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It's a cheapened way to build homes now. I also feel if you need to hide in your house (a home invasion or children playing hide-n-seek, for example) that would be hard. Open plans cost a lot more to heat/air condition even when the house is properly insulated. I don't like those houses at all.
It's a cheapened way to build homes now. I also feel if you need to hide in your house (a home invasion or children playing hide-n-seek, for example) that would be hard. Open plans cost a lot more to heat/air condition even when the house is properly insulated. I don't like those houses at all.
I'm not sure how it is cheaper....
it cost me a bunch more money to get the structural steel and microlams and to bury it in the ceiling to achieve an open floorplan. it would have been much cheaper if I included a dropped header and a main supporting wall.
I love the open floor plan. I am a better cook because of it.
I don't feel "banished" to the kitchen like the "little woman" when we have company. I can prepare my meals and still feel very much a part of the social exchange. I also spend more time cleaning my kitchen etc because I can multi task... clean while watching (or at least listening to ) TV. I can also talk to my family while in the kitchen working and it is not an inconvenience to talk... no having to sit on the hard kitchen chairs while talking to me... DH can lounge on the couch and talk to me while I am cooking or baking.
I can easily help DD with homework at the kitchen table (in the kitchen nook) and still keep an eye on dinner.
I'm not a fan of one giant room and that's it, I'm more a fan of a modified open floor plan. A kitchen that opens to a family/hearth room is lovely imo! I enjoy being in the kitchen and having a space for friends/family to hang out while I'm in there makes it nicer for me than being alone in the kitchen while everyone else is hanging out elsewhere. It's also nice for my seasonal kitchen adventures (summer canning and holiday baking) as I tend to have more stamina and get more help with those activities when there's TV and conversation in the background. Love being in the kitchen but it gets lonely hanging out by yourself for hours on end for days!
I'm in the process of purchasing a place and all the rooms are seperate and because of the layout, it's not a house you could easily open up either. The flow of the house is really nice though and the rooms are nicely sized (for the most part) so I don't believe it will be too confining. I am a little sad that the kitchen is only "open" (via the door!) to the dining room but it's not the end of the world.
I have a very open floor plan. For entertaining it is great, but I have come to be annoyed with it for day to day living. I would rather have a quiet tv/family room.
When I reno'd my kitchen last year more than one person assumed I would knock down the wall that separated the kitchen from the dining area. But I did not, and chose instead to recess a 32" ultra-thin Samsung TV into that wall (on the kitchen side) and mount a 32" x 55" granite counter-height tabletop beneath it. It is supported by matching 12" deep cabinets and has a transluscent fan suspended from the high vaulted ceiling. The original wall does not rise to the ceiling and the kitchen has double sliders out to a large semi-enclosed patio, giving a very large feel to the space.
My question is: Does anyone think that open-concept has gone too far, and that a little separation is often a good thing? Have some of these super-big homes with "island chains" jumped the shark?
No it has not gone too far. As a Professional Designer for over 3 decades, I have seen many many fads and styles come and go. Some outlasted others but always changed or just simply disappeared. Even people's taste for larger homes still won't die and that trend is only a dozen years old. If the bigger the better.........then too big is just right. Right?
If you walked into as many homes as I did over time you'd realize how terrible floor plans really were back some time ago. Closed in hallways just eating up precious usable square footage. Stupid unnecessary walls serving no purpose. Closets not even deep enough to use standard hangers. Garages that can't even fit a modern day SUV. ......and so on.
No that open feel will not die. I don't see it. Changes come and go but some changes are simply better and will not go away.
I dislike open floor plans myself, but to each his/her own.
Me too!
I especially like my separate dining room, and I would not want to move to a house without one.
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Has open-concept living space gone too far?
