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We have both--a 3 story foyer, a 2 story family room, and a finished 3rd floor bonus room +bath that adds something like 400sf. I LOVE all the light I get in my house--I really have never seen a 1-story family room that gets the kind of natural light we get. We never need to turn a light on in the house until the sun sets.
That being said, I would never try to paint it on my own, and even with the ladder we can't get the cobwebs off of the foyer chandelier!
In the 80's, we were SO in love with two-story family rooms! They are beautiful.
But today, to reduce heating and cooling costs and to have more room for whatever (guests, office), it makes much more sense to have a single-story room and a bonus room.
Have a 20' tall great room in current house. It took awhile for it to grow on me as I never had dealt with it before. Now I wouldn't trade it. Greatly opens the house up, even compared to larger homes with 10' ceilings, the light angles you get with 2 story family room are amazing. To be able to sit on the couch, look out the wall of windows and watch the snow or lightning is truly amazing - much greater depth than just out of a single story. A couple of suggestions - carpets are a must due to sound issues (depending where we placed the TV in the room, we could hear it more clearly upstairs than downstairs), install the ceiling fan as low as you can - typical builders install it 3-6' from the ceiling and IMHO, that's not close enough to the living level to do any good. Painting is a pain, but the higher wall areas dont get scuff marks and its hard to see any dirt up there. Lastly, if you have small children, you can hear what they are doing anywhere in the house (if the 2 story family room is in the middle of the house), nice that you don't have to trudge upstairs to break up an argument every time the bickering starts....
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