Picture yourself carrying in food-laden trays, plates, glasses, water pitchers, getting up to get something you forgot, getting up to check the oven, getting up to get paper towels when a kid spills something, then getting up to bring every plate, dish, cup, fork, spoon, knife back into the kitchen for washing up, then bringing toweling or polish or whatever from the kitchen back into the dining room for cleanup, and back again.

If the number of steps between kitchen and dining room don't bother you in your particular layout, the number of rooms don't matter.

My aunt lived in a great, renovated old farmhouse. She had a butler's pantry hallway separating their kitchen from their formal DR. The kitchen was huge and had an island + a big table for every day eating. There was also a TV area in the kitchen area so it had a great room kind of effect going for it. That's where they lived day to day. As such, the hauling everything back and forth through the butler's pantry to the kitchen and dining room was really only an issue on special occasions.

I really don't know how it functioned, but it looked great. So much character in that house...

I think the issue is whether the additional little something in difficulty of getting to the actual DR will mean you default to the counter or whatever instead. That's what happens to us - we naturally gravitate to the shortest location even if it's not what we want in theory. It takes a strong will to lug stuff the extra distance.

So ... if you're committed to using the DR instead of, say, the kitchen table or bar seating area or something else that's kinda close, and the extra steps don't bug you, you're good. It's just a matter of being really honest with yourself and figuring out what you would *Really* do.

I think it depends on how often you will use the dining room. Our dining room is down a butler's pantry hall that also houses our walk-in pantry and a storage closet. However, we do not dine in our dining room very often, only for holidays or family gatherings which end up being 3 or 4 times a year, so it works for us. We eat most meals in our breakfast room which is part of the open kitchen/family room area.

I think there could be legitimate reasons for separating them but the passageway would have to be easily negotiable and the reasons for the separation would have to outweigh the (potential) inconvenience factor.

If direct adjacency of the two put the kitchen in a location where it was windowless or in a strange spot in the overall floorplan for some reason and this could be solved by separating them by a short hallway, I would have no problem with that.

I looked at a beautiful house that was set up for staff and the kitchen was in the English basement under the dining room. Even though the dining room is very large, it would really spoil something to put the kitchen and dining room together. If I were to buy a house like that, I would have to really rethink how the entire floorplan worked and perhaps have the kitchen and everyday dining room somewhere else in the house entirely because I could not live with eating in the basement kitchen or hauling everything up a flight of narrow service stairs on a daily basis. Its a moot point because it was way to expensive for me, but I would imagine thats one reason it isn't selling. (Although the spectacular jewel toned deco bathrooms that most people seem to dislike might be another).

How do you use the dining room and how often do you use it? Do you have an eating area in the kitchen? As long as carrying food, dishes, etc to the dining table from the kitchen as often as you use the dining room won't bother you, then go for it. I would recommend having a staging / landing countertop in the kitchen on the path to the dining room. That might make transport of things to the dining room easier.

my friend who entertains often doesn't have hers right next to the kitchen. it's separated by what's now a sitting room, but may become a butlers pantry once she remodels the kitchen.

we were just saying recently how nice it is to have that set up (an advantage of old houses where every room was separated. i live in an old house too, but when we remodeled the kitchen we knocked down a wall & opened up the kitchen). she has a nice buffet in the dining room where she puts all of the food & drinks so there's not alot of back & forth.

although knocking down the wall was the best option for my house (kitchen is small, no windows), it's a hassle when i do entertain & everyone gathers in my kitchen! they're in the way :) i'd rather they hang out in the dining/living room (which is right there!) but, like they say the kitchen becomes the gathering spot. i'm hoping when i get a new buffet people will congregate near the food ;)

on the bright side everyone who hangs out in the kitchen always says what a great job i did w/the remodel lol!

Referencing what Marcolo said - If the walkway is wide enough and without any tight sharp corners that would make it difficult to navigate with an armful of stuff I think you'd be good. I would probably make sure that there was a landing space, buffet counter maybe, that wasn't the DR table for putting things down and sorting things.

As long as you have servants to carry the food from the kitchen to the dining room, you'll be fine :-)

Is it an "eat in" kitchen? I could tolerate a kitchen down the hall from the dining room if most of my meals were happening in the kitchen.

If you can fix up the "butler's pantry" so there's a diswasher, sink and dish storage, then that would be really swanky.

I'll add that I've seen spec homes where the dining room is really an alcove near the front door of the house. I think the idea is that you'll have your linens and china on display there for guests to see. Meanwhile, the kitchen is on the other side of the house and that's where meals get eaten. Eating dinner in the dining room would be like a catered event where the occupants of the house have to do the catering. (Cook it and then package it up to be transported to the dining room.) Crazy.

If you can fix up the "butler's pantry" so there's a diswasher, sink and dish storage, then that would be really swanky.

Excellent point. If this "short hallway" is of any size, then you need to make it a butler's pantry, not just call it one. Including landing space, the cleanup run, a bar or whatever you would really use while serving in the dining room.

Will the food get cold in the time it takes to transport it to the dining room?

No?

Then you're fine.

It's YOUR house. Use it the way that works for you and your family.

Wrestling with this problem now, as I'm thinking about giving up my formal dining room (which is an awkward butler's pantry's distance away from the kitchen) and bumping out the kitchen and adding a glassed-in DR there. Current DR would be converted to either a bedroom or my exercise room. I know that if we keep the DR as is and can't solve the awkward pantry layout issue, we'll end up eating at the kitchen counter most of the time. With so many people shying away from formal dining rooms, I think you need to make them as accessible to the kitchen and as attractive as possible to get full use out of them.

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I looked at a beautiful house that was set up for staff and the kitchen was in the English basement under the dining room. Even though the dining room is very large, it would really spoil something to put the kitchen and dining room together. If I were to buy a house like that, I would have to really rethink how the entire floorplan worked and perhaps have the kitchen and everyday dining room somewhere else in the house entirely because I could not live with eating in the basement kitchen or hauling everything up a flight of narrow service stairs on a daily basis. - Palimpsest

Good friend has this exact layout problem in the townhouse she purchased. She solved it by putting in an electric dumbwaiter in an old shaft running up from the kitchen to the formal DR. She uses the DR maybe three times a year - Christmas, Thanksgiving, one formal dinner party - and the dumbwaiter gets full use then.

Full disclosure: she was doing a gut renovation, so installing a dumbwaiter was easy/easier with all the walls opened up anyway. AND she says if she had to do it again, she'd keep the layout but bag the dumbwaiter. It was very expensive, mostly due to fire code requirements, and the cost-per-use price is high. Instead, she'd resign herself to getting in a good stair-climbing workout when she entertains.

Pursuant to the discussions we've had about proper locations for powder rooms, I wouldn't want one opening off of my butler's pantry. I'd rather call the strange passage an "anteroom". It's not the actual room that bothers me. Just the name. :)

If there's room for a dresser or buffet, or even a good sized console, by the dining room door, so that things can be cleared and set down without having to go all the way to the kitchen, I think it would be fine. Or a tall tea cart you could wheel between the kitchen and DR (if you can keep the kid from riding it!).

I have a dear friend whose kitchen has an eating counter on a peninsula and a large breakfast area with room for a full sized table. That opens into the formal living room, which has a large fireplace area, opposite, and a cabinet style wet bar by the breakfast room. There's room for another table there near the bar, with plenty of seating area by the FP. The actual DR is behind the LR and down a short hall from the kitchen. In that case, it didn't make any sense. It's now the TV room. :) OTOH, if the location you describe makes the most sense for a DR, do it!

Another way to look at it: You probably don't remember my early tries at a kitchen layout, where I was trying to put the cooking near the DR door. It didn't work out, and it's no closer. It's about 25-30 feet from stove to table. This isn't a real problem, though less convenient, but I wouldn't want it to be much greater. If you can keep it under 40 feet you'll be in better (servantless) shape (for serving rather than fit and toned).

Having a removed DR makes organization a must. Plan out your serving pieces--dishes and spoons--ahead of time. Have lists, even if they're just in your head) of extras and accompaniments that you regularly need. For instance, I always put olives on the lunch table even if they're not always eaten so I won't need to jump up and get someone olives. It's different from eating in the kitchen where one isn't removed from the conversation, etc., when getting an extra something. Baskets and trays are your friend. I wasn't sure I liked the "butler's tray" (i.e., with sides and integrated (holes in the sides) handles) I was given in anticipation of the new kitchen, but it's very stable and holds more than one might guess. And I recently gave in and put the bread in a basket (container from a hostess gift) which is easier to carry between island and DR table than the bag. Baskets are great for all kinds of back and forthing, and for organizing tabletop stuff.

Thanks for the input, y'all. Nothing in my house is (or could) be far enough for the food to get cold!

The layout of my house leaves no place for a dining room, or even a proper size dining table. Walls have been removed and I think fireplaces added and even putting walls back in place or rearranging them where possible, I'm having a hard time finding a place for my table, which isn't even that large. I do require a dining room for important things like art projects. And entertaining, which isn't often in the dining room except holidays. (For example, there is a gutted laptop computer on my table now in its squishy "dining area".) This is my first home without a formal dining room and I don't like it. This is my first home with a (small) eating area in the kitchen and I DO like that.

So, I'm giving up on the old kitchen and will add on a kitchen with a (larger) eating area but it would still leave me with no %$#@ dining room unless I put it in the former kitchen. But I don't want it to be too screwy.

I would like to provide a sketch but my scanner is angry at me and I can't find the chargers for either of my dead cameras. An approximate layout of the current house, compliments of the appraiser with doodles done in a most excellent drawing program:

{{!gwi}}

The purple stuff is the current kitchen (it really does spill out into the living area). Green bits are fireplaces. Red bits are doors. Yellow is where I'd put a kitchen of yet-to-be determined shape. The blue blob is a greenhouse and potting shed. I'd like to keep them (spouse says "but you aren't USING the greenhouse! Why do we have to keep it?" Sheesh. It's summer. Of course I'm not using it!).

I suppose I could make the new kitchen big enough for holiday dining crowds and not be redundant with two tables. Old kitchen could be a den or something with a work table for projects.

I dunno. I don't think the trek would make me fit but it wouldn't be ideal.

Hm... This actually might be a good place for an architect. They are often hopeless with things like kitchens, but they're usually very good at seeing potentials in a building design.

Since I find it easier to dream big and scale back than to start small and go just far enough, my first thought was that unless the greenhouse is fully climate controlled, etc., it might make sense to either incorporate it in the yellow blob, or replace it with a conservatory that opens out of it...but if the replace option, perhaps have it off the casual eating area, and more toward the patio, than the more utilitarian thing that I imagine is out behind the garage. Visions of covered kitchen garden and hydroponic carrots do dance...

Those fireplaces really are inconvenient, aren't they?

The old kitchen as dining room really is inconvenient isn't it?

One alternative might be to make a formal dining room in the area where the family room is currently, and use the old kitchen area as a den. That would flow a lot better. That also would give you a more logical entry to the kitchen. Walking through the FR or through the garage passage to get there is kind of weird. Walking through the DR or garage passage seems less weird.

OR

You could make the new kitchen were the family room is, the old kitchen could be the dining room, and the yellow blob could be a wonderful new family room/conservatory combination. I really like that one. Knowing my ideas, it's probably the most expensive too. :)

How about a library/dining room? You could add some bookcases and maybe a window seat. Have a big table for crafts/projects, that can expand for large dinners. Have a few chairs at the table everyday and bring in extra chairs for dining...and maybe have two smaller wing chairs, 'reading chairs' for the library, that can be used at either end of the table. Very elegant...and will fit your butler's pantry idea. Most important, it wouldn't be a room you ignore 360 days a year! :)

I would be tempted to do an addition/plan reworking that made the orientation of the house and the garage intersect and interrelate more.

Pll, you're probably right about the architect. Currently I do have the dining table in the part labeled "family room, on the kitchen side of the fireplace. The fireplace is less convenient than it looks--the hearth is elevated and sticks out 2 feet so there isn't quite space to put the table in the middle of the room. And of course the door in the family room is the main exit to the back yard.

I could swap the kitchen and the dining and the family and the uh...the fireplace is going to have to go, isn't it?

I want that room you described, LLass. Just tell me where to put it! (I'm thinking maybe I could squeeze it into the old kitchen...or maybe not.)

Palimpsest, I think the assessor who drew the drawing forgot his protractor--the house isn't bent QUITE that much, but it is bent. It's on a cul de sac so the lot is small in front and large (for the subdivision) in the back. If the garage weren't bent it wouldn't fit and all the cutesy 50s ranch houses on the street wouldn't line up with the same setbacks. The odd little connecting room is actually kind of nice with coat closet, powder room, pantry, and idunno another pantry.

*sigh*

So, should I leave the kitchen where it is, put the original walls back, and get a smaller table for the dining "room"?

It would probably cost a lot less time, money and trouble and restore the original intent of the house. :)

But what fun would that be?

Before agreeing about getting the angles of the house and the garage to interrelate more, I'd like to see a bird's eye view of the street and neighboring houses. Then, it would be good to know the lay of the land, to get a sense for the best long distance views. I suppose I could climb a tree or get up on the roof to double check this.

Only by being there would I know for sure.

We tore down the wall between our kitchen and dining room, leaving us with a much larger eat-in kitchen. We put the dining room furniture out in an otherwise unused section of our large, L-shaped sunroom. The sunroom is directly adjacent to the kitchen, but the dining area is about 25 feet from the kitchen, in the far part of the L. We just use table about 6 times per year, and on those days, I really don't notice the distance. We could have placed the dining room furniture in the part of the sunroom that is directly connected to the kitchen, but that would have been awkward with the way we use the space. It does leave a reasonable alternative for hypothetical future buyers, though.

We converted our old living room into a dining room and put the living room farther away. Worked for us.

The repurposed living room is actually a fat hall--there are so many doors coming and going from it that there is only one semi-dead-ended space, now holding the dining table. The space was disfunctional from the get-go so it begged to be converted.

We recently punched into it from one more direction, which needed to be done. I haul stuff to and from kitchen peninsula to dining table about 20 feet, give or take, but now it's a straight shot and the doorway is not tight.

I love my dining room because it's the center of the house and it connects to everywhere. I'm sitting there right now.

Goodness, Pllllllog! The original intent of the house was "gracious living". (I've seen the brochure.) Very few of the original floorplans in this subdivision actually had dedicated dining rooms. I guess this was about when dinettes came about. And the kiddie table.

David, no need. The garage isn't going ANYwhere.

Holli, I think your layout would work for us. When we need the dining table for actual eating, there are usually too many people around trying to help so maybe it would even be better to give them a job away from the kitchen. Hehhehe.

FLor,it sounds nice and it's what I need. Even though we don't necessarily EAT at the big table very often, it's always being used. (I'm at it now.) I guess I just want a place for it where I won't be tripping over chairs trying to get somewhere.

I was planning on being able to fit 6 in a remodeled kitchen nook. Fitting a larger dining set and scrapping the dining room concept altogether really makes more sense.

In my parents' generation, once the owners of small tract houses were empty nesters, some converted a bedroom into a dining room. Have never eaten a meal in one of these, but I've seen the concept a few times. Must be like one of the "Candlelight Suppers" in the Britcom "Keeping Up Appearances"--another couple is invited in for a fancy meal, very very intimate but all the finery is there. Hardly room to walk around the table if the chairs are occupied. Everything needs to be hauled down the hall past the bathroom and into or out of the kitchen.

Fori- Piece of cake! Put shelves along the kitchen/nook wall, closest to the living room. Maybe some on either side of the nook window (making a window seat). The wingback chairs can go where the sink is now (in the kitchen) and the table with a few chairs, can go in the nook. Maybe use two chandeliers/overhead lighting of your choice, so when the everyday library table extends into the huge dining table....there's light for the entire table space. A few sconces would look cool, too.

The great thing about dining...usually the table is only 42" to 48" across....and just keeps getting longer, so you don't need a lot of room from front to back, just from side to side. So, if the table extends from the 'old' nook, into the 'old' kitchen area, you should have plenty of room for seating on both sides.

This room is not really my idea, but something my mom has always wanted to do. She's described it in great detail, but never had a big enough space that wasn't being used for something else.

If you want a traditional look, use wood bookcases, lots of greens, brass and dark woods. Can you imagine how great this would look with orange accents for Thanksgiving and red accents for Christmas?

If you want something lighter and sunnier, use white bookcases, blues, yellows, and lighter wood/painted furniture. It's your room, so have some fun with it! :)

I need some help here. I am in the same confusing spot on whether to keep the kitchen right next to formal dining and live with a small kitchen or take over the family room and convert it into a large kitchen / eat-in island area and have a smaller family/tv room between the large kitchen and formal dining. I have uploaded the sketch of my existing family - kitchen - dining setup and 2 remodel Ideas to show the options I have. Please suggest which one is better?

Existing setup (large family room and a very small kitchen)

Remodel Idea - 1 (Same small kitchen with extended countertop)

Remodel Idea -2 (Swap family room and kitchen to get a larger kitchen space, but the family room gets small and is in between the kitchen and formal dining).

P.S. I have very occasionally used the formal dining area. Only when there are guests.

When entering my front door, it has always been the living room, walk through there to a small dining room and into a family room connected to kitchen.
I want to put the dining room where the living room is because it’s bigger.
Is that to far from the kitchen and what would I put in the tiny dining room.