ok i am not sure what to do here. i have a 3 bdr duplex that has stairs to a loft room which is open to the downstairs although not as MUCH as modern homes. there is a big cutout open to downstairs. the only vent located up here is near the top of the stairs, in the wall (closer to where your feet walk rather than up by your head). the vent was CLOSED when we moved in, but we moved in in january. now that it's super crazy hot, should i open this vent and allow cool air to come up here (even though the only place i feel it is on the stairs when i pass by it!) or close it and will it help the downstairs? i don't care if this upstairs gets cooler. it's not enough to be appreciable i just have a big fan up here. there is no dual zone system or anything just one thermostat. i think that since i have opened this upstairs vent it seems like the AC unit cannot get the house down to the thermostat temp i set which is 77 degrees. its sitting at 80. i guess fast answer is i should try closing it up again and see what happens huh :) steph

I have friends who have a loft area between their upstairs bedrooms and I always thought it was so nice. So when I started looking for a new house, I mentioned to them that I liked their floorplan and they said the loft is just wasted space. They never use it. If they have the tv on, the sound travels through the house. And there's no door, so it always has to be tidy if guests come over, especially if they're staying for the weekend or something. They wish there was a door to close it off if it's a mess or to allow people to do separate things upstairs and downstairs without the noise traveling. In regards to children, I currently have 2 under 2 and I work full time..... so in the evenings, when we get home and need to make dinner, I would never send the kids upstairs to play while I make dinner. I need a playroom or space for toys on the first floor near the kitchen. So as a playroom, a loft or bonus room upstairs might work on weekends (or if you are a stay-at-home mom/dad) or in the future when the kids are older, but it won't be fully utilized while the kids are little. Just food for thought..... Depending on your first floor layout and your families needs, maybe you could put an office in the loft/bonus room and utilize a downstairs office as a playroom while kids are little.

I have a loft space in my home coincidentally, and it is where my son has his xbox. However our loft is also our guest room, it does have a 1/2 pony wall not an open railing but I wanted a solution to provide guests more privacy. I used hanging panels. I take them down when we do not have guests. You could make some out ou foam core which would be sound absorbing. Also if you think about sound as a wave, which it is, pretty much your set up now is bouncing the sound down to the living room. My loft have a peak above it so the sound goes up. If you rip out the rug and put in a hard floor it is going to be louder. You need to think about absorbing the sound, not just shutting it in. Look into acoustic absorption panels.

Take what follows as worth what you paid for it. (Ha...) My very first starter home was a tiny cape cod, where the front door dropped everyone on the far end of the living room. Words fail to describe how much I hated that. I spent years trying to create a nice first impression, a nice foyer, out of that stupid entry. I loved most of that house, it was a great first house - but I never solved the problem of not having a nice front entry. It sounds like you care about something similar too. Some people care, some people don't - that's the beauty of life, different things matter to different people. If you're building a brand new home, and are lucky enough to be building it at the beach, then you really should take advantage of this to know what you want, and to get what you want. Within reason, of course. :-) But a nice foyer is certainly a very reasonable ask. Not seeing the entire floor plan and things to scale, I have no idea if a pretty table will work for you to delineate some space. Just bear in mind whoever said upthread that will need a lot of room to work is 100% right, and honestly it would not work for me. However I am not you. I am just imploring you to think carefully about what matters and what doesn't - lest you spend a shocking amount of money on a new build and then end up like me, spending years hating one of the most important parts of the house.