Do we need a dining room in retirement?
 

How often do you use your dining room. Is it just a decoration?

Just curious

We hardly ever eat dinner there but use it for playing cards/games with friends all the time.

It really all depends upon your life style and what "you" want to do! We use the dining room for Holidays with Family or for Special occassions and also use it when we have neighborhod parties to lay out the food etc. Our dining room is very functional for us while the breakfeast area is used for everyday use or casual dining engagements with friends.

That is a very good question indeed!
 

We have set up this home much more informally than our home up north. This dining room table is used for puzzles, games, buffet style dinners as mentioned, my sketching, lap top computer, and for family dinners (when they visit). It is used really more than the bigger one we have in Cincinnati. I know why you asked and I thought long and hard about having two tables so close to each other, (some have one on the lanai as well) I think if we do, or more like when we do become full timers in TV, I will make the dining room in the next house down here more of a library with double desks for our computers.

I find that I am not entertaining people in our home nearly as much as we did before retirement. We go out to dinner much more with friends and may have casual coffees and neighborhood get togethers that are much more informal and that spill out to the drive way and garage.

We bought a courtyard villa so we wouldn't have to buy a "dining room set" in addition to a kitchen table. Our kitchen table works well for any amount of people (within reason)!

We chose not to have a dining room table and don't miss it. My formal days are over. 99% of the time it is just the two of us eating at home. A larger great room is more to our liking rather than the dining area. Really is a personal preference. I think it is best to live in your new home for a while and get a feel for what meets your needs & likes.

Nah No DR
 

We elected not to go with a DR. That way you don't have to invite people over for dinner because you don't have anywhere for them to sit. :D

I chose not to have a dining room either. Instead went with bar stools at the counter. Seems to leave much more room.

Becky:)

:agree: We also chose to be more informal and having an eat-in kitchen and the patio set in the lanai serves us well for dining which then gives us a large comfy great room with a conversation setup where the DR would be and the other half of the LR has our TV area with two comfy recliners that can also swivel around to join the conversation area. Works out fine for us.

We use our dining room a lot , thats where the phone book is to look up numbers to ..
The Outback, Olive Garden , orange blossom, cane garden, Mallory, Perkins , Denny's, Terra Del sol, Katie bells , golden corral, Bennigans, Ocala Elks, Bellview Elks , pannara's , too jays,

Red Lobsta, on and on ......

I didn't know what a dining room was for until I read this thread.....

Very Large Fumar .. .:popcorn:

Thank you all for the opinions

Yoda

We use our dinning room about 4 times a month on average and more when we have family down. Other times we use it for a Jig Saw Puzzle or for a craft my wife is doing. We find that our dinning room is under utilized but we are glad it is there when we need it.

No dinning room for us. We made the area which was for a dinning room an extension to our living room. We eat our meals either at our kitchen table, bar stools at the counter or at the table in the lanai. We gave our dinning room set away before we left PA and we do not miss it one bit.