Help to Decide on Garage Entry direction in L shaped Home
dnik_gt
4 years ago
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Virgil Carter Fine Art
4 years agolive_wire_oak
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoRelated Discussions
Help me decide on size of sconces for front door and garage
Comments (2)A simple way to solve your dilemma. Cut out templates the size of the 2 lights and tape them up on the house. You didn't mention how tall your house is or how much space you have on the garage where those lights are going. Remember that when someone is standing at your front door, those lights will appear larger than they will when viewed from a street in front. Most errors occur when the lights are too small when viewed from the street. Try the cut outs and you will be able to decide. Brown paper or brown cardboard are good to use. If the fixtures are going to be dark, use a dark material. Anyone can have an opinion, but it is your opinion that really matters, once you have a visual reference. There is no right or wrong answer to your question. A lot has to do with the visual weight of the fixtures. Is all of the length in fixture body or is some of that a bottom finial or top and bottom scrools ? Make sure your cutouts replicate the shape as well as the size....See MoreHouse Shopping, Saw an Old House Today and Need Help Deciding
Comments (32)I refer to our two hundred year old home as a white elephant. I am in the greenhouse business and my husband is a rabid gardener, so the grounds are planted with rare trees and flower gardens and go on for acres. Over the years we have added a large gazebo and a spring fed pond. yadayadayada. Only a person who knows old homes first hand, and has the time or money to hire a professional full-time gardener, should ever buy it. There'll be lots of people to come look when it goes up for sale, but it would not be for the weak of heart. Heating bills. Put that at the top of your list. Even if you let the house fall down around you, they'll just keep coming. We've installed new double-paned energy efficient windows. Caulked. Weather stripped. Built a solarium across 2/3 of the northern exposure of the home for solar gain, replaced the roof, put in a new boiler, converted from electric to gas heat (yes we had to pay to have lines ran), and placed gas grates in strategic spots to take off chill or use when it wasn't too cold. Use reversing ceiling fans to distribute the heat. We've cut our heating bill IN HALF as far as energy consumption. But, rates rise and will keep rising. We still have six hundred dollar a month heating bills in winter. And this is an old farmhouse. It does not have fourteen foot ceilings. It also is nowhere near 6,000k square feet. And, until we put a small fortune in the energy efficiency items, a draft from a window on one side of the room could blow out a candle on the other. It's comfy now, and even cool in summer so we don't need air conditioning, but for the first fifteen years of my marriage you needed a wet suit to take a bath. Think also about the bones of the house. Redecorating is great, but get somebody in there who knows construction really well to look at the skeleton of the house before you even consider buying it. The last two winters, we replaced the beams and joists under our kitchen and dining room. They were logs with the bark still on them, or logs cut on site and hand hewn to nearly square. They were ENORMOUS,and likely dragged into place by teams of horses. We needed to chain saw them to even think about getting them out. We had to gut these rooms clean down to the dirt underneath and after we got new joists up then replaced floors. Moolah. BTW, we never thought about replacing joists and floor beams in this house. After all, they'd withstood two centuries before us. Then termites happened. LOL. The roofer left about a hundred bats homeless when we replaced the slate for modern shingles. We've put in a new entrance box and had to rewire the whole house and it has solid brick interior walls. The logistics of running electricals, and the plumbing for the boiler system were staggering. If you see fuse boxes that should send up a red flag to check out the electricals for modern wiring. Moolah. We had to restucco over the seventy five year old stucco over the bricks. (major, major moolah) We've had to repair or renovate chimneys and it's hard to find brickmasons here who are familiar with the old craftsmanship. That's another thing about very old houses. Nearly everything in seriously old house is done by methods not common to craftsmen anymore and that includes materials. If you have to replace parts of woodwork it's going to be something like oak or mahogany and large. Not box store kickplates. My walls are so old, it's not even plaster on most of them, it's a sandy almost concrete covering. If we put together all the money we have spent in the last two and a half decades breathing life back into our wonderful old home, we could be living in a really fancy new one. We don't want to. We love our old home and pretty much know it inside and out by now. But, it's like a marriage and yes.............we are the volunteer caretakers to an historic old building we couldn't see being left to ruin. But, it's going to take a very special person to want the job after us. Now, ask me about the plastering schedule where the doors and windows are. LOL. Old houses just keep settling. Not a door in this house even resembles a rectangle. They all have been trimmed or had wood added to them to fit the openings. Every window was custom made and no two are the same size. The house is nearly regained its integrity now, and I can see the end in sight of the major issues. But, if we had been forced to sell this at any point along our long path of renovation, and somebody else had to pick up where we'd left off, if they knew up from down, you can take it to the bank our money and sweat wouldn't have left much room for profit. There'd have been no quick sells. The end results perfect for us. It's rustic yet and even has a pitcher pump in the kitchen to pull up the spring water for the house. But you always live with a foot in the past where people lived simpler and made do in some respects. Some people can do that. Some people can't. It fits our lifestyle well.........simple and hard working. But, it was purchased because my husband wanted an old large home in a rural setting. If he'd just wanted "room" it wouldn't have even been in the game. Good luck whatever you decide....See Moredirection of wood planks in L shaped room
Comments (11)Horizontals do take more work and cutting. I'm sure that is why he didn't want to do it. I just read online to expect installers to baulk. I am not modern contemporary, I am traditional. I wonder too if diagonals might look out of character with the furnishings. I found a picture online of a room with the length of table against the floor boards, but with a long area rug underneath and I liked it. I think it was the long rug underneath that made it look good. Most of the time my table is round, but during holiday season it has 3 boards to lengthen it dramatically. I have not had much luck posting pictures. I've already started to tear up the room and baseboards anyway so I'd be ashamed to post pics of the mess. The house is a condo with the entrance into a hallway. The opening to the living area is just off the hallway and the room is not very visible until standing right in front of the opening into it. The fireplace is to the outside corner. The dining area is not visible until walking most of the way across the living area. The dining area is pretty square all around. Thank you for your replies....See MoreNeed layout help for a non-L shaped kitchen/dining room combo
Comments (23)I know you said you did not want to switch rooms; but since you like the look of the sink in the bay (the outside views are awesome), it may be worth exploring. If your DH is like mine, change is hard, but he comes around eventually. Perhaps posting another thread that asks people to weigh in on the two kitchen locations with a mock layout for each might get DH to consider the possibility if he can read what others have to say concerning the positives and negatives of each kitchen location. Many people are remodeling to get a larger kitchen space by eliminating two sit-down eating spaces in their homes. Thus, If you switch the rooms, I do not think you would have to “stage” a formal dining room if the time comes to sell. The larger, well designed kitchen would be a major selling point. Keeping the kitchen in its current location does not gain you a whole lot more space for the kitchen because of the traffic patterns; moving the kitchen to the dining area gains you much more kitchen space. You gain the space for family friendly island seating, and the kitchen does not have to be in a location that “fights” with the traffic patterns of your home. The generous dining space combined with the larger kitchen space would be awesome to entertain in. One negative would be carrying groceries a tad farther but not a whole lot more. ;...See Morednik_gt
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agoJudyG Designs
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoSummit Studio Architects
4 years agolive_wire_oak
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agoMark Bischak, Architect
4 years agoAnglophilia
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agoMark Bischak, Architect
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoMark Bischak, Architect
4 years agodnik_gt
4 years agoPatricia Colwell Consulting
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4 years ago
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