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We for years have had a small TV set up in the kitchen that is easily watchable while cooking or at the breakfast bar, the only TV we have on the main level. And if you never use your dining room why don’t you set it up as a den? Yes, there is some design thought to that and it may never be perfect for its newly designated use but at least it will be a room you use. Instead of a major, likely structural remodel maybe just repurposing rooms or maybe opening/lining up openings between them is a possibility.
I am always a bit puzzled by people who complain (and I’m not singling you out, this is a common comment) about not having enough room in their house but have rooms like a dining room or “formal” living room that they rarely, if ever use. Change it up so it is comfortable to your lifestyle and aesthetics and use away.
It’s not like we have to be old school Italians with a matched set of clear plastic covered furniture and a couple of prints of the Pope on the wall in a room you merely glance at while crowding uncomfortably into the remaining rooms of your house.
Yeah, we had it set up as a den/TV room for a bit, but it's kind of small itself (the house was 1200SF with 3 bedrooms) and the only place to put the TV was across from the french doors into the living room, and so you kind of blocked it off with a couch there. So we moved the TV back into the living room, and reset the dining room as a dining room that gets rarely used.
The kitchen is long and narrow, and the doors off it are narrow, with a tiny one going to the living room and a larger opening into the dining room. The living room has a large opening in the hall off the entry, and a french door to the dining room. So there are openings that can't be blocked by furniture, but really limit furniture placement and just get in the way of doing anything else.
Living room:
Dining room:
Floor plan as is:
And this is the plan:
The idea is to make the kitchen less claustrophobic, make the dining room usable, and let the living room have many options for furniture placement, while allowing for flow from one room to the next, especially after things get back to more normal and we can start having people over again.
^^^
I totally get your goals and the proposed layout looks well enough thought out and would get you that “open concept” that everyone and their brother (Property Brothers) insists we all need but I will also say I think your house is as handsome and livable just the way it is. The windows, casework and finishes tells me it is an early 20th Century Craftsman, Foursquare or Colonial Revival of some kind and it looks great.
I understand all about the compact, sometimes awkward floor plans - especially kitchen layouts - that come with vintage houses, our home is a compact 1927 Spanish Revival, but I’m glad we didn’t have the resources to make the radical, open up changes I initially envisioned when we first bought the place. After living in it a few years we let the old house speak to us and it said don’t knock down all my walls and we listened and slowly filled it up with just enough of the right furniture and equipment to make it work for us but still keep its charm.
I’m sure you will come up with something to enjoy it better and keep your fine house’s charm yet intact too.
My two cents, after this people will realize how little sound barrier there is in their homes. I'm not just talking about open concept, but things like noise from bedrooms. Daughter is doing college from home, sometimes having online group chat classes and her wall shares with our master bath and I can hear the conversations.
Makes me wonder what she hears from us at night. *ahem*
^^^
I totally get your goals and the proposed layout looks well enough thought out and would get you that “open concept” that everyone and their brother (Property Brothers) insists we all need but I will also say I think your house is as handsome and livable just the way it is. The windows, casework and finishes tells me it is an early 20th Century Craftsman, Foursquare or Colonial Revival of some kind and it looks great.
I understand all about the compact, sometimes awkward floor plans - especially kitchen layouts - that come with vintage houses, our home is a compact 1927 Spanish Revival, but I’m glad we didn’t have the resources to make the radical, open up changes I initially envisioned when we first bought the place. After living in it a few years we let the old house speak to us and it said don’t knock down all my walls and we listened and slowly filled it up with just enough of the right furniture and equipment to make it work for us but still keep its charm.
I’m sure you will come up with something to enjoy it better and keep your fine house’s charm yet intact too.
Cheers!
I've been here for 19 years and this is what the house is telling me to do. It's a '32 bungalow style (the real estate company called it a colonial, but it's definitely not.). A garage had been added on at one point and we tore that down in '07 and built a two story addition with a master bedroom suite above the expanded 2 car garage. But the main house is cheaply built and not really all that well done. It was the '30s version of tract housing. We bought it cheap as it was all we could afford at the time with a garage, and then added on 7 years after buying because we couldn't sell it and move to someplace bigger. And we loved the neighbors. So now I just want to make it like we want a house, since we can't afford to sell it and find a better place that is also close to work for me (prices have gone up quite a bit since 2007)
This is what it was:
And this is what it is now:
This was the kitchen when we moved in:
Yes, that's contact paper on the walls trying to look like tile...
And now:
And the living room when we bought it:
Should never have changed that color. But, it's only got one electrical outlet in that room...
After 19 years, the "charm" is merely frustration. The 2007 master suite is the only part we really like. I mean, I can barely get anything in and out the front door as it's only 32" wide. So that's getting fixed with a 36" door. But in order to do that I have to move the light switches by the front door, and since they are cloth bound wires, I have to upgrade the wiring to bring it up to code. Which means upgrading the wiring all over. The plaster walls are really poorly done, and need to be replaced. So when the electrical is done, it needs to come back down to the studs. At that point, might as well open it up. The window casings can still have the old style to them, it'll just be open(er) in the middle. The crown molding is only in the living room now and it's cheap box store stuff. I'd do the whole house with crown molding if I could. The plan is to keep a lot of the style of the house (moldings, trim, casements, etc) and just update the layout to work better for us.
As for sound carrying, the master suite is up the second floor of the addition and you can't hear anything from it in the downstairs living room area, and you can't hear anything from the first floor in the bedroom so that's not an issue. And the other three bedrooms are upstairs in the main house, one is now an office and the other two are mostly storage and guest bedrooms (or will be once social distancing ends)
I've been here for 19 years and this is what the house is telling me to do. It's a '32 bungalow style (the real estate company called it a colonial, but it's definitely not.). A garage had been added on at one point and we tore that down in '07 and built a two story addition with a master bedroom suite above the expanded 2 car garage. But the main house is cheaply built and not really all that well done. It was the '30s version of tract housing. We bought it cheap as it was all we could afford at the time with a garage, and then added on 7 years after buying because we couldn't sell it and move to someplace bigger. And we loved the neighbors. So now I just want to make it like we want a house, since we can't afford to sell it and find a better place that is also close to work for me (prices have gone up quite a bit since 2007)
This is what it was:
And this is what it is now:
This was the kitchen when we moved in:
Yes, that's contact paper on the walls trying to look like tile...
And now:
And the living room when we bought it:
Should never have changed that color. But, it's only got one electrical outlet in that room...
After 19 years, the "charm" is merely frustration. The 2007 master suite is the only part we really like. I mean, I can barely get anything in and out the front door as it's only 32" wide. So that's getting fixed with a 36" door. But in order to do that I have to move the light switches by the front door, and since they are cloth bound wires, I have to upgrade the wiring to bring it up to code. Which means upgrading the wiring all over. The plaster walls are really poorly done, and need to be replaced. So when the electrical is done, it needs to come back down to the studs. At that point, might as well open it up. The window casings can still have the old style to them, it'll just be open(er) in the middle. The crown molding is only in the living room now and it's cheap box store stuff. I'd do the whole house with crown molding if I could. The plan is to keep a lot of the style of the house (moldings, trim, casements, etc) and just update the layout to work better for us.
As for sound carrying, the master suite is up the second floor of the addition and you can't hear anything from it in the downstairs living room area, and you can't hear anything from the first floor in the bedroom so that's not an issue. And the other three bedrooms are upstairs in the main house, one is now an office and the other two are mostly storage and guest bedrooms (or will be once social distancing ends)
When you open it up, you’ll have more light. The place will feel less claustrophobic.
What changes do you think the pandemic will create in home building, a year or two from now?
I think new homes will offer walk-in pantries, and they will be more wanted than walk in closets.
I think kitchen surfaces will be non porous, and maybe treated with microban. Butcher block anything will be frowned on.
It's interesting that you mention Microban. They have just developed a product that not only kills germs, but keeps on killing for 24 hours.
Normally, when you sanitize, as soon as you set something on the sanitized surface, you have lost your sanitation. With this new product, you will have 24 hour protection.
As to the other part of your topic, I can see people wanting more land, at least room for a sizable garden. I agree with others who mentioned food storage and less emphasis on open concept living.
Something I could see happening in the US is something seen quite frequently in the UK, where you have an exterior front door that opens to a closed off "porch" so to speak, before that then opens to the front door of the foyer. It would be a good place to have deliveries made without you having to come in contact with the delivery person or drone or whatever it will be in the future.
I think some people will re-think the joy of having everything in one big room with all hard surfaces giving your home all the cozy ambience of Sam's Warehouse.
I think some people will re-think the joy of having everything in one big room with all hard surfaces giving your home all the cozy ambience of Sam's Warehouse.
We'll see. LOL
For what it's worth, a lot of people like stainless steel everything. LOL
I just see these things as trends that might happen. Not everyone goes for every trend, and there are plenty of people who likes the charms of old homes. (But I'm still going to say people will choose walk in pantries over walk in closets.
I think some people will re-think the joy of having everything in one big room with all hard surfaces giving your home all the cozy ambience of Sam's Warehouse.
I can tell you've never lived in a home like I'm planning. Do my pictures LOOK like a damn warehouse? Fabric surfaces and the like mean they don't echo at all, and in a smaller house, the "room" ends up not being very big at all. It's just got better flow.
And as for sounds and smells, in my closed off little house, you can already smell what's cooking all through the first floor, and sounds in the kitchen can be heard in the front room as it is. Even now, people tend to gather in the kitchen while cooking as it's the larger room of the three on the first floor. So guests seeing "the mess" of cooking is a given.
But I'd rather have good sightlines, better flow, and more appropriate furniture layouts, where the furniture defines the "room" rather than walls that are in the way in a too-small space.
I think some people will re-think the joy of having everything in one big room with all hard surfaces giving your home all the cozy ambience of Sam's Warehouse.
See, you are using loaded language to describe something that is not true for most folks. My living area, dining area are kitchen are one large space. A half wall and bar separates the kitchen from the other two spaces. My space looks like a comfy home, to me.
If a kitchen consists of a wall of cabinets and appliances facing a large open area—that’s bad design, IMO. You can have bad design in any style. I am sure many old homes have clunky floor plans, especially for modern life. Kitchens in older homes were often badly designed or too small, for instance.
I love the way my house is so open in the three living spaces. Big windows flood light into the area. Movement throughout the space is easy.
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It's a '32 bungalow style (the real estate company called it a colonial, but it's definitely not.). A garage had been added on at one point and we tore that down in '07 and built a two story addition with a master bedroom suite above the expanded 2 car garage. But the main house is cheaply built and not really all that well done. It was the '30s version of tract housing. We bought it cheap as it was all we could afford at the time with a garage, and then added on 7 years after buying because we couldn't sell it and move to someplace bigger. And we loved the neighbors. So now I just want to make it like we want a house, since we can't afford to sell it and find a better place that is also close to work for me (prices have gone up quite a bit since 2007)
