The historic preservation committee meeting is the 18th; our plans are due to them on the 11th, Friday, for hopeful approval, which would let us really start moving. We really don't want to linger over this project -- among other things, every month we sit in this rental costs us another $2000. Plus, it's going on the market in the spring -- if it sells, well, chaos ensues. So one way or another, we need to finalize the plans with architect Dave this week so we can at least try to get approval from historic this month. We're meeting with a kitchen designer, Dallas Smith, today. Maybe he can help us figure out what exactly we want to do with our kitchen.
How important is an eat-in area, anyway? Those of you with small kids -- does it really help a lot with grabbing breakfast and the like? Is it worth paying a significant chunk of money to extend the house further to fit it in? If we put an eat-in kitchen in, will that mean we never use our dining room? I hate wasted rooms -- my parents had a formal dining room and living room that they used perhaps twice a year. I really don't want to do that. But people do seem to love having an eat-in option...
(We're not going to just add stools to the island because a) our kitchen isn't wide enough, and b) I hate stools. Personal quirk.)
I love having an eat-in kitchen in addition to a dining room. I don’t like wasted rooms, either. In our case, whatever area isn’t being used for eating ends up getting used for somebody’s art project or lego creation or (lately) an epic battle involving tiny plastic soldiers.
Of course, you don’t need a lot of space for an eating area in your kitchen. I’ve seen them in the smallest of kitchens, and personally I find that I don’t need as much counter and cabinet space as many people seem to think one needs in order to cook. If you ever get a chance to see Julia Child’s kitchen in the Smithsonian, you’ll see an example of a small kitchen that is put to very good use. 🙂
Kev is very anxious about sufficient counter and cabinet space, but I think we’re going to be okay on that. We did look at the Julia Child kitchen for design inspiration!
Good point re: other uses of dining table. I did have that in mind at one point, but had sort of forgotten about it…
We use our dining room for eating most days, when we are eating the evening meal at home. We eat breakfast in our enclosed porch/sun room. The kitchen in our house is arranged so that it is inconvenient to use it for a breakfast room tough we did for a dozen years before we got the sun room redone. (The kitchen table is my work desk for the times we are not cooking. I have a desk in my bed room, I don’t use it much.) Our living room is the least used room in our house. It is my wife’s office. It gives lots of book storage, and it has a nice fireplace to toast my feet at when it is cold and I am reading.
Our daughter’s house has a combined large living room with a dining area higher than the rest of the room. They eat their evening meals there. They also have a large family room and eat breakfasts there on a table. They also used the table for a sort of communal desk. The kitchen in their house is almost too small for two people to work in, no room for eating seated.
I think regular group meals are important for a family. I would not know my sister and brothers at all well if we had not eaten diners together for many years as we were growing up.