mouth where my modem is.

Daina- What a terrific topic! We just bought a 1905 wreck of a farmhouse. I had been thinking about this very thing. We are largely going to return the house to original, rather than updating it. (Within reason - I mean, we'll still have a refrigerator.) Our house's issues are the opposite - it was originally more open, and someone chopped it up into smaller rooms.

Our front door opens from a small porch directly into the 18x18 kitchen. A local historian explained that owner-built homes were built this way sometimes, a sort of "heart of the home" thing. It just made sense for the front door to open into the kitchen. The original "dining room/family room!"

There is a living room/parlor off to the side, through a doorway that was boxed in at some point. The stairs are in this room. We're planning on removing the boxed-in doorway and returning to the original floorplan.

So I guess we got the best of both worlds ... keeping the house original, and having a more open floorplan!

I have a circa 1900 FourSquare house, and a separate room for the kitchen and dining room. I am very happy having it that way. One of my favorite features of this house, when I first saw it, was the "breakfast nook" in the kitchen.

I bought a great 50's style vinyl diner booth which fits perfectly in there, and where the two of us eat 90% of our meals. I think it adds immense charm to the house.

We had our attic converted to living space 3 1/2 yrs ago. It turned out very well and added 1300 sq ft of space to our home. It has "knee walls" that are 45" high in the 2 bedrooms and the bathroom and the study area but the main great room has a wonderful vaulted ceiling with a skylight that opens to allow heat out. We have a wall of windows that look west where the builder did alter the roof line. The remodel per sq ft was about 70.00 which is still the going rate in this area more or less. We had a lot of other stuff done also. If you do decide to do this make sure the contractor has done these conversions before. Also go and see the work he has done and talk to the owners about the pitfalls . Our staircase came out very well and since we have a small lot this was the only way to get more room. Good luck and feel free to ask any other questions. Caroline

It's fun to see how we all think. It stands to reason that most of us would like to keep the kitchens seperate, because I know in me, one of the reasons I love old houses is because of the sectioned off rooms. I am also guessing from all these responses, none of us have really encountered loss of value in the home due to out lack of "modern" greatrooms. That's a good thing, too.

To me it is funny how I can hear about a coworker talking about building their house, and how much they like it, etc. and I walk in and my first thought is "Yuck, another greatroom with a kitchen in one corner and DR in the other, looking out over an expansive TV watching area." I have learned to zero into little things to complement. "My, what a beautiful little desk.... etc." I guess "those people" think the same way when they come into our homes. "Ugh another house with all those little rooms they need remove that wall and open things up"......

housekeeping - Your comment about redirecting folks from the kitchen cracked me up!

We have a small kitchen with adjoining laundry/mudroom, and separate dining and living rooms. There's no room for a table in the kitchen, so we eat in the dining room.

We updated our kitchen in 2004 and kept the original configuration. Don't think we had the option of opening the rooms up, but didn't even entertain the idea. The separate rooms are what makes our house special. I do like the feeling of privacy and coziness.

Tina

I like my little '56 kitchen with the sliding pocket door - I can shut out the sound from the boob tube in the living room!

No open plan for DH and me. Storage space is hard to come by in our small cottage. If we were to knock out the wall between our kitchen and dining room, we would lose the cabinets in the kitchen, and the shelving in our dining room, which also serves as a study.

The previous owner of our home had taken out a room, eliminating the butler's pantry and making it a part of the den. Our recent remodeling project included putting the wall back in. Our kitchen is separate from both, and we like it that way. Some people thought we were nuts for putting the wall back, but it looks so much better now, and it functions better too.

Interesting topic, what about the old center chimney, post and beam colonial and capes? They had open rooms. I assume for heat purpose.

We updated our kitchen 2 years ago and kept the origional configuration. I briefly thought about opening up the kitchen and dining room, but I really like my didning room as is and I have never had trouble cooking in my small kitchen. I get tired just watching the shows of kitchen remodels and wondering how much time it takes to cook a meal and clean in those huge kitchens.

"what about the old center chimney, post and beam colonial and capes?"

The early ones had a central chimney with a room on each side, and generally rather small ones at that. Large, open rooms that we're accustomed to now whould have been hard to keep warm.

My family room is for sprawling out and watching TV or whatever. The furnishings are a casual Mission style. My living room is cool, quiet and more formal in its furnishings.

I've read over 9,000 books in my lifetime doing a conservative estimate, and I don't hide my TV. I enjoy TV when there's something good on, although I must admit it gets harder and harder to find the good stuff. I have to program the DVR to record those goodies they sometimes show at weird hours.

This topic stressed me out a bit since we are the middle of work opening our kitchen to the dining room in our 1906 house. I'm already worried about whether everything will turn out ok. We thought a lot about this, though, so I'll weigh in. I apologize for the length - brevity may be the soul of wit, but it apparently is not my strong suit.

We moved to our current 1906 Arts & Crafts house from a Victorian farmhouse which had the kitchen isolated from the dining room and living room, separated by a bathroom. We found it hard when we had people over since they were either crammed in the kitchen without enough room to participate in the cooking or they were way at the other end of the house. We saw that we had a pattern of having people over in the summer when we could congregate outside by the grill, but not much in the winter. We have a very close community of friends and we enjoy sharing meals in a very casual, family sort of way with kids playing, adults talking and cooking. We also found the dining room more difficult to use for everyday meals. Additionally, it was not possible to carry on conversations when in the two spaces or moving between them for setting, clearing etc. I enjoy cooking, but also like interacting rather than being isolated. When we decided to move we were looking to resolve this split and have a more connected common space. We saw many houses (and almost bought one) with family room additions connected to the kitchen which left unused living and dining rooms. These rooms had become merely somewhere to walk through, heat and cool. Some had little or no furniture in the abandoned formal rooms. We realized that we did not really need this redundant space. There is an excellent book by Sarah Susanka (Taunton Press), The Not So Big House. It talks quite eloquently about using space in an efficient manner.

I personally like having one place to eat all meals. I like eating at the dining room table for just the reasons mentioned in posts above - slowing down, sitting on a chair instead of stools, in a space designed for eating, around a table (preferably round) which facilitates a relaxed, shared experience. The truth is that since we do not have servants, we often need to go back and forth between the spaces. Houses at the turn of the last century were often built to fit a more formal way of living which placed servants (even modest homes) or the women of the house out of the way while the hosts entertained in formal rooms. They were also built prior to the use of refrigerators. When we moved into this new-to-us 1906 house it had a (tiny) butler's pantry for staging serving, while the refrigerator was crammed into the food pantry in such a way that required near-contortionist moves to get a carton of milk. The only storage was open to mice or around the corner in the butler's pantry cabinet. Counter space was limited to the two drainboards of the 1950's metal sink. This was not the room of efficient post-work cooking and cleaning, much less any pleasant shared time. One of us would quite frequently get trapped in the pantry by another trying to get something.

The rest of the first floor of our beloved home showed signs of the revolutionary changes that were happening in houses at the time, shifting from formal double parlors to more flowing open rooms with wide framed openings between them. I am in Oak Park, home to Frank Lloyd Wright, though our home was part of a far more modest working class development. It is stunning to see the differences among the different houses being built during the first part of the century. As central heating and radiators allowed rooms to open up, a social shift away from formality and toward more relaxed, real connection was also under way.

Now that the social and technological changes that have transpired over the last century have ushered in a time of shared cooking, I welcome kitchens and floorplans that facilitate that. There are other times in history and other cultures today in which the communal kitchen holds a significant place in a community. Our new kitchen provides inward facing space where people can prep around an island. In our open floor plan I envision friends and family cooking and talking together, either within the de-cramped kitchen or between it and the dining room next to it.

We are also concerned about creating something that respects the house's history, fits in with the architecture and creates a sense of two spaces with different but related activities. The disfunctional pantries were ommitted in favor of refrigeration and dish storage near the new dishwasher (uses less water than hand washing). We removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and are replacing a portion of it with shallow (12 inch)cabinets that create a partial division and open to both sides. There will be a 6 foot visual opening on top,stepping in to a 3 foot walking space at the bottom in a sort of key hole shape. As much as we love the big pocket door in the large opening between the dining room and the foyer, I doubt that we will use it. I just can't see part of our family sitting in the living room smoking cigars while another part of the family or servants quietly set the table out of sight.

It has been a delicate dance trying to mesh the eras. We are having a duplicate of the missing original built-in hutch along one side of the dining room built, but it will have some wood doors in place of the original glass to house some less aesthetic items that have no other storage on the first floor since the one closet was turned into a WC in the 50's. We got a picture of the original at an open house across the street and noticed gloves and scarves displayed where china and silver of another time once shone. Life is not static and it seems to me that a key component to navigating the ever-shifting impermanence is to be flexible.

I cross my fingers hoping that my ideas about homes and people actually work out in this re-working of our lovely old house. I do not disagree with any of the prior posts, I just wanted to add some thoughts.

We opened up part of the wall between the kitchen and family room and put in a breakfast bar. It has increased the noise in each room, but has also greatly increased the amount of light each room gets. Our house is typical of old stone houses in that the window space is not huge and the light has to come past 2 feet of wall before it enters the room. Opening the part wall was like putting an extra window in each room.

Most of our visitors are family. We have 4 kids, and 5 grandchildren who are here a lot. So it is really nice to have overflow space for multi cook meal prep and visiting that were not possible in the former 1 cook kitchen.

We have an 1810 colonial. 25 years ago when we bought it, I said, "if only there was room for a kitchen table." We raised our kids with meals in the adjacent dining room, and now 25 years later (using blueprints we had drawn up 15 years ago!) we are finally breaking out the exterior kitchen wall to create an eat-in kitchen. We are also adding a mudroom - with a closet on the first floor - yippee! And a walk-in pantry. Each area is its own space - With a door.

I have to admit the main reason we are expanding the kitchen is that we entertain a lot, and it never fails, everyone still stands around my 13 x 10 kitchen while I am trying to cook. At least now they will have their own place to chat(hopefully).

I am avoiding the great room concept by still keeping up other existing walls. The eat-in part of the kitchen will be next to the family room, so we are going to break through that wall to connect the two rooms. But it will be doorway width only. I like my separate rooms. Plus as you all know, with so many darn windows and doorways in these old houses, we need all the wall space we can get.

What a great thread!.. I think as old house owners we generally have a differnt take on things but obviously have to create a home that lives best for us in the here and now. I have little knowlege about what my kitchen looked like when our house was first built... I would give my eye teeth to know! But 100 years of renovations and no saved plans leave me with only the knowledge that I have a center brick cooking chimmney and little more. So after that is was mine to create since the PO's had stripped it bare and put in ORANGE formica counters and some dubious cabinets.

Mine is what I would call semi open. It has a pass through to the formal dinning room that we eat at every night and it's open to our Keeping room where we have the kids computers ( to keep and eye on them and the internet) and it has a french window pass through to our media room. But what it's not directly connted to is my livingroom, nore is it visable from the front door and for me that works well.

Not to scale..but you get the idea!