<p>Count me as another without a family room or eat in kitchen. We live in the very tiny living room (where the only TV is, though it’s not on that often.) We eat in the DR, and it’s also where my H’s desk is. (currently we’re sitting across from each other on our respecitve laptops at the DR table.)</p>
<p>My desk, when I need to do more work than commenting here, is in our BR. Basically, there are 5 and a half rooms in our house. Nothing extra.</p>
<p>We live in the living room and do homework in the dining room. Old house, no great room or family room.</p>
<p>We use family room and kitchen as the kitchen opens up into the family… Never used the dining room or the living room.</p>
<p>Very good point. In New Jersey we had a very large very traditional colonial with a large living room and a large dining room. We rarely used either, spending most of our time in the huge open kitchen/family room side of the main floor. </p>
<p>Our current house is a little smaller, but has a much better useable floorplan. Master BR is on the main floor and we have a very small formal dining room and the “living room” is the family room that extends from the open kitchen. Every person in our family has better/bigger space than in the old house… except the garage is smaller and there is no basement. :(</p>
<p>We have neither. There is a space adjoining the kitchen where my husband would like to put a dining room table, but I dont want to. After that is a space we call the family room. Hardly any walls, except for the bathrooms and bedrooms. We have a room we call “the front room” with a piano, fireplace, and built in book shelves. What makes something a living room?</p>
<p>Yes, we use both. We do not have a huge kitchen, there is a table where we eat breakfast and lunch, but dinner is usually in the dining room. We added a family room on about 10 years ago, which is where the computers and TV are. The living room is quieter and used mostly for reading and homework.</p>
<p>We use the living room everyday. We have our coffee there, talk and read in there. The kids grew up calling it the talking room - no T.V there. Since h retired and the boys are gone the family room is now the man cave. I never go in there unless I’m going to the laundry room or garage.</p>
<p>The dinning room? We use it only once a year, The rest of the time - where all of the junk goes although I try to keep it decent because it is open to the living room.</p>
<p>We do use our living room, but use the family room more often. We do use the dining room daily for dinner. Our kitchen also has an eating area, but I like to eat without all the kitchen mess at dinner time. We use the kitchen for breakfasts.</p>
<p>I use my living room more than my family room. The kids use the family room more. The living room has the fireplace and the good TV though. I have an eat in kitchen and no dining room. If I had a dining room, it would probably become a sewing room or home office, frankly. I just don’t see us using one with an eat-in kitchen.</p>
<p>We recently moved and downsized with retirement. Left the big dining room table and living room furniture behind- old furniture from each of our single days and more formal than our lifestyle ever was. We both had purchased furniture for the assumed proper use of rooms decades ago. Times changed. Donated the unused LR piano to the school district. We were and are casual people. Current house has a family room, dinette, dining room and living room. Big TV in family room. Old (30 years or so) round glass top table in dinette. Former wooden dinette table with leaf- has 6 chairs, 4 there and others used elsewhere, in dining room open to living room, hallway. Years ago we used the round table in a condo and needed a dinette table, hence two dinette sets. When we moved we chose keeping the small tables without worrying about the rare use of the big, formal dining room set. Have a couple of tables we use for library books. Dining table for projects. Living room has a tv and or computer depending on H’s choice of the month, a few low bookshelves and two LaZBoy recliners with reading lamps close. We can each watch our favorite TV shows at the same time. The living room is open to the foyer but we planned for our use, not appearances. We “migrate” from room to room based on mood, sunlight… Our home furnishing choices would only make the “desperately needs a makeover” article of a magazine. Comfort rules.</p>
<p>It was nice having space for large numbers of people dining in the old house, here we made do. It was also nice to have different public spaces so everyone didn’t need to be in the same room all of the time. I notice on the home shows that former formal living rooms are often marketed as a study and that newer houses have such small ones that is all they are meant for.</p>
<p>I miss my formal living room. I spent most of my time in that room in our old house. We have a formal dining room here that gets used frequently, any time we have someone over to eat, which is often (kids’ friends mostly). In our old house we did not have a TV in that room and that is where I would read or sit for the most part. Now we have a large kitchen open to a family room and we spend most of our time in those 2 rooms. We have a separate TV room that is used a lot as well.</p>
<p>Haven’t moved into our new house yet, but it has no formal living room. There is a beautiful paneled “study” which will house the piano, guitar, and flute and will be a “music” room.</p>
<p>We have a formal dining room, which we rarely used in our old house, but we are selling the really long dining table for a beautiful round one. I think we will use it more often now, having friends and family over, because it is more conducive to conversation than the long one (where people at each end could never converse). Time will tell.</p>
<p>We are also among those who have the kitchen open to the breakfast room open to the large family room with TV. Love that setup.</p>
<p>Someone on the other house thread recommended a Houzz web site. Wow! I could look at those beautiful photos all day long, and I’m also an HGTV junkie. Comfort is very important, but comfortable and beautiful are not mutually exclusive.</p>
<p>We use both everyday. In winter, we huddle around the fireplace in the living room and in summer in front of the picture window looking out a patio with a flower bed. We eat breakfast and lunch in the kitchen but supper is always in the dining room. I like it that way.</p>
<p>Like Dragonmom, the living room is were our piano lives. I wanted at one point to convert it to a billiard room but alas it was too small. The cue sticks would have been hitting the walls. Our dining room is used for that purpose several times a year. The rest of the time it is used as my sewing room, puzzle room and storage for things that need to sit downstairs for a short time.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t have either at the next house but I would have either a larger family room or a sun room.</p>
<p>I am currently in the process of de-formalizing the living room. Have already taken down the heavy curtains and put up white panels from PB. Comfy chairs and sofa to replace the formal stuff is a must.
We use the dining room on holidays and lately I have been serving Sunday dinner there. There are only 3 of us at home, so we are able to shove aside S’s school books/papers and use one end of the table.
In my next house I would prefer to have only a great room rather than separate living/family rooms.</p>
<p>I am a very formal person and far, far prefer discrete rooms. My kitchen is open to my living room/great room, and I absolutely can’t stand it. But I would never have purchased a house without a formal dining room. We have always eaten dinner in the dining room, and we used to love to entertain for dinner, where the best conversations always happened around the dining room. I also use the dining room table for sewing, and for bill paying. </p>
<p>I’m looking forward to my next house, but I do worry that I might have to settle for an open concept in order to get the space I want, since I want a single story home. Shudder.</p>
<p>We have a formal dining room separated from the tiny kitchen by a wall containing a chimney. After 25 years we are now taking out the wall and the chimney and making the kitchen and eating area one space. We will have a built-in banquet with upholstered cushions with a round table and three chairs. We will also have a peninsula with three stools facing into the kitchen. I will miss the formal dining room not one bit.</p>
<p>We turned the living room into the family room, and the family room into a computer lab. Every family member has a desk and a computer in the lab. It made it easy to keep an eye on the kinds when they were doing homework and what-not. There is a couch and TV in the lab, so it is almost like a second family room.</p>
<p>The dining room gets used maybe twice a year.</p>
<p>When we moved into our current home ten years ago, Our living room was a play room for our one year old. It is off the main entrance and is easily fenced in. Picture mini slide and little tykes play gym.<br>
It was great until I inherited furniture from my mom who had passed away. Then my living room turned into the unused, formal room it is today. I often think it would be nice to move DH’s office into it. He has a beautiful wood carved desk that would look great there.</p>
<p>The LR has the cozy chairs, the fireplace, and most importantly the couch, to flop on when exhausted. </p>
<p>The dining room is too often a mess of papers, but I love having a large formal dining room, hosting sit down holiday meals with 12 to 14 friends, dinner parties, etc. I wish it didn’t have to function as an office. </p>
<p>But day to day, my kitchen table is where I put the lap top, and gaze on the back yard.</p>