We live in an era of multi-purpose, open-plan spaces, and of all the rooms in a typical home, the kitchen is seeing perhaps the most fundamental changes.

It is an era where we have bid fond farewell to the kitchen triangle and the tiny kitchen isolated from the rest of the house. Instead, kitchens are social spaces where we cook together, eat together and are brought closer by the joy of food.

With modern homes and industrial lofts with huge open-plan living areas, this is fine, but did you know that you can transform almost any kitchen into a cooking, dining and entertaining space with the right furniture pieces and some imagination?

Having worked for 15 years solving construction and design issues using beautifully rugged raw materials, here is how a scaffold board corner bench can radically shift your kitchen and give you new space and entertaining opportunities you never knew you had.

A dine-in kitchen or eat-in area is a place where everyone in the home can gather round, sit around a table and eat together, as opposed to having meal preparation, cooking and eating in distinctly separate rooms.

It is often the biggest motivation to have an open plan space which combines your living, dining and cooking areas into one large room, but what can you do if this is not an option for you?

The solution is typically a dine-in kitchen, where a carefully shaped and sized table and seats are placed in an underused space in your kitchen.

It can be a particularly difficult design to pull off. You need to design a space that is comfortable and roomy enough for people to sit in, but also not encroach on the actual kitchen workspace.

Designing around a small kitchen can be tricky at the best of times, and the best way to do so is to make the most of every inch available.

With that in mind, one suggestion for enhancing the appeal and functionality of a small kitchen is to fit a diner area instead of a conventional kitchen table.

This can work very well at times, but you need to ensure that you carefully design your diner island with enough practical space and choose the right chairs, stools or scaffold board benches to comfortably use the space for both meal-preparation and dining as and when you need it.

In general, it is typically easier to integrate a dining area with cleverly designed corner seating into your small kitchen than a diner, although with some creative thought, the right materials and the right design, anything is possible.

Dining areas are about having enough room to sit and enough room to comfortably eat, so adding a dining area is about creating a clear zone in your kitchen and maximising the use of the space available to bring a welcoming entertaining space.

Ultimately, whilst other kitchen renovations will help to unlock the space you need to fit a comfortable dining area, your small kitchen will thrive or falter on your choice of table and seating.

Specifically, the key to a great small dining area is not to rely on freestanding and free-moving chairs, but instead to integrate your seating more completely into the space.

In most cases, this means incorporating corner seating, which can fit more snugly into the wall, integrate with existing furniture, and even potentially provide space for additional storage in some configurations.

More commonly known as booth seating, a banquette is a bench that is integrated into a seating area, and whilst it is most commonly associated with restaurants and diners, it has become an increasingly popular way to set up a dining nook in a corner, an alcove or underneath a window.

Banquettes can be as simple as fitting a wooden bench to the back wall of your kitchen, or can be a more elaborate integrated seating solution that incorporates a back, cushioning and even potentially a table designed around the booth area.

This versatility has also made them especially popular; you can design them around any space and any need that you have, but they have become particularly popular in kitchens and multi-functional spaces.

Given the huge influx of banquet corner nooks, diners and booth-style seating fresh from a particularly pleasant restaurant, corner benches are having a particular moment in interior design circles.

There are a lot of reasons for this, but the simplest and biggest is that it coincides with a trend for integrated furniture designed around the needs of a room.

Interior design often goes through cycles of integration and open versatility. There is an oscillation from the likes of the capsule hotel or the Brutalist Barbican to open-plan converted warehouse lofts and cottages.

A lot of kitchens in older homes are tiny, because the idea was that cooking and serving food should take place in relative isolation, something that is simply not the case anymore.

Cooking is a social activity and has been since the days of Fanny Cradock, and the idea that cooking is both a public spectacle and a hobby for everyone to enjoy. It is kind of unthinkable to think of living anywhere without being able to cook a few basic meals at least.

Because of this, kitchens have become more multipurpose spaces, but if you live in a small home with a kitchen designed in such a way that knocking through a wall is impossible, the alternative is to bring the dining room into your kitchen.

This requires you to maximise space, which in turn means using clever out-of-the-box solutions such as corner benches, integrated seating and fold-out tabletops.

• Integrate it into your kitchen design from the very start.
• Choose a table that allows guests to sit comfortably.
• Choose comfortable textiles to add a luxurious finish.

Ready to bring authentic industrial character to your dine-in kitchen? Explore our collection of corner benches and furniture made from reclaimed and new scaffold board, each seamlessly integrating rustic heritage, clean design and robust functionality.

The Scaff Shop works with customers on many levels. Some need more time, tools, or necessary skills; no matter the reason, you can purchase everything you need, and it can be delivered to your door as a finished product. Some customers have the time, skills and tools that may want to build your corner desk, and that is cool with us, too! What we have offered below is a list of the products required to make your perfect corner desk.

First up are the Scaffold Boards. One thing to remember when buying reclaimed scaffold boards is that they have previously been used. The life-altering wear and tear changes to those boards make them unique compared to new boards. For this, you will need four six-foot boards and two two-foot boards. Once the boards have been cut and joined together using biscuits, glue, and clamps, they will make the desktop. Sounds easy. Well, I'm sure there will be some sweat and tears before you finish.

Once the desktop is joined, you can start the finishing process by rubbing it down and selecting the type of oil you want to use to finish your desk. The last part is deciding what legs you want to use with your desk, which depends on the look you are going for.