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Our home right now is, to me, really beautiful, with crown molding, pretty hardwoods, arched doorways, etc, and is only 2 years old. However, it seems so un-functional to me. For example, you cannot get up the stairs from the garage if both cars are parked in the garage because you must pull one of the cars all the way up to touching them to get the garage door down. You have to sort of scale them by stepping up big to the second step from the side, which is really a pain with groceries, etc.
The dishwasher flips open directly in front of the sink, so to load it I have to put all my wet, dirty dishes on the counter, then go around to the other side to load them in. The kitchen has a breakfast bar, but you can't sit it at because the kitchen table next to it doesn't allow you room to pull your stool out far enough to sit down.
Our bathroom has double sinks, but they are so close to the wall that you must step into the counter space between them to dry your hair, shave, etc, because there is no room to move the arm next to the wall. It really irks me when my husband and I are getting ready for work at the same time, both fighting over the middle counterspace instead of able to stand in front of our own sink. I so admired the double sinks when we looked at the house, now I've started using the hall bath so I have enough room to move my arms.
I feel pretty silly for never noticing any of this and falling for its "pretty face" so to speak. Anyone else ever lived in a pretty but not quite as functional house?
I consideredbuying one once. The house was owned and planned/designed by a builder. It was loaded with bells and whistles.
The entry was breathtaking. two stories, loads of windows, marble or granite floor. You walked in and said "Wow"
It had a rally neat looking balcony that went 3/4 of the way around the grand entry. The problem was that one leg of the balcony went nowhere. It just dead ended at a wall. Totally useless space. They were using part of it for storage and part for a treadmill. However you had to limb over the treadmill to get to the storage part (over the part that sticks up, it was too narrow to get around the treadmill).
The other two legs of the balcony connected and led to the upstairs bedrooms. You had to walk down leg one, then leg two then you could enter the hallway that led to the bedrooms. Kinda Dumb.
The house has a "greatroom" that took up two floors except that it had a loft. It was really nice looking with lots of windows and skylights and a huge brick fireplace (with a comparatively tiny opening). There was a neat double door thing that allowed you to put wood in one side and take it out the other without cold air coming in. The loft was above the fireplace and next to a skylight. Guranteed to be uncomfortable pretty much any time of the year. The loft was too small for any real purpose. It could fit a twin bed maybe, but who woudl want ot be up there with one open wall looking into the living room? A small desk could fit. Of course you would be either miserably hot or cold up there, there woudl be a lot of noise and you woudl have to climb up/down the circular stairway if you needed anything. The front of the house was in tudor style and has some great windows. Unfortunately many of the windows were wasted on the grand entry way and the balcony dead end leg.
Then there was a giant laundry room. It was laughably huge. My wife thought it was neat, but we would have had to use much of it to build an additional bedroom. However because the great room/loft and balcony took up so much space, there were not enough bedrooms and what there was were tiny rooms that could only hold one person. The master bedroom was also small, but it had two huge walk in closets. The two closets when compbined were bigger than the bedroom.
The back of the house had only one tiny window (into a bathroom upstairs) and a doorwall. Otherwise it was just a huge mass of flat siding and looked absolutely horrible. The kitchen was very large, but it had a big island crammed into it so that it had many of the problems that you decribe. You could not open the huge sub zero built in fridge if the diswahser was open. The fridge door would also hit the overn door if both were opened all the way. The island was neat in that it had seating for 8 (bar stoools), but it took up a lot of the kitchen space. There was a tiny dining room with a really nice bay window, that we would have had to have everyone stand up if someone at the back wanted to get out. We were going to just use it for a bedroom or an office. (Waste of a bay window with a nice view).
The house showed well. It was realyl pretty when you walked into it and it looked nice from the front. We were so absorbed by how pretty it looked that w tried to work around the deficiencies. We had figured out an offer to make on it when we went back to measure and plan where people would sleep and things would go. Then we realized what a POS the house really was.
In the past five years, it has sold 3-4 times. At least two of the owners did some major gutting and renovation of the inside.
Same house you bought about a year ago?
And you're selling right now?
Learn any lessons?
There seems too be more and more less function in today's designs- why?
Because designers are trying to squeeze every square inch into usable space. Or more 'flex' into plans. I continually scour designer websites, plan book websites, and pickup the latest plan books at builder shows and conventions, to see what designers are doing when responding to the 'needs' of the public.
They use surveys, reader response cards, and hidden camera/mikes in model homes to gather this information. Sometimes, they just get it FLAT WRONG! And a lot of it is demand from builders that need specific items in a specific space. Think small lots, fire rated walls, floorplan layout, etc.
Yes, we've been here under a year and are selling. We basically just looked at how pretty the house was, and figured it would work. Finding out now that's not really true. What is so annoying about it is it seems that if things were slightly different, they'd work--like a few inches more between the sink and the wall and it would be fine for example. I had to buy new washer and dryer because the laundry room, though beautifully tiled and with nice cabinets, wasn't quite wide enough to fit my year-old standard size washer and dryer. It never occurred to me to measure that--hopefully we've learned our lesson!
It has been frustrating to discover our not-very-pretty, dated late 80s rental house we lived in before was more liveable than this house.
Sometimes you have to make a few changes after you move in.
Take out the kitchen table, and use the breakfast bar for seating in the kitchen, for example. Look into what it would take to have the dishwasher moved to a better spot.
I've lived in some places that had some dumb designs...one kitchen that was so narrow that you couldn't stand in front of the oven, open the door and put something in. You had to do it sideways, not easy with something heavy that needed both hands.
The house we're in now is only a couple of years old too. I like a lot of the things about it, but I already know which other things I want to change. There's no cabinet or cupboard in the bathrooms except under the sink. The kitchen is big but lacks counter space, the sink is too shallow. I'd like a door leading to the computer nook, instead of just an archway. None of those are major things and I've got the changes planned into my budget for a few years from now...for example, my kitchen has counters on both sides and then a dining area. I'm going to extend the cabinets and counters to the end of the kitchen and add a breakfast bar across the bay window, so tha the whole room is functional.
The people that built our house did a pretty good job with "functionality". One thing that I would change is that the 1/2 bath on the main floor entry is in the laundry room/mud room. That is the room in our house that is always a mess, kids dumping stuff after school, laundry in baskets, etc. I would like to change that layout but there really isn't a good option to do that. When we looked at the house we thought it was nice that you didn't walk in the front door and have a bathroom "right" there...hopefully others will think the same when we sell. The layout in the kitchen is different than what you normally see but it is REALLY a nice layout and I would duplicate it again but I think the people looking at it would say the same thing, it's a different layout. All 5 of us can be in the kitchen doing different things and not be in each other's way.
It has been frustrating to discover our not-very-pretty, dated late 80s rental house we lived in before was more liveable than this house.
LOL several years ago my boss had a similar experience. They moved "up from the cookie cutter" to what she thought was her dream house. It was custom built by a fairly well known architect, and she just assumed that an architect would build something functional.
Wrong! It had real problems with noise and echoes, not to mention other little practical problems similar to the ones you mentioned. The stairs were not well placed at all, making it difficult to do simple things like carrying laundry down to the laundry room. Before long she realized how much she missed her cookie cutter house and how livable it actually had been. In fact they lasted just over a year in the fancy custom house and ended up moving back. Since they had rented out the first house, they could move back into it. They're still there and now appreciate that house a lot more. She likes to joke about "The Revenge of the Cookie Cutter."
LOL several years ago my boss had a similar experience. They moved "up from the cookie cutter" to what she thought was her dream house. It was custom built by a fairly well known architect, and she just assumed that an architect would build something functional.
Wrong! It had real problems with noise and echoes, not to mention other little practical problems similar to the ones you mentioned. The stairs were not well placed at all, making it difficult to do simple things like carrying laundry down to the laundry room. Before long she realized how much she missed her cookie cutter house and how livable it actually had been. In fact they lasted just over a year in the fancy custom house and ended up moving back. Since they had rented out the first house, they could move back into it. They're still there and now appreciate that house a lot more. She likes to joke about "The Revenge of the Cookie Cutter."
Its ridiculous that architects and designers would still put out non-functional or severely compromised designed homes these days. I mean, it's one thing if you live in a really old house like mine that has those compromises inherent in a house built for lifestyles 85 years ago (thankfully the compromises are few and the beauty definitely there) but to have a newly designed one is just embarrassing. I design homes and I only start imparting aesthetic elements and style into a house only well after a functional and livable plan is fully worked out. It doesn't cost any more to do it right in the first place and is very expensive to fix after it's constructed.
To be fair to the architect, my boss bought that house from someone else, so for all we know the original owner might have insisted on those design flaws against the architect's better judgement. And it was a very beautiful house with a stunning view.
I would not live in a non-functional house. DH and I play out everything when house-hunting... and fortunately we have not been swayed by beauty/wow factors.
I have vacationed in some crazy rentals though....
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