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When Is a Dining Room Not a Dining Room?

When is a dining room not a dining room?

That's easy - when there's a grand piano in the middle of it! My daughter, Erica, placed a gleaming grand piano where most people would have a dining room table. This makes sense because she's a professional accompanist http://www.ericarome.com/ and needs a piano for her work. Her dining room is NOT a dining room.

It got me thinking. What else do people do to change a room into a unique expression of the owner? I mean, if you call it a "living room"...what the heck do you do in the rest of the house?

I've known people who took a bedroom and turned it into a luxurious walk-in closet. A formal dining room that was never used became a poker room and home to a regular gathering of old friends. Even a living room morphed into a media room with the addition of a massive wall-hung state-of-the-art TV and a comfortable sofa.

One family had a room in their Victorian farmhouse that was furnished with tree limbs, high shelves, and cozy beds for their cats - real ones. There was no room for a human to sit, but the "cat room" was heaven for these felines.

One family had even "decorated' their entire house with Christimas Pigs. This was quite a conversation starter.

And then there are the collectors. One man had a complete "turtle room" to house his collection. I've seen rooms and whole basements devoted to trains, dolls, chairs, owls, giraffes, hippos and butterflies.

Yes, there's a grand piano in my daughter's dining room.

So, what makes your home unique?

http://www.homerome.com/

Baltimore,md.

Posted by Margaret Rome-- HomeRome Realty Baltimore, Md. on 12/28/2006 11:12 PM

Comments (18)

christmas pigs, collections, ericaromecom

Originally posted at: Margaret Rome's Blog: When Is a Dining Room Not a Dining Room?

18 Comments on When Is a Dining Room Not a Dining Room?

DEC

2006

I toured a restored Victorian once; each room was like a museum; in each room was a rabbit from Alice and Wonderland; sometimes only two inches high; then there was (on third floor) an entire room of these rabbits!

Very whimsical and cool post, Margaret!

Just checked out Erica's website too. What a talent to have!

My family room is a dining area which makes a huge, open country kitchen type of feel for me! The dining room and living room is one big game room - pool table, foosball, darts.

We aren't formal people obviously :)

When I do floorplans, I don't like to label the rooms - this allows for a bit more creativity in how they use the rooms.

Switching room uses is often a feng shui solution to a better feeling home.

Pool tables or a table tennis table in the dining room is a personal favorite.

And she went to Oberlin!

Yep, a number of pool tables in LR and DRs here in MI. One had totally converted the LR to a pub with a pool table and installed pub 'stuff' like a beverage rail all the way around the room (for resting your beer).

Ok, Our house is pretty unique.

The downstairs is a concrete block house built in 1988. Then they picked up a fishing cabin off of its stilts form across the lake and put it on top. The fishing cabin is frame and was built in 1940. We have a wrap around "porch" on the second floor and we have a old metal roof. Our house looks like a barn from the outside. Since it's only the 2 of us we did the cardinal sin in Real Estate and turned a 3000 sq ft 4 bed into a 2 bed by knocking down interior walls. You enter our house on the second level through the kitchen and there is no master bath. We have 3 rooms that I don't know what the heck they are. One we use for storage, one is my office and the other is a play room for the grand kids. No one will ever want to buy our house. Unless of course they like having their own lake and no neighbors.

The family room that I built in our basement, became and still is sort of a wrestling room (both my boys wrestled in High School) a study room (that is where they have their laptops and do school work) and a game room. It is nothing like it started out to be but gets a lot of use.

DEC

2006

Carole, That must have been so much fun finding the minature Alice's in each room and then discovering a whole room. I would like to tour that property. And yes, I am very poud of Erica.

Renee, I love your informality and the way you are LIVING in your house.

Sharon, By not labeling rooms, we give the buyers more choices. If you have found out their needs, an extra bedroom becomes the home office they needed etc.

Chris and Maureen, That pool table can still be covered for use as a serving table and you have just multi-tasked the room. Yep Maureen, Erica went to Oberlin. Thanks for checking her out.

Bryant, It sounds like you made your house exactly what you needed. Live and enjoy now. Too many times people don't LIVE in their homes. They don't want to "mess up" a future sale! Do you think they miss the absolute joy of having the home be unique just for themselves, a place to call "our home".

George, I like the way you are USING your home. Creative with the spaces; Since you did the building, you & your boys have it the way you want it and when needed, can change.

I once went on a listing appointment for a 100 yr. old house that had only a few closets. One room was decorated ceiling to floor in Broncos memorabilia. They insisted that they were going to take it all down. I insisted that they keep it all up. We couldn't call it a bedroom anyway and the Broncos made it memorable.

JAN

2007

Dena, I think you allowed for that home to be memorable.

Forgot about all the sports rooms. One of my listings had a complete Baseball room which was more like a museum. THis same client had an extensive collection of miniture pocket knifes, all in cases and catalogued.

We had a Victorian in Celebration that used the living room as a library really hard to explain but they had terrific seating areas with coffee table books and magazines spread out. Very inviting, but during the holidays a true dining room is always an asset!

Teri,would like to see a photo of that.

Had a center hall colonial and they used the foyer as well as the living room and dining to set up tables for large parties, making the area one large dining room. Worked great.

Happy New Year to the best Rome this side of the Atlantic :-)

PS: very interesting ideas here! I love the library idea too .

Carole..best Rome this side of the Atlantic..Love it! 2007 is wonderful so far! Spent time with daughter and husband. Visited with a friend who is making a remarkable recovery. Went to a wonderful house party and ate really good chocolate. Friends and chocolate, what could be better!

Oh and I signed up a new listing tonight!

2007 is a good year so far and I have a positive post about the market that I will try to finish up tonight.

Since we didn't own dining room furniture for the first three houses, the dining room was a sitting room in one house and the toy room (when the kids were little) in the first two. In our current home we invested in a beautiful dining room set that was delivered right after we moved in, we even use it on occasion!

Moo

Wow you even use your dining room occasionally! LOL

Moo, Hope all your meals are happy ones around that table!

JAN

2008

Wonderful article, I actually do have a dining room and a game room. We use the pool table downstairs with a table pad so we can eat and entertain downstairs also. I ordered custom table pads for my pool table and dining room table from www.tablepadfactory.com there were a great website and just thought I would tell people. They offer protective table pads to protect your treasured table from heat and more. I recommend the table pad factory because they made my table pads perfect.

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