Old dining furniture is better, especially for occasional use. The finish may not be good enough to hold up to toddlers every day, for example, so you want something less special for daily use unless it's got a good top.

I miss having a formal dining room even though nothing stays formal in my household. In my new house with a more open concept and no dedicated dining room, I finally gave up around Thanksgiving, tossed out a couch, put in all the leaves, and spread out that table. It's covered with toys and art supplies and computers and gift wrapping stuff. And I can scrape it off for a formal dinner.

If you don't need a formal dining room very often but have a spot for it, do it. It's good for so much other stuff when you're not entertaining. For goodness sakes--do people still have LAN parties? Haha I'm old.

Tables aren't bad to refinish. Chairs can be harder, and depending on construction they may or may not be an easy reupholster/repair. Don't do it if you don't like them, though.

Let's see them. Pictures please!

I'm really not a fan of multiple dining areas. If we had built, we would have had one dining area area open to both the kitchen and living room. However with that said, I guess it would have still been sort of formal. We'll call it semi-formal because I would have still had a china cabinet and sideboard with formal china and crystal on display. The difference is we would have used the space every day.

Plans changed and we bought a house. She's 80 years old and comes complete with a built in booth, butler's pantry and formal dining room. We love the house so we're adjusting. We make it a point to eat our nightime meal every evening in the dining room. The booth (which we really didn't want at all) has become a great spot for sorting mail, having a beer, or playing a game. We call it our "pub."

As far as furniture goes, I always lean toward antique. If it's not antique, then I want artisan, hand-crafted, unique pieces. To me the two types actually blend well together, even if the artsy pieces are more modern. We have a round quartersawn oak table that I got off of craigslist. We are going to eventually have someone else restore it for us. We're waiting until after the holidays so we won't be without a table. It's usable now. In fact we just hosted our first dinner party on it. We only had a party of six, so we only needed one of the 8 leaves that came with the table. I sometimes wonder whether we will ever get around to refinishing it. I forget how scratched up it is, because we usually dine with the lights dimmed!

I definitely think you should give the old dining room furniture a second chance at life. Let us know how it turns out.

I pooh-poohed the formal dining room for years and now that I may be becoming one of the "matrons" of the family, I really would like to have the right kind of set-up.

I say set-up because I think it's more about planning for a larger number of people and there are different ways to do it. The "formal dining room" is the most obvious, but I find a lot of them too small and dark and claustrophobic. However if I came across the perfect traditional home with a lovely large dining room I think I would like that now.

I love the idea of multi-purpose arrangements--something where you can expand and contract, or a layout in which you can set up 2 tables that relate to each other and can be made festive, or a room that can be a sitting room or library during much of the year (one that is used!) but easily converted to dining.

I also like round tables, but it is hard to have a large enough round table for holiday gatherings, whereas the classic rectangle with multiple leaves comes in lots of options. I say that because if you really can get 14 people at a long table, you don't always feel more "together"--think back on big family restaurant dinners and work dinners at such tables and people can only talk to a few. Maybe not as much in one's quieter home.

I'm with frankie. I hate the idea of a room that is used only a few days out of the year. But I do think every house deserves a flex formalish room that can function as a sitting room/library and then be converted to a formal dining room on special occasions.

We have an open concept great room with kitchen/dining/family room all open to one another. I can fit 8 in my dining room, 3 on the island and move the sofa forward a little and put another table for 6 between the dining room and family room. This is what we did last year for thanksgiving.

If the weather is nice we can set up a large table outside as well.

I also think round tables are better for conversation. I need to scope out a round table on craigslist :) Definately use the antique!

Fori- Your 'pub' sounds like a lot of fun! I'd like to have a banquette in the kitchen, if we do go with a formal dining room.

Here's a picture of the dining chair with arms...the other five don't have arms, so this was my husband's grandfather's chair. I brought it over a while back and put on the new fabric, mainly to protect what was already there...a two tone, narrow green stripe. {{!gwi}}From Lavender Lass farmhouse pictures

Frankie- I think I'm in the same situation you are. I've never really wanted a dining room, but we seem to be turning into the place where people want to have dinner. I'm surprised, since we don't live in town, but it's fun, too!

Pps- Round tables are great and do make conversation easier. The old table in the attic (still up there) is rectangular and I think it's supposed to have at least one leaf, but I haven't found it yet.

Sorry, I meant to say to Ncamy- Your 'pub' sounds like a lot of fun! Formal dining and a butler's pantry...do you have any pictures?

Fori- Here's the picture :) What are LAN parties?

I do not like counter seating and do like dining away from the kit. Some people think it is a waste of space to only use a few times a year. I choose to use the space and enjoy it. That said, my dining rm is separate from the kit but there is nothing formal in my home. Din rm table & chairs are shaker.

I have older furniture that I have fixed and refinished. I use it everyday for dinner and it is in a "Formal" dining room. My chairs are harp backs from an auction and the table was purchased for 30lbs. It was covered in green paint at a second hand shop in England before we gave it a new life! For larger events I use a fold down table, that we also got for less than 50 dollars and refinished,that sits under a window in the dr as a sideboard and I put the two tables together to sit up to 14. The only thing is I wish I had six more matching chairs. Use your finds, antiques want to live on!
everyday pic

set up to sit 14( Sorry this is set for my DD's 5th birthday party.

and here it has no tablecloth covering the tables but still works ok. Sorry another theme party, xmas baby shower.

If the table is half as classy as that chair, you have to restore it. At least they are the easy-recover types of seats. And while detailed and elegant, it's not so fussy as to be a PITA to refinish if touching up isn't enough.

I don't think a formal designated dining room has to be used infrequently. Even if you don't eat there often, who the heck can't use a big old table?

Old dining chairs are usually smaller than modern ones which is nice in older smaller-scaled homes. If these can't all be repaired, complementary old ones would be the way to go.

We have an antique table and modern (in date) chairs. I wanted chairs with nothing that could stain (just wood). Also wanted chairs that could stand up to some abuse over time, with kids.

Why not use your old chairs and tables-- I'm sure restoration can do wonders.

We have and use our dining room every time more than two people are eating. We have a toddler and are focusing on family dinner-- DH gets up at 5 every morning so he can get home in time for DD's early dinner and bedtime. So we eat it at the table together.

I'm struggling with the same question. We don't have room for a breakfast nook any place that would make sense, but we do have the space for a dining room. While I would truly WANT to eat there for nightly family dinners, I just don't know if we would. Family dinners are important enough to me to want to give it a shot, though!

What a nice problem to have, Lavender. I really like the idea of refurbishing your family pieces to be attractive and comfortable. Just don't forget that you don't want a high-maintenance, seldom-used "formaldiningroom" room, rather a room dedicated to the pleasures of dining together, one that can be dressed way up and then brought back to everyday family use. As in no need to polish fingerprints off after each use. :)

Roarah, your dining room is terrific.

With those chairs I see a fun dining room theme emerging:
{{!gwi}}

Oh great. Now the chairs are gonna look like hot air balloons whenever you look at them, LL. Maybe you'll have to replace them after all. :)

What is wrong with hot air balloons? It's a pretty traditional motif.

Definitely use your antique table and chairs if they are fixable! I have a dining room and an eat in kitchen. We eat in the dining room every day even though it's just the two of us. Just because it's a separate room doesn't mean it has to be formal or infrequently used.

I toured a house a few months ago that had an open floor plan (with lots of "wasted" space) plus a dining room. The dining room was tiny. I thought it was extremely weird but I suppose it was intended as a fancier space for a small dinner party.

I also think you should use the existing chairs and table. We're putting a dining room into our new house because I host all of the holidays and I really can't stand staring at the mess in the kitchen when I sit down to eat.
Recently though, we've been talking a lot about how to make the room multi-functional. A library has been discussed but I'd be curious to hear what other functions people have added to their dining rooms. One other thought I had was to put a hutch in which will hold all of my sewing supplies and kids crafts to allow me to spread out when I want to sew and let them do school projects etc.
My Mom had this padded cover she would put on our dining room table. I'll have to ask her where she got it because it allowed us to use that table for everything and yet it never suffered a lick of wear and tear from it's everyday use. It seemed like it came with the table actually.

That chair's not in too bad shape. While you may want to totally refinish it/them one day, I have a simpler suggestion to try first. Have you ever used Howard's Restor-A-Finish? A 16 oz can of the stuff costs less than $9 at HD, probably other home reno stores carry it too. We've used it several times over the years and it does an amazingly good job. It will fix up the finish dings on all the square corners easily. Just wipe on, wipe off.

Yes, I do like a formal dining room if that is possible. If you don't use it regularly, you can use it for projects. The trick here is to get a piece of vinyl lined felt and cut to fit your table.
{{!gwi}}
Top with a table cloth, and you're protected from most of the terrible things that might otherwise destroy it. Another advantage here is that you can close the door on unfinished projects and not have to clean it up between work sessions.

Here is a link that might be useful: Howard's Restore-A-Finish

Thank you all for the responses. It's nice to see I'm not alone in debating about the dining room...but I'm glad so many of you like them and USE them!

Marcolo- I like the hot air balloon theme, but the chandelier might look more at home in the sunroom, than the dining room. It's actually quite charming and I like the fabric, too :)

Fori- LOL! I still think they look more like a shield, but Marcolo does make an interesting point.

You all are definitely making me think twice about repairing and refinishing the furniture. It would be so nice to have a bit of history, in the family farmhouse. I've been trying to keep the footprint fairly similar, but it's starting to feel a little small, with the house getting cleared out. You think it would seem bigger...but instead, it's feeling smaller. An addition off the back, for a bigger kitchen might be a really good idea :)

They were shields this morning. Now they are balloons, and I don't see how they can stop being balloons.

It appears to be a sensible and sturdy chair (my inherited chairs have a ribbon back with the lower stripe so low it's been broken on many chairs by butts. Doesn't even take a big butt, just someone sitting all the way back).

I haven't been keeping up and I'm not sure what and where your plan is now, but you have to eat off something. Could this be your everyday table? Formal schmormal. A big table you can dress up or down in a sensible location for all meals is what you need if you don't feel like dedicating a room to it.

Love the chairs. As to "what is it?", I see a Willaimsburg Seashell.
And I do enjoy my dining room, and would not want to be without it.

Hi LL,
I responded to your last thread so maybe you already know my preferences but I do think it is really nice to have a seperate dining room. I have reupholstered chairs like the one you have and it is a super easy DIY project and wouldn't take much fabric - the chairs appear to be in GREAT shape and have a lot of nice details.

In the last house we had the combo kitchen/dining room set up and it meant every meal (including the nice dinner parties) was in view of a kitchen that had just seen a lot of use. I just find it more enjoyable at meal time to leave the mess in the other room (in this house the current kitchen is so outdated, I practically run screaming from it, but that's another story).

I will post a pick of my dining room. Still need to paint the wall above the chair rail (thinking a pale gray with green and yellow undertones) and I would like to put up drapery panels. My mother in law just paid to have my old chairs reupholstered so I took this picture to show her how nicely they turned out.

The door that you see held open is to the butler's pantry with the kitchen on the other side. Nice have this little bit of division in my mind but to each their own.

I actually love Marcolo's hot air balloon theme!

As for a separate dining room, I think it depends on your lifestyle. For us, we needed one because we entertain large groups frequently so I needed multiple tables. It is also the place where kids can do school projects, puzzles, and build legos.

Maybe I'm old school (and the fact that we live "sans children" might make a difference), but when I prepare a nice meal I'd like to eat it while not in view of the process. Our formal dining room right now is not adjacent to the kitchen, but we either eat there or we are bad and eat in front of the TV. It is not "formal", but it is where we "dine".

Having dinner in there (almost) every night gives us a great transition from the work day and it provides a natural environment where we are looking at each other and talking. Dinner parties in the dining room are always more enjoyable - people stay at the table longer and enjoy what they came to your house for - dinner!

After our remodel is complete, the kitchen will be adjacent to the dining room and I'm really debating how wide I want the archway to be - 48" would bring in more light, but 36" would maintain the separation I like so much....but I'll stop now from hijacking this post. : )

Hi LL - love that furniture! - I would be thempted to restore it but also would be tempted to have the table with more casual chairs just to keep the room approachable. I think if I did restore I would go casual on the fabric and do something with some great texture like velvet - and would have squashy back pillows smushed in there. I have rambled on about our dining rm in other threads - I am huge fan of ours - a big part of it's appeal is a casual table (no fear with markers or playdoh) and cushy chairs that encourage hanging out.

1929 - we had a similar debate on our arches - we split the difference And went with 44" - about the same as the other oriiginal arches.

If we have the separate dining room, it wouldn't be our only table. I'd like to have an L-shaped banquette in the kitchen, with a rectangular pedestal or trestle table and three chairs. The fourth one I'd use at the desk...since these are my chairs and I just love them :)

I wish I could get a better picture, but the cream color never comes out right, in pictures. My favorite part is the back, with the spindles and those little carvings at the top, which look like deer, to me. {{!gwi}}From Lavender Lass farmhouse pictures

I've been working on our new house plans for weeks now. Still tossing the formal dining room idea around. The kitchen was set up with the idea that I would have a dining area off of it. We have a dining room now that almost every meal gets eaten at, except for a few toddler meals that are fed at the kid's table in the living room. If we had an eat in kitchen, we might eat in there. Since I grew up with a dining room that was used every meal and have one now, I don't think I could live without one. I did make the island with an overhang for meals, but honestly, I hope we don't use it for meals. Great for doing homework as the kids get older or sitting and drinking coffee in the morning, but honestly. I hate eating in the kitchen, knowing there is a huge mess to clean up just staring at me. I could be a little weird about that though. Also a combination of aging parents and grandparents, the need arises for a room that will seat everyone or at least mostly everyone, because no one has the energy to host family gatherings any longer.

We have a dining room and use it constantly. Our children grew up eating at the table and we use it for most meals even as empty nesters. Because the dining room is there, we are more likely to invite people to be our dinner guests. This is who we are, and the dining room helps us be this sort of person.

We have plenty of friends and acquaintances who do not have a dining room as the center of their living in the house, even if the house has a dining room--this is who they are.

The answer to your question is "Who are you and would you use the room? Is it a wise investment for your way of life? Do you really entertain? At your time of life, is it something you will really use?"

Lavendar, fwiw:
Your painted chairs are styled something along the style of the crafter-revival period from the period before WWI. Same style was revived a number of other times, including during the "shabby chic" period of recent memory. The rungs on the chair are somewhat reminiscent of pilgrim-era furniture, but the backs are not. This style is being pressed back into use for mixed-style rooms still. These are not classically styled but they are family-friendly and happy.

Your rescued chairs are more on the lines of the Sheraton shield-back ones of the early 19th century Regency & Empire styles. They refer to classical Greece and such. Legs with spades at bottom are sufficiently suitable for this period, but yours seem to be more sturdy in the understory than the originals, which you can assume means "more functional." There were a number of "colonial revivals" including the U.S. centennial in 1870s and the 1920s-30s period, continuing in some ways into the 1950s. Then it recurred again in the 1970s for the Bicentennial and the rise of the pillared colonial split level and the McMansion and such. A suitable table for this chair might be called "Duncan Phyfe" -- there are lots of these coming onto the market now as our Greatest Generation gives up housekeeping. Chairs of the type of the rescued one above are not a good match with a round oak table with a massive pedestal; better to match it with a table with less stolididity and more upper class grace.

Florantha- We seem to be on the same page. The darker chairs should go with a more fancy table (which is up in the attic) and the lighter chairs will work well, with the banquette and pedestal table. At least, I think we're on the same page :)

The darker chairs and table were purchased new, in the 1950s. My lighter chairs are antique/thrift store finds and are probably from the 1970s, maybe older. Someone did a lot of work, refinishing them with the lighter glaze. It doesn't show up well in the picture, but it's really nice IRL.

As for the type of people we are, we haven't really had a lot of dinner parties in the past, but that seems to be changing recently. As our friends kids' get older, they seem to be coming out to visit more (along with the nieces and nephews) and we seem to be hosting more get togethers. I guess when you 'grow up' out here in the summers, it doesn't seem so far to travel for the holidays. The kids are coming out to visit and have meals, more than their parents did. LOL