What to do with this room?

Lady_1981

Hy H and I close on our house on Monday.  We've purchased a split level, and are having a hard time figuring out what to do with this one particular room.

If you would kindly imagine - Walk in the front door, and your in this room.  To the left is your kitchen; which is large enough for our kitchen table.  This room also has stairs that go upstairs to the bedrooms, and then there's stairs that go downstairs to the basement (split level).

The room is hardwood, and the basement is carpet. This room also has a cathedral ceiling.   I was thinking of having the basement be more of a reck room, and this room as a living room.  My H thinks that it would be better off as a formal dining room.

We have a little one on the way, so I think the reck room would be better, along with his video games, and upstairs can be more of a formal living room.  I think that a formal dining room wouldn't get that much use at this time.

 

Does anyone else have a set up similar to this?

Any thoughts on formal living room/dining room space?  

TarHeels&Rebels

So your house is a tri-level?  Basement on the bottom, kitchen in the middle, and bedrooms upstairs?  Seems like the logical choice to me would be a family room for people to hang out.  With a baby on the way, I imagine it's going to become a playroom, whether you intend for it to or not, so I'd set it up with casual but attractive furniture.  If you won't use a formal DR, no sense in setting it up as one.

PS - it's rec as in recreation

toothpastechica

I would agree with setting it up as a family room...dont worry about making it super formal, but a nicer seating area, if the kitchen is on this level, this is the level  your kid will probably learn to crawl and learn to walk in just because you wont want to be going up and down stairs all the time to check on dinner, etc. So make it livible. I agree if you wont use a formal dinning room there is no point dedicating a whole room in a house to one!

UngryIppo

I would agree with other posters - it should be a family room.  When we remodeled we put a small "sitting room" near the kitchen and the "family room" was placed upstairs.  We never use the family room but the tiny sitting room is always used.  I don't see a formal diving room being used as much especially with a little one coming.

Good luck - take a little time and that may help as well. . . 

edwardschristina87

Even I believe that using the whole room as dining room would be wastage of space at this point. You should use it as Living room at this point and get it remodeled once LO is grown enough you can have the living room shifted upstairs and use the current living room as Dining room.

StevieJo

Sounds like I have the exact same set up!

Checkout my pics to see how I've set mine up.....

http://theturnerpage.blogspot.com/p/house-tour.html

But I will tell you my downstairs is my rec room and "that room" is my living room.  However, the plan originally was to keep the living room more formal.  But one thing I've noticed is that if people are over (or even just my own family) kicking back watching TV while I'm cooking dinner, they are so far away and I don't like it.  So I actually just set a goal for myself that I will be putting a nice tv stand and tv in there.  That way I'm still a part of the action while in the kitchen.   However downstairs will still be my kick back rec room, where we retire to after dinner to watch movies, play games, etc...

JessicaLovesBrian

Kind of sounds like the same set up as my split level, with maybe a slight variation. I use the room that the front door opens into as the living room. We don't have a tv in there, just couches, a console and a recliner. It's used mostly when we have guests because the arrangement is good for conversations. The basement is where we have our family room/rec room. Although our living room isn't extremely formal (i.e. "stuffy"), it's free of clutter. The rec room is where all the kids toys land, has a tv, is uber casual.

Summer2011Bride

Small threadjack.

@StevieJo: I looked at your blog and love how you decorated! We're moving into a house in Aug. and are currently picking out paint colors to sample. Do you know what the name/brand of the paint is that you used in your living room?

StevieJo

Summer2011: Yep! It's Aspen Gray by Valspar, but we had it mixed in Olympic One.

And thanks for the compliment!