I have an 11x12' DR off our open kitchen. I can, in a pinch, seat 10 people with enough room to move around, as well as keep a bank of 10" deep cabs along one wall for permanent storage.

The trick is to watch the width of your DR table and allow for the style of your DR chairs. I have bulky chairs, and keep to a 42" limit on the width of my DR table, with an expandable length.

Hi Jax. I am in the same position. Our kitchen is currently 11 1/2 x 12, L shaped and the dining room is 14 x 12. The dining room opens into the living room with just a decorative moulding separating the two rooms. I'm planning on taking down the wall between the dining room and kitchen and making a penisula but need to move the wall into the dining room for more space since I'll be losing the upper cabinetry. We're taking 12 - 15 inches from the dining room space. We can't take any more because we also have a very large box out window in the dining room and don't want to add to the expense of moving that window. So the dining room are will now be 13 x 12 which I think is still a decent size. Our advantage is we can extend into the living room if necessary for large get togethers. Hope this helped.

We are redoing our kitchen know and currently have a 22' x 11' space. We have a penisula 9' in that goes 1/2 across and i don't like it. We are a family of 4 and when i open the table up i can't get more than 8 comfortable without hittin a wall. We are redoing the kitchen now and removing the island (contractor surprised) to sit more comfortable, also adding more cabintete on the side walls.

The space occupied by our kitchen and dining areas is 11' by 17', but there is a 3' x 3' closet in the corner that could not be moved because our commercial tenant's plumbing runs down through the closet wall. We put an 8' x 8' galley kitchen in the end with the closet and turned the closet into a pantry. That left us with a 9' x 11' dining area. If we pull the table out from the wall we can seat six comfortably and eight in a pinch. Normally the table is up against the end wall and seats five, which works for all but two or three days of the year.

(I realized quite some time ago that if your house or kitchen or dining room or car or boat or whatever is never too small it is always too big.)

I believe the rule of thing is: allow for 3' of space for the chair to push away from the table, plus the table dimension. A 42" wide table needs 6' + 42" at a bare minumum.

If the space behind the chair is not a wall, but a space shared with another space (e.g. a walkway, or kitchen), then I think you need 6' of space behind that chair
(3' for push back, and 3' for the other space/room).

-Gorilla

We did the same thing. ONly we had 25 ft of length and only 10.5 ft of width.

I utilized 15 ft for the kitchen, and left 10 ft from one side of the peninsula to the sliding glass doors for the DR. We nearly always eat at the peninsula, but can combine eating there with six at the table for 8 to eat comfortably and squish 10. You have 13 feet of width, so you could turn your table so that the long way runs parallel to your width- that would let you leave a 9 X 13.3' DR.

But, does 13.3' not leave you enough width to have an island instead of a peninsula? I don't know what the minimum is, but I think perhaps an island would be better use of your dimensions.

I know people say they don't plan on using a "formal" dining room, but do you really want to eat every meal at a counter? If you're planning on a family, do you want to perch on stools when preggers? And what about birthdays, holidays, etc.? I don't have any measurements to offer, but we eat every meal in the dining room, and I wouldn't want to buy a house that didn't have room for a Thanksgiving dinner. Squeezing on holidays sounds uncomfortable to me.