I am going to reply however my opinions are just that... mine... and I have no clue about whats "in" or the right thing to do : )

1- wall to dining room, I would leave it. Unless I misunderstood you said this was your game room and you don't need the seating or need this to be a peninsula.

2- I use my dining room as an office, eliminated the dining table completely. I am having doors installed just because I don't want people to walk thru it and I want to be able to shut the door. I am making sure the doors are french pocket doors and keeping them wide in case the next owner wants a dining room.

3- I like to have a space where I can have people sit and chat without inviting them into the rest of the house. If my formal living room was big enough I would put a dining table AND a sitting area in it because that is what would work for me and my family so that we would get the most usage out of the space. It looks like you have 17 1/2 ft of space. Assuming you may have a dining table and buffet taking up 12' you could put 2 wing chairs with a small table between them as you come in. Houzz has many pics of dining rooms used as both.

As for your other space filling to large, not sure if you meant your family room. You should post that in the decor forum. I am sure that you will get lots of tips on how to make multiple seating areas. Same for the dining room. You would get lots of help on that forum for real pro's at decorating.

Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: [sitting area in dining room[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/hidden-hills-traditional-dining-room-los-angeles-phvw-vp~3749293)

Hi mellyc-- Thanks so much for taking the time to respond! I really appreciate the feedback. You are right that we really don't need the extra seating and that right now we are using the dining room space as an office/game room so that might not be attractive to open up to. I was imagining that the kids would someday use that space for homework so being open to it would help me keep an eye on them (especially if we have computers there to keep an eye on them.) I have been going back and forth between the two ideas exactly for the reasons you mention.

I love your idea about using the front formal living room as a sitting room and dining room. I will look at houzz for the pics. Thanks for the great idea. When I get around to decorating I will check out the decor forum for suggestions. I made some typo on my original post which made my statement about our living room make zero sense. I meant that we are currently using the living room as the dining room but there is a lot of empty/unused space since the room is large. Your suggestion about the sitting area solve that issue. Thanks again!

I've been just reading posts on this forum for about a year in prep for this project so really appreciate anyone willing to help.

Have you posted on the kitchen forum?

It might just be me but I can't really look at your layout because of the graph lines. Its really distracting. Maybe you would get more responses if you used regular graph paper and drew it at 6" = 1 square.