Have you picked up the new Tribeza magazine yet? This month’s “Dinner Conversation” by Russell Gold (photographed by the incredible Annie Ray) got me thinking about the dining room. Like the family in the article, I too grew up eating at the dining table. It was a safe place. A place where we ate incredible, homemade food (thanks mom!) and talked about our day. It was a place where we had family meetings, birthday parties or study sessions. It was the central hub of our house.
As a teen, my parents built a new house out in the country. The new house was a stark contrast to the cute cottages of Bryker Woods I grew up in, which were small and compartmentalized with the dining table sitting between the kitchen and the hall that led to the bedrooms. This new house had an open concept layout. There was flow between the kitchen and dining that didn’t exist in my childhood homes. Would our evenings feel the same with our dining table so open? Yes! Yes, it did! In fact, our conversation lasted longer and got more in depth. We were able to cook together, eat together and clean together all in the same space! Our house had changed, but our dining table relationship had not. It remained a central point in our family and continues to be important to this day.
Dining rooms come in all types of layouts; not every family needs the same thing. Some may prefer to eat in a nook in their kitchen.
Some may prefer a more traditional layout of a separated dining room.
Others like the flow and flexibility of an open concept layout.
Photography by Tre Dunham, Jonathan Jackson, Paul Finkel, Patrick Wong, & Thomas McConnell
