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When I owned single family homes, I always had a living room and dining room. I LOVE dining rooms for nice dinner and of course holiday dinners. We have a dining room table (currently in storage) that seats 12 and we used it quite a bit. Living rooms are a nice place to sit and visit with friends, gather around a fireplace, etc. Of course it is wasteful if they're never used, but we used ours quite a bit.
What I meant is that right now, our living room serves as my two year olds play pen. It's always a mess. I'd love to have a different room for her to make a mess.
A dining room, we'd definitely use if it were spacious enough. Right now our "dining room" is used as my office. It's just not large enough to sit comfortably behind a table, especially since we live in a "railroad" style apartment that requires a certain amount of space to walk through the room. So we ditched our table and eat on tray tables. Not the most gentile way to live....
If we have a real space to eat, we will get a dining table again, and start entertaining again. Hopefully some outdoor space with a BBQ. DH is a great griller.
I love my house.........it's nearly 6000 square feet. (Although living in a smaller house would be nice for cleaning purposes!!) I have 2 other siblings who are both in college. So with only my parents and I, it definitely can be "too much space!!" But I know my parents would never want to part with the house... It's an older house, from about 1930. My mom especially did most of the decorating and is so proud of her job on the house! It was so much work to fix it up the way WE wanted!!!! Not to brag or anything like that, but this is what I really think is cool about our house:
1) We have 7 bedrooms - Each one has their own bathroom. (We also have 2 other separate bathrooms)
2) We have a laundry chute - I just always thought that was cool....those are like the things they usually have in mansions. I've heard from some sources that any house 5000 square feet and above is a mansion. But I've heard from other sources that anything above 8000 square feet is a mansion, but I don't really know.
3) We have a sound-proof room - Yes, it is one of my favorite rooms in the house!! It's actually the family room, it has my parents' bar and wine cellar inside it, and our flat-screen. The walls are sooo thick you can't hear anything!!!
4) Our bedroom doors require keys to open them - I love that...it really feels like I'm in a hotel.
5) Speaking of which we do have an indoor pool and 2 indoor hot tubs - The pool is in the basement, along with one of the hot tubs.. The other hot tub is next to my parents' room.
6) We have a mini movie theater - It was totally our idea to add this in - There was this huge part of the basement completely unoccupied and my parents weren't using it to store anything so they just made it a screening room. It can fit 10 people and actually my mom bought old movie theater seats from about the time period the house was built...so it works perfectly!!!
7) We have a living room/library and 2 dining rooms - My parents, my mom especially loves fine dining and hosting dinner parties...also my dad's favorite thing to do is collect old books so we made the living room a library too.
8) We have a 6 car garage - My dad loves cars, so that's perfect!!
9) I have a whole separate closet just for my bags - My room is big and I'm a total girly-girl!!!
10) PROBABLY MY FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE HOUSE - The furniture and antiques!!! Just the way they look in the house, I just love it... a lot of leather and velvet! My parents NEVER accept anything cheaply made... that's why old houses are great because back when my house was built they didn't have things like plastic and cheap wood which can sometimes make houses look so tacky!!!
Yeah I think it would be pretty cool to live in a small house, I'm just not used to that... it definitely would be less to clean. A cleaning lady is one thing we don't have because my mom is very house-proud and loves to clean..... but I do have my own room to clean and I do think people with smaller houses have it much easier!!!
No. McMansions are the multi-family homes of the next decade once people get tired of paying $800 monthly utility bills.
I know this is an old post but since the thread was revived, I live in a 5 bedroom, 3 bath home with a pool pump running 6-8 hrs a day dependent upon the season.
The most my electric bill has ever been was $211 and that was a summer month when we had company for 2 weeks. Last month was about $150 and the next few months it usually goes down to about $80 or $90. Of course we get the capital credit from the electric coop and some months we pay $0.
I would say on average our electric bill is $110 a month. Throwing out ridiculous figures to try and bolster your post just makes you look foolish.
Could'nt agree with you more! I love the Alaskan "pioneer" mentality. I live in Minnesota and culturally, we are very similar. McMansions are for people that are totally disconnected from nature, spirituality and everything that is "real".The pleasure of waking up to a bird or a wild animal is priceless. This society has gone so astray from the basics. Happiness is in the small things not the big cookie cutter souless home.
Oh some of these old posts are priceless. I don't consider my home a McMansion but I do live in a 5 bedroom 3 bath decently sized home. Right now it is just me, the wife and the dog.
Why do you think that someone in a larger home can't be close to nature? I am on over 3 acres, within walking distance to a 44,000 acre preserve and have a multitude of wildlife on my property.
Say hello to my little friend.
In addition to this guy we have fox, racoons, hawks, bobcats, deer, gopher tortoise, turkey, armadillo, possum and I can go on and on. That is just what we have seen on the property. There are also bear, hogs and panther in the preserve among others and some do come outside the preserve.
Happiness is what makes someone happy, not what makes you happy.
Do you really need a huge anything? Car, refrigerator, TV screen? Who are you trying to impress, why do you need to impress them, and why do you think big stuff will impress anybody? Maybe they're just shaking their heads, or laughing at you.
True, it's your life and you live how you want to live, but there is a difference between want and need. Need is like in blessings11's case, who definately needs a large home with 10+ members in their family (btw, good luck on finding your new home blessings11).
Living alone in a 2700 sq foot home though? It's your choice, and I'm not criticizing you, but personally I wouldn't know what to do with all that space.
I'm guessing I would only use a few of the rooms while the rest would be mostly unoccupied. I guess I can add a pool table and maybe other furniture, but that would still leave a lot of empty areas.
'
I don't consider 2700 square feet to be huge.
My husband and I don't have any kids at home. He works out of town often. So, I am often alone in our home, which is 2500 square feet. We have four bedrooms, two living areas, and three bathrooms. Seems like a lot for two people?
Well, we also have siblings, five grown kids and seven grandkids, who visit often. The two guest rooms are put to good use on a regular basis, as are the two living areas (it's nice to have a place where the little kids can hang out and we can CLOSE THE DOOR to drown out the sound of cartoons!). Also, those three bathrooms come in very handy with a lot of company.
Our home is very comfortable and casual - not pretentious and formal. Also, since it's new construction (quality construction by the way), it's very low maintenance, which is important since I am here alone so often. It's also well built and well insulated, so the utility bills are low.
Not a day goes by that I don't wander through my house and thank God for the blessing of a safe, comfortable home.
Do we NEED all this space? Of course not - all we NEED is a roof over our head and food in our mouths, and one pair of underwear, one shirt, one pair of pants, a coat and a pair of shoes. We don't even NEED a toilet!
So - it's all a matter of perspective, and we wade into murky water when we try to impose our own values onto others.
Yeah it went from Soprano houses to McMansions in just a few years. How sorry do I feel for the middle class when I see them in homes like that. The soprano houses are more for the middle class but the McMansions are for the really rich, IMHO.
Those what I call soprano houses with almost an acer of land because they have 3 to 4 children are very expensive to heat and cool during the seasons. But hey get the built in pool with pets and nice cars because they want to say hey look at what I can afford. That's one reason the other is because they want their children raised in safe neighborhoods must keep them safe from those other types of people, you know who they are. Another reason is because they are fed up with being packed in like sardines because the idiot elected officials in by far too many municipalities didn't plan for growth and took away side property.
Do you really need a huge anything? Car, refrigerator, TV screen? Who are you trying to impress, why do you need to impress them, and why do you think big stuff will impress anybody? Maybe they're just shaking their heads, or laughing at you.
You keep watching TV on your 27". I'll watch my football on my 55" until I upgrade to a bigger one. My fridge needs to be big so I make sure I always have an ample supply of beer.
I understand that you don't want to stick a 4 person family in a 2 bedroom condo, but do you really need a huge McMansion out in the outer exurbs or in the middle of nowhere? Where it would take you forever to drive anywhere?
Why do you need that much space? Are you planning to build a baseball park in the backyard? Or a ballroom inside? I'm just curious.
I was one of thirteen children and was raised in a three bedroom one bath house. We managed because we had to.
As a adult, I started with a small house, got a bigger one and then bigger one's still. I've sense regained my senses, downsized and remarkably, live very comfortably in a house the same size and vintage as the one I grew up in. Full cycle sans sharing!
... I've sense regained my senses, downsized and remarkably, live very comfortably in a house the same size and vintage as the one I grew up in. Full cycle sans sharing!
But are there 15 people living in that same sized house? Hard to use this as a valid comparison if there are 4 or 5 people in a 3 bedroom 1 bath compared to 15.
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Not to brag or anything like that, but this is what I really think is cool about our house:
I'm just curious.
