Increase Your Functional Space By Deleting The Dining Room

Based on my previous posts, you can tell that I’m big on usable and functional spaces in your home. One of the bigger wastes of space I see in houses today is the formal dining room. Very few families dine formally these days. The modern kitchen features an open floor plan and is generally the central location of most meals. Grandiose formal dining rooms are often found deserted and rarely used.

To my knowledge, there is one reason the dining room is still the norm; It’s always been that way. Homes that have clearly defined rooms (kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom, etc) is commonplace but outdated. Growing up in my home that was built in 1952, we had the dining room where we ate every meal and the living room where we would watch TV and spend time with family and friends. As technologies, societies and economies have evolved, this housing layout has stayed consistent.

It’s time to improve you’re existing spaces!

Last year, my family undertook a renovation project to update our kitchen, dining room and living room to combat this very issue. We took our divided housing layout and made it more multi-functional and open. See this post to view ‘during’ and ‘after’ pictures of the removation. You can see in the pictures where the walls once were and how divided the living spaces were. Although a renovation of this magnitude may not be a viable option for all, there are other less-intrusive methods to improve the our spaces.

Look for more posts on how to improve your current living areas in the near future.