How much space do two people need????
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How much space do two people need????
| Mon, 12-29-2003 - 10:22pm |
If you read my morning post you know that I wanted to drag DH out this afternoon to look a new model homes in our area.

Shag carpet will never be in style again for me, nor will avocado, harvest gold, or burnt orange colors in an interior. LOL! I haven't recovered from the 70's yet.
What
~~Rhonda~~
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~~Rhonda~~
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I moved about five times in a couple of years, I never want to move again!
Anyway! To answer your questions...
How many square feet is your current home? Is it too small, too big or just right for your needs. 2389 sq feet. We'd welcome one more room to be a playroom, and think we'd be most comfortable with 2800 sq feet. Our hobbies - model railroading, sewing, woodworking - take up significant floor space. Right now, the first two have taken over the bonus room, and the latter takes up workshop space in the garage.
Do you have an entry way/ foyer separate from the living room or does the front door open into the living room? We have an entry way - it's really the hallway to the bedrooms on the left, to the kitchen on the right... but it also opens directly into the living room (2 paces and you're in). It is very inviting.
Do you have a formal dining room or living room? Do you use them? Formal living room, no - we just have a great room/family room which we interchangibly call the family room or living room. We do have a formal dining room, and yes, we use that for dinner nearly every day. The breakfast area in the kitchen is more casual, we read mail, look at magazines - not conducive to dinner conversation and family time.
Do you have enough cabinet space in your kitchen? Do you have an island? If yes do you like it? Yes, we've got plenty of cabinet space, though they could definitely use organizing right now! Upper and lower cabinets on the sink side extending to the door to the garage, and L-shaped on the stove side to the fridge. We've got an island too - not a cooktop island but a counter island with two drawers and two cabinet doors which open to two shelves (the sides are NOT separated inside). It's a convenient spot to set groceries and mail, though it's convenience can be it's downfall - magazines, receipts, and art projects tend to gather there!
Do you have a big garden tub? If yes do you like it? Does it drain the hot water heater to take a bath? No - we had one in our previous house, seldom used it but liked it when we did. Our current extra long bathtub doesn't get used much in our current home either. Neither of them was/is a hot tub.
And most surprising to me...Did you know shag carpet is back in style? Yes, we've seen it during local Parade of Homes. And we wouldn't get it if we were paid to! Like Rhonda, we had it in the 70s, and both The Cus and me had to deal with worn out shag in our apartments in the early 80s. It ain't our momma's shag - a little shorter, and firmer pile... but still. LOL!
If we could do one thing right now, it'd be to have one extra room so that Allison could have a playroom. Ours is a 3-bedroom house, with a family room (no separate living room), a bonus room with our hobbies, and a formal dining room which I want to keep. I'd like a bigger master closet, too, but I think redoing the system in there (we still have the old poles and wood shelves - from the builder) would go a long way. We absolutely LOVE the bonus room - it was a selling point, right behind the sizeable kitchen/breakfast area and roomy family room. Our dream house would probably not have any more basic living area, but would instead have a basement - for our hobbies. Oh, yeah - a garage is a must for us as well. My old Mitsubishi doesn't look like a nearly 12-yo car because it's been sheltered in this southern sunshine and heat. My mom's car looked ancient after 5 years.
I hear ya on the crowded lots - pack the most on the least available land, knocking down all the trees and naming streets after them in the process. A lot of people don't have a choice, or they appreciate the amenities and having plenty of neighbor kids nearby for their own children to play with. Don't know about where you live in Texas, but in SC some of that quick construction is really poor, even if the floor plan is grand. A friend of ours bought a Centex-built home in a n'hood close to ours; got a good price because it was on the verge of being foreclosed (maybe had been) and was somewhat neglected. Being handy, he made many improvements - a number of them were things like nailing subsurface floor boards into cross beams... yeah, the lunkheads who built the house nailed down floor boards into thin air. Brilliant. And the builder got how much for that?! For the same amount of money, we got a house in a nearby n'hood with local builders who took more time in building, and got something that has lasted, appreciated, and doesn't look like the homes on either side or across the street.
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I've noticed that some developments aimed more at baby boomers are using smaller lots, because people want some yard, but not a
~~Rhonda~~
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I don't know what the square footage of my house it; I can guess that if the second floor and basement were finished, it would probably be 1800 sq feet. DH and I live in the 5 rooms on the first floor. Second floor has a finished room, but it's not presentable, and empty attic/storage space, which we haven't totally cluttered up with junk. Sometimes I feel like we're in each other's way, but that's rare.
Front entry is very small and minimally separate from the living room. There are stairs to the second floor directly in front of the doorway, with a closet to the left of the stairs, and the entrance to the living room through a small archway to the right.
We have a formal dining room; used about 30% of the time. Our living room would be formal if we had a den; right now it's our family room. It has a fireplace.
My kitchen is small, but inefficient. I would like a few more cabinets so I can accommodate a dishwasher without having to sacrifice a large cabinet and so I can ditch the microwave cart which I'm constantly running into. There's no room for an island if DH and I want to be in there at the same time; I feel like it's Times Square on New Year's Eve when a third person is in there. The expansion possibilities for the kitchen include a major bump-out into the backyard, which would make it a long and narrow space, or knocking down the walls between it and the dining room, which I'm still reluctant to do. Surprisingly enough, when we had a parade of contractors come through a while back to see what our remodeling ideas would cost, one of them loved the compactness of the kitchen and didn't have a lot of good things to say about the trend toward huge kitchens - he thought they were ergonomically unfriendly (too many steps from work center to work center).
Bathroom has a basic tub and shower. The benefit and drawback of the tub is that it seems to be longer than average - when Bathfitters was trying to fit a surround over the tub, they had to come back three times to get the measurement correct and figure out which style of surround would do the job with the least "custom" work and the most attractive appearance.
Shag carpeting - ugh! That's what was in the house when we moved in. I put up with it for 3 years, then just got down on the floor and started pulling it up one weekend without any kind of plan in mind - just get rid of it. Fortunately, the floors that were hidden beneath it are oak and, except for the one in the office/2nd bedroom, in great shape.
DH is in the midst of drawing up plans for renovating the kitchen, creating a family room/office/guestroom setup where our master bedroom and second bedroom currently are on the first floor, and finishing the second floor to include another bathroom, a master suite, and a second bedroom. I'm trying to convince him that I don't want to start traipsing upstairs at this point in my life to go to sleep and to do a set of plans that expand the master bedroom on the first level into the office, and to make two rooms (one an office, the other we would use as a den/tv room/retreat) and a second bathroom upstairs.
What I'm really wishing for is a MegaBucks win that would make this whole post moot and allow us to buy a new home that's not extravagantly sized, but really comfortable, built with the best materials and finishes, and customized for us for the next phase of our lives.
More than you wanted to know, right???
~~Rhonda~~
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How many square feet is your current home? Is it too small, too big or just right for your needs.
***Just under 1200 sq. ft.
Live With Passion!
Phyllis
So you are house hunting, are you?
"Make Choices that bring you joy" cl-Patty