buying home in dallas, tx without living room.

[momof2dfw]

Originally Posted by dweej

Good point about the dining room. Dinner parties are all the rage these days, and even if someone never actually has one, I know a lot of people who like the idea that they could have a nice sit-down dinner if they wanted to.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas it is nice to sit in an area that is not the kitchen. And if the gathering is large you have two places to seat people. Kids in the kitchen/breakfast room and adults in the dining room. About the only use for a formal living room nowadays is for a piano or a place to put the Christmas tree if you want it in a front window.

[sale111]

thanks everyone for your advices. i value ur responses very very much. really appreciative of all of your time.

[5stones]

We had our "formal living" room converted to an office, put up 6ft french doors and a wall separtating it from the dining room. We have the computer in there and a sofa bed, it's sooo much better use of space now. (we have a family room off the kitchen, a TV room for the kids upstairs and a "sitting room" in our master bedrroom...how may places do you need to "sit"? lol! If the next people want a formal living room all they have to do is keep the doors open.

NOw a formal dining is another issue, I wouldn't consider a house without one. We have big family dinners etc... and whenever we have company we always eat in there because I can put 10 around the table.

[lh_newbie]

Funny - my wife and I were discussing this just the other day.

We have a large, central living room - roughly 16' x 24' that has a fireplace on one end of the room. We don't have a "formal living". Our breakfast area is pretty large - it has a built-in buffet/storage and we have a 6-person oval table in there that isn't cramped in the least. We do have a formal dining that's 12' x 14' with another 6-person table (we've discussed getting a bigger table, but just hate to spend the money). From a resale perspective, we put hardwoods in the "dining", but feel that with the size of the breakfast - the dining room could easily be used as a formal living, so we have that flexibility. The thing we liked about our home when we bought it was that it had great flow - much better flow than many of the other homes in our neighborhood. I personally think formals are a waste, but the comment about dinner parties coming back into style is totally true. We have people over for dinner probably 2x per month on average (especially now that it's renovated).

So I would have a tendency to think that a formal dining is more important than a formal living - but if the home is laid out in a way that the room could do either function, that's even better (but you better market it that way, cause people will see either a couch and TV and think LR or see a dining table and think dinnig only).