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You actually can have BOTH.. with a smart design. Sort of Open-ish, like my Florida single level home.
The kitchen is separate from the living-dining-core space but open via large sliders to the semi-covered and screened large patio for grilling. Keeps a lot of the cooking outside and creates a different, more casual environment to shmooz. Happily, the living room opens out to this space as well, so people can join in without traversing the kitchen where refrigerator-centric activities happen, thus forming a giant circle... to, uh, circulate in.
It's a GREAT entertaining house but my kitchen does NOT intrude into the adult living areas. I also have a den with french doors directly off the core which expands or contracts the space ad libitum.
Plantation shutters in all exposures give abundant light as desired.
I hate full-on OPEN where the house looks like a giant one-room cabin.A friend did this and the fridge is almost in the living room and there is no good wall for a big TV. It reminds me of an office lounge at work as it also gets very little light. Worst of both worlds.
I hate it, but she'll never know that.
Last edited by PamelaIamela; 03-18-2019 at 09:04 AM..
While not as sinister as your words suggest, absolutey YES! t's much cheaper to build without walls. Watch how fast new construction goes up. Bing Bang Boom...Throw up some plywood and move right in!
Nothing today is built to last. All the McMansions will be falling apart in less than 50 years. We had to do some minor updating to our first post WWII house and the contractor was frustrated that simply moving the steps from the house to the backyard was a multi day project because it was solid concrete.
I have the same issue. The steps started sinking a bit (probably from chipmunks tunneling under) and we are unable to jack them up, they are solid. I don't feel like spending four figures to hire a company to move steps a few inches...
The builders got done charging more to leave the walls out of a house, so now they can charge more to put them in. In 50 or years, they will start charging to leave them out again. Charging more to leave them out so much better for the builders. Higher price for less materials and work. Now they will convince us having walls is better/more trendy and the fancier more exclusive homes will have walls. Eventually that will become the norm and even the cheap houses will have walls. Then they will come out with the new high end idea no one has heard of - Open Concept floor plans. People will say "Wow I want that, what a great idea, why didn't they think of that before. . . . .. .
I think some people are very uncomfortable with change.....
Why make it sound like those who like open floor plans are nothing more than a bunch of lemmings who blindly follow commercial gimmicks? Every think the market followed what people like?
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You actually can have BOTH.. with a smart design. Sort of Open-ish, like my Florida single level home.
The kitchen is separate from the living-dining-core space but open via large sliders to the semi-covered and screened large patio for grilling. Keeps a lot of the cooking outside and creates a different, more casual environment to shmooz. Happily, the living room opens out to this space as well, so people can join in without traversing the kitchen where refrigerator-centric activities happen, thus forming a giant circle... to, uh, circulate in.
It's a GREAT entertaining house but my kitchen does NOT intrude into the adult living areas. I also have a den with french doors directly off the core which expands or contracts the space ad libitum.
Plantation shutters in all exposures give abundant light as desired.
I hate full-on OPEN where the house looks like a giant one-room cabin.A friend did this and the fridge is almost in the living room and there is no good wall for a big TV. It reminds me of an office lounge at work as it also gets very little light. Worst of both worlds.
I hate it, but she'll never know that.
My parents have a 3000 sq.ft. house. 10ft ceilings on the 2nd floor, 12ft ceilings on the first/main level. Exposed post and beam. Never has a large house felt so small. You AREN'T next to each other but it certainly feels that way. My mother has still not learned to partition living spaces with furnishings and plants so it's all lined along the walls like they're in queue. The only walls on the main floor are a half-bath protruding from the center of the back wall. Every time someone goes in or out of the bathroom, it's center stage. The flush is so clear. All noises are. Every noise is clear and loud, from the bathroom and from everywhere else. Every sound echoes so you feel like you're right next to that person. Different conversations drown out each other. A whiny child eclipses them all. Everyone tries to speak over the competing noise. It's dreadful.
She gets furious when family wants to stay with us instead of her and took to telling them we'll be out of town so they didn't ask. (They know better now.) Our house IS smaller... almost half the size. There's not enough room here, apparently. Well, it sure FEELS bigger. To everyone else, just not her.
We also have separate rooms, a patio off one room, a garden off another, a porch off the dining room and living room with separate entrances at each end of the porch. There are places to spread out of any people-crush. You don't feel boxed in. Her house is like a large silverware drawer without dividers... but not having dividers makes for chaos, no matter how large the drawer is.
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