* Posted by itltrot (My Page) on Mon, Mar 21, 11 at 13:01 I'd like the help of making what I have/like all work together. I've talked with a designer and the suggestions were to get rid of everything from my DH's recliner to DH himself. As they didn't fit with her vision of my space. Needless to say DH was not interested in working with a designer again. I think I have good taste and I know what I like. I have trouble tying it all together and making it flow. And the accessories kill me. I am to afraid to pick something because if I don't like it then I have to hear DH's comments. LOL. Ditto. Even if I could afford it, I would be extremely hesitant to give a designer carte blanche after watching shows where they get rid of everything, start over, and replace with cute but cheap stuff. I know they don't all do that. What I'd really like to have is someone who will look at all my crap and rearrange it so it bears no resemblance to crap at all. I have a tendency to go shopping and fall in love with an item, bring it home, and have no idea what to do with it. Like this lamp I bought the other day. I'm not taking it back. But it sure doesn't work on the dresser. Like someone else said, the accessories are the hardest for me.

I hear you, mrs pete. How would you change the garage entry/exit not to be through the kitchen. My front door is on the edge of my kitchen right now and I really don't mind. I like that my husband walks right into what we're doing at the end of the day, and we kiss him goodbye as he finishes breakfast. I'm not worried about tracking in mess or dirt from the outside very much. So is there something I'm missing? We might brush shoulders? No big to me. In all seriousness, I'd choose another plan with a better traffic pattern. The problem is that the kitchen is a busy area, and in an ideal situation you'd avoid running traffic through it. Someone walks in while someone else is opening the oven -- an accident occurs. The back door's left open, and it prevents the cook from using the cabinets on the end. The kids hear Dad coming in and run into the kitchen, getting in your way as you cook. It's easy to imagine any number of reasons why you don't want your main entrance funneled through the kitchen. Pictures always help -- first, this is your plan and the red line is the traffic flow -- note that a person coming in through the casual entrance must thread his way through the kitchen, cutting off the cook from the refrigerator and interrupting the cook's work, and even if we're talking momentarily, it's an aggravation that you can avoid: Now, in contrast, here are three kitchens from your plan's "first cousins" -- I'm not saying you should love these kitchens; just look at how much better the traffic pattern is. Note that each of these plans has a casual entrance through the porch, coming by the kitchen, allowing for the same family interactions that you described above -- but in each case, the person entering the house skirts the action /walks by without interrupting /is on the edge of things. No interruption for the cook. Personally, I like the last one best. You caught my attention with fire hazard. I have lived with my washer and dryer this way for a long time now, and I've also lived with a laundry room on the opposite end of the house. I prefer the close by, compact laundry areas. Is it really a fire hazard not to be on the outer wall, though? That's certainly something to consider. Think through it: In an ideal world, your dryer would vent directly to the outside. The connection would be about a foot long and straight. Lint would scoot straight outside. On the other hand, if you have an interior dryer, it must be connected through a longer tube, which means more space for lint to become "hung up"; this means every time you use your dryer, more and more lint is piling up -- and if you don't have it cleaned out every year, that lint can catch a spark as the dryer runs, and it can set your house on fire. The longer tube costs more to install, and you may or may not be able to clean it out yourself. I'm hearing lots of "this is what I've always had" -- I'll echo what CP says: Why go to the trouble of building and moving if you're looking to have what you have now? And beware of confirmation bias. I think you're enamored of this plan; look at it with objective eyes. Breakfast areas are such a joke to me. Why in the world would I want two tables. That's pure opinion. No positive or negative to it. My husband and I are choosing a dining room and a breakfast room because we're planning a retirement home. We want a large space for frequent family dinners, but we don't like the idea of sitting in that big room at a big table with 3/4 of the chairs empty. It would feel unsettling and empty to us. Worse than that, the reality is that I'm younger and in better health than my husband. At some point, I'll be alone in this house, and I really don't want to sit alone in a big dining room to eat my meals.

It's not ceiling height, it's the context of the ceiling height. It seems like the increase in ceiling height corresponded with the rise of the McMansion. Not that every new house with a higher ceiling is a McMansion, but I think it's a result of the same mindset. Most McMansions are a checklist turned into a house. Certain elements are "desirable" or "good" and certain elements are undesirable or bad. The thing about McMansions has generally been that it doesn't matter so much how the "good" gets there, as long as it's there somewhere, that's sufficient. Context and proportion and all those sorts of things are mostly secondary to meaning the list of requirements. High ceilings are one aspect of that. I'm not against high ceilings. I am not against low ceilings. I'm against doing either when doing so flies in the face of good proportions or good sense. I have lived in places with 14' ceilings, 10' ceilings, 9' ceilings, 8' ceilings, 7'6" ceilings and believe it or not 6'8" ceilings. (The 14' and the 6'8" were in the same apartment. They divided the height in half with a loft area. The 14' was main living space, and the 6'8" was the kitchen, a dining area and closets and a bathroom. The 14' was nice because of the Greek Revival detailing, but other than that was a bit too high for my comfort. The 6'8" was not so great...but those are extremes). The 10 and 8 were in one apartment and they both had their benefits. The 8's were the bedrooms and bathrooms, those were fine. I can tell you from living in a building which went 7'6" English basement, then 14, 12, 10, 8 on the way up, that a lot of people don't have a great sense of 6-12" increments over 8. Some people can't tell the difference between 8 and 9. Some can tell the difference between 8 and 9 but not 9 and 10. Over ten and lots of people have no clue. One of my neighbors who lived in the 14' apartment kept saying it was almost 18' (He was thinking the lofts were 8 with a bit over a foot in between, not under 7 with 8" in between...no clue really). ----- I think whats happening now is that as houses get more complex with a lot of rectangles stuck together, they are creating "open concept" that still are made up of complex boxes stuck together in their middles, bleeding into perimeters that 1) go off in every direction and 2) create a bunch of smaller spaces in their own real and assumed boundaries (because we still try to assign rectangular boundaries to complex open shapes) . These smaller footprints end up having awkward proportions because they are topped off by high or multi leveled ceilings. The new construction in many neighborhoods here is built on 12-13 foot lots. The older two or three story houses are 9/8 or 9/8/8 with the first floor a step or two above the street. The the new ones are 6 steps or so above the street. 9ft. basement half above the street/10 ft./9ft./9ft/ and they loom above the street and the other houses in sharp narrow 'fingers'. And the inside rooms are toaster slot proportions.

I'm finishing up a remodel - gut remodel of my whole condo and I used a designer and it is money well spent. Aside from helping me wth the visual design, she also knows how things will function as well as knowing Codes. There are so many decisions that have to be made, I'm glad I didn't also have to educate myself on exactly what kind of hardware I need or exactly the optimum height for various things such as toilet paper holders. The list is endless. She provided vision in terms of my taking risks that I would never have taken and she also listened in terms of looking at my inspiration photos as well as how I wanted/needed my space to function. For example, I had a wall unit built for my office and we had a long discussion about how I wanted the printer to be; how I wanted my external hard drives to be; file holders etc. She is also acting as a project manager. As much as I tried to educate myself on construction, this is and never will be my area of expertise so she is making sure that stuff is being done properly because she has supervised construction and remodeling for more projects than most people would do in a lifetime if they weren't professionals. In terms of access to her sources - as others have posted, most of the really high end furniture and fixtures are "to the trade" only. While you might be able to view their stuff on the internet they either don't sell to non-pros or the price they sell to non-pros is MUCH more expensive than what you would pay if your designer bought and then put her/his markup on it. My new place will be a mixture of items that are repurposed. Although I am by nature reluctant to let things go, in the end the pieces I had to let go really wouldn't have worked as well. I was coming from a place where my furniture was accumulated over the years from gifts; purchases when I needed something and in general my philosophy was to make it work :-). If I had a bit more space I might have kept a few more pieces but within the limited space of 1200 square feet, some pieces had to be released into the universe :-). As others have stated, the cost is really all over the place depending on the scope of the project. In my experience (both personal and that of friends'), if the project is large, the designer will generally do it on a cost plus markup basis. My designer had different markups depending on whether something was just a purchase or whether it was a custom item she designed. If one has a smaller project, then an hourly charge for a design might work. There are also designers who do shopping by the hour - i.e. they take you around and often this gives you access to the D&D Building in NYC or PDC in Los Angeles.