Dear Fiona,
We’ve recently bought a fairly standard terraced house in north-west London, and, like so many have done before, we’re planning to extend the ground floor out into the garden in order to have more room. However, before we find an architect, we need to know exactly what we really want – and here my husband and I differ in opinion. I would like a proper dining room and a smaller kitchen, and he thinks we should go all out on a vast kitchen-diner that’s also sort of a playroom for the children, so that the sitting room can (occasionally) serve as his study. What’s more, every single one of our friends thinks that he’s right, and I’m wrong, and tell me that dining rooms are dead and we’ll never use it and that, if I do have one, I’ll always regret it.
However I think I would use it. I grew up with a dining room (he didn’t) so they’re already ingrained in how I live, and I like the idea of all of us – including our young children – sitting down to Sunday lunch, and my husband and I eating there together once the children have gone to bed, and it being a proper meal – not a meal with the detritus of cooking and life spread all around us, and a television on (yup, my husband wants a television in the kitchen, and he’s a sports addict, so I know we’ll end up with it on during meals.) Most of all, I want Christmas there, with the table beautifully laid and special china and the silver polished and candles twinkling. Can Christmas really be as special if the washing up is always in your eyeline? Also – I’m just a bit over the whole massive kitchen thing. Kitchens don’t really do it for me – I simply can’t get excited about cabinetry and appliances.
Please let me know how I can persuade my husband of the need for a dining room – or tell me why I should focus on a kitchen-diner after all? I mean, which approach is better? Is the dining room really dead?
Love,
An Appreciator of Formality XX
Dear Formality,
It was Dorothy Draper who wrote “eating is really one of your indoor sports. You play three times a day, and it’s well worth while to make the game as pleasant as possible.” So thank you for your letter, and bringing up an issue which is not to be sniffed at. It’s also not something that I can resolve on your behalf. For while, yes, Nicola Harding advises in her Dos and Don’ts of Decorating that you should consider your house fantasies, asking “have you dreamt about Christmas looking and feeling a certain way?” (and evidently, you have), a house has to function for all those who are living in it – and this particularly applies to houses where space is not necessarily in abundance.
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