We love our bar and so do our neighbours with many Friday night fizzies. It opens up to our entertaining area, and doubles as a kids area during the day. For parties and impromptu gatherings we push the lounge back against the wall and open the folding doors and when its getting late the doors get closed and it is quite sound proof so the music can be cranked. It suits our busy lifestyle with most of our entertaining done at home and it is seperate but still part off the house.

I have a lovely north facing window overlooking bush. Great to be able to connect with nature while working.

Clever planning of the location and taking into consideration the overall usage of the house by others can resolve all these issues. I have worked from home for many years. I have worked out how to do it :)

We've eaten in the dining room or outside for the past 20 years. When the children were younger, we had the kitchen table angled off the end of a kitchen bench with just enough space for the whole family to eat at it, and we only used the dining room when we had guests. I found that saved a lot of work. I now hate that we have to set the dining room table for just the two of us. I've tried using stools at the servery (and I use those for the grandchildren when they visit) but my husband refuses to sit at the servery, so we plan to renovate the kitchen and re-shape it with a standard-height table on the end of the servery. We are doing away with the existing dining room to make the living room larger, and security-screening a large covered outdoor area to make a combined dining and outdoor kitchen. Since there's only two of us now, we don't see the need for an indoor dining room. If we have guests, we always eat outside. The area is well sheltered and will be partly enclosed. If it's cold, we can set up a folding table next to the kitchen table to extend the indoor eating space. The kitchen table will seat 5 anyway, so it would be rare to want to eat inside and need the extra seating.