Have you killed off your Dining Room?

[Nigel Watts]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=EXMTWIQEHBJ1RQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2008/01/29/ndining129.xml

I knocked through two rooms in my basement (formerly the kitchen and servants' rooms) to make a kitchen/diner. My original ground floor dining room was always connected to the drawing room, via an arch with folding doors (the doors have long since disappeared). I am now converting this into a library, with a dining table. Whether we will ever have the energy to lug food and plates up the stairs from the basement remains to be seen. I blame the demise of the dining room on not being able to afford servants.

 

[MdB]

We will be losing our dining room when we do our house update but we won't be losing the dining room table. A subtle but important point.

 

[Nemesis]

I have a very nice dining room. What used to be the parlour... but what was once the kitchen is now the - living room? Lounge? Certainly not the drawing room... and what was the scullery is now the kitchen, pending conversion of the adjoining barn.

Confused?

Mind you we only use it as a dining room on highdays and holidays and when we have guests, otherwise it doubles as a workspace/dumping ground. Yes it's bit of a trek.

However - I doubt the accuracy of the figures in that article, you have to wonder how they can possibly know, and I recall reading not so long ago that dining rooms and dinner parties were making a comeback.

Newspsers, journalists - columns to fill...

 

[Nigel]

A recent edition of the Antique Trade Gazette also confirmed that dining table and dining chair prices continue to fall as demand tails off (with the exception of the absolute top quality stuff which continues to rise in price).

 

[Nemesis]

Well dahling - one doesn't buy one's furniture, you know...

 

[Nigel]

Quite, but parents (bless) refuse to pass the furniture on while they are still alive; what is one to do if they are so selfish. A set of chairs I bought at auction 6/7 years ago is worth a lot less now. Just as well I bought them because I liked them rather than as an investment. One of the great myths is that buying antiques is a good investment. If you buy retail it is very unlikely indeed and even if you buy at auction you can still get hammered - silver auction prices are still a fraction of those fetched at the end of the eighties, Victorian paintings have crashed in value, davenports are down etc etc.

At least buying antiques is recycling and carbon friendly.

 

[MdB]

At the house clearance end of auction sales, I came to the conclusion it was cheaper to buy solid wood furniture than it was to buy firewood. When I bought my first house, I kitted the entire house out with 1900 to 1930 furniture for less than £100. Not to everyones taste (including mine to be honest) but the workmanship and materials was vastly better than most things you buy now.

 

[Penners]

One of the greatest pleasures in life is to sit down around a table with family and/or friends, for a meal and a good chinwag.

Frankly, it doesn't matter a damn whether it's in the sitting/dining room, the kitchen/diner, or in a proper dining room. What matters is the company.

And, of course, the chocolate pud.

 

[Nemesis]

I do start off at the table, but have been known to gently slide under it...

I love my dining room, especially with the fire lit and candles.

Beans on toast taste so much better there than the usual slot slumped on the sofa/settee...

 

[Penners]

Beans on toast taste so much better there than the usual slot slumped on the sofa/settee...

Surely it's "beans on toast" on the sofa, but "haricots à façon anglaise" in the dining room.

 

[Nigel Watts]

Penners has hit the nail on the head as usual. Sitting down to a good meal is one of life's great pleasures. One of my wife's indian cousins from Delhi visited us at the weekend and I treated him to some good English food - with no toning up of the daunting blandness for which our native fare is so renowned: Lancashire hot pot, followed by steamed jam sponge pudding with home made custard, washed down Marston's Pedigree ale served in pewter tankards. I am pleased to say he had several helpings of everything, while stoically refusing the bottle of Tabasco sauce proffered appologetically by my wife. When in Rome ....

 

[Juju]

When the kids argue over whose turn it is on the playstation or computer in their playroom, I keep threatening them that I'll take the room off them and turn it into a formal dining room. Mind you, that would just mean they would move into our peaceful living room and argue there instead.

 

[Nemesis]

Pedigree in PEWTER TANKARDS?

Eeh lad that's heresy!

 

[arl]

We have been pondering about this recently.
I really like having lots of seperate rooms (far less drafty), more walls to put furniture against and hang my clutter on, but everyone that comes round sais, "oh you could open up you the little kitchen into the dining room and make a lovely kitchen-dinner".
The trouble is with a kitchen-diner is im not sure i want my dinner guests watching me cook, (actually what i mean is i am quite sure my dinner guests wont want to eat once they have seen me cooking -all those escaping food items that currently get washed and popped back on the heat for a couple of minutes). Im sure the kitchen-dinner will go out of favour just as living-dinning rooms have. Im just concerned that until then we will have trouble selling the house with our old fashioned victorian layout. But what do i know, im still waiting for avacado bathroom suites to make a come back.

 

[michael]

A friend of mine in Brighton recently had the front room and rear dining room in their Victorian terraced home, knocked through into one. Where as at one time, all that was required was a sufficiently sized RSJ, to replace the supporting wall, the building inspector now stipulates that a complete one piece square steel frame has to be installed i.e. a frame that goes across the ceiling, down both walls and under the floor to form a square. Apparently so many people have been knocking their rooms through that they are worried about the terraces falling down and insist on this extra stiffening/strengthening.

Did I not here on the radio the other day that something like 3000 rooms are lost in the UK per year from knocking through or was it 3000 per week?

 

[Nigel Watts]

I think I may have been rumbled by Nemesis. I have to admit that my Lancashire Hot Pot receipe was from Old Etonian Hugh Fearnley-Whatnot's Meat book and made with lamb purchased at Waitrose, and the beer was bought in specially (wine is our normal tipple).

 

[Nemesis]

I do recall, when William Hague was Leader of the Poncy Party, he did a telly prog oop in Yorkshire to try to show what a Gritty Almost One Of Them Northern Chap Of The People he was, he sat outside with a bottle of beer and a pint glass, and poured it. Straight into the glass, which filled with froth.

We real ale drinkers had him rumbled in an instant. As indeed did we champagne drinkers.

(For the benefit of Wor Nige - you tip it gently, pouring with care down the side of the glass. If bottle conditioned, even more so, don't stir up the sediment and leave it in the bottle. Straight glass, no handle.)

 

[Nemesis]

Surely it's "beans on toast" on the sofa, but "haricots à façon anglaise" in the dining room.

Well Penners, whatever - the end result is the same.

 

[Matt Green]

Any house I live in is required to have a table big enough to play boardgames on and 5 chairs. Dinner can also be seved on these tables as long as any spillages are cleaned promptly.

Matt
-back form Ireland

 

[Penners]

We recently went to spend a weekend with some friends who have extensively "remodelled" their house in Gloucestershire. They've spent huge amounts of money, including the addition of an en suite bathroom for every bedroom.

However.... for reasons best known to themselves, they have made each bathroom a "walk-through" from its bedroom - ie: no door.

Now, I'm sorry, but there are times in life when all of us, no matter how close our personal relationships may be, need to close a door and have a bit of privacy. And for goodness' sake, who wants to lie in bed and watch their partner/spouse sitting on the loo?

To say nothing of the aromal offence.