Help me evaluate this floor plan Please!
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5 years ago
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JAN MOYER
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I have a headache, please help me review my floor plan!
Comments (51)I knew a lady who had a 'Formal Room'. Her house was known, locally, as "The Castle", and was a Tudor dating from 1925. Anyway, the 'Formal Room' was a large walk-in closet next to the kitchen, where, when the maids weren't doing anything else, they could go and get a 'Formal' (party dress/evening gown), and "iron-on-it" for awhile. The lady's daddy had owned a beer joint, but she'd been Miss-something-or-other, and had snagged the richest boy around. It was real smart of her to have 'The Formals' where the maids could grab one, when the Lady of the House, or her Daughter, called from upstairs, or from the Country Club, and said, "Vinah! Git me thaaayit blue Dior ready. Wuhrrr goin' ta thuh University Club tanite!", or "Git me up some formals, Queen Esther! Tha inlaws are flyin' us up ta thuh KENtucky Derby." That 'Formal Room', now that you've jogged my memory, was probably the house's original Pantry, and is roughly the size of YOUR pantry. In fact, your house is roughly the same size as 'The Castle'. And its facade seems about as complex and expensive-to-build as 1920s Tudor architecture. Yours is a HUGE, luxurious house, by most people's standards. So, I'm baffled as to why the dining table is relegated to a 13'x13' 'Dining Area' off the Kitchen. I'm guessing you're in someplace like Northern Michigan, where people are very unpretentious. But still, there seem to be a lot of people in your life, and jamming them all into that little space, when food seems rather important in the scheme of things (the well-developed kitchen... the large pantry....) would seem to potentially make for tense and unpleasant meals, when the whole family is together. We recently moved back South, when it turned out we'd taken over another corporation (honestly, I didn't mean to...), and someone was offering us too much money on our almost-complete house outside Portland, and somebody else took our lowball offer on a silly, overgrown "Old-South-Style-Dream-Home" (on considerable acreage, with millions in landscaping and embassy-style electric fencing that we were getting basically for-free). As much as I hate Mississippi, all those tempting numbers made the move back home impossible to resist. So, here we sit. This house had the typical tiny, prissy little Dining Room, just big enough to hold the previous Owner's "Mamaw's (Grandma's) Mahogany Dining Set from Montgomery Ward" (C. 1957). The space was too small. It became my husband's Library. Stretching across the back of "The Gracious Mansion" was some bizarre free-flowing conglomeration of space, that was a den/great room... something... I had that space gutted before I even let my Decorator in the door. Didn't want to give him a cerebral hemorrhage... and it's cheaper to let your design team know the raw dimensions from the get-go. They're going to come in and take measurements, and photograph every stub-up and framing anomaly... So I had studs, sub-floor - tutto - sprayed in white primer, before they arrived. Well, I had sold our Portland house before I was able to use my custom table built for 30. But that table (and a kitchen designed for caterers) turned out to have made the house irresistible to my Best Friend's Daughter, who ONLY entertains formally, and otherwise has meals across the meadow at her Parents' house. I have a history of selling my houses to pairs of surgeons. These particular surgeons, despite their youth, paid cash. Seems they'd each been letting their trust incomes pile-up while they were in residency. Good kids. So, here, in my newly-acquired bargain manse, I wanted the same thing: long table, with three big chandeliers overhead... lots of sconces, mulberry silk shades for really soft lighting... but with a big, long buffet, because this IS the South, and we ALL dine buffet-style. In Portland, caterers and rent-a-butlers are fun people. In Mississippi, they're failed actors and musicians, and are bitter, spiteful little bundles of passive aggression. And anyway, everybody at our table here, even when there are 30, are 'family' in some way, and the Caterers really don't need to overhear whatever schemes we're hatching, or whatever dirt we're dishing. Although we use fancy plates and fancy goblets and Whiting's 'Lily' flatware from 1902, we DON'T DINE FORMALLY. Everybody's too busy, and it's basically an open-house-in-the-Dining-Room: arrive at some approximate hour, grab a plate, leave whenever... But the table seats an easy 30 (three feet for each person), with blazing chandeliers overhead, and my favorite ancestor, a banker from Riga, glowering over everybody, from the center of the longest wall. It's a practical room: brick herringbone floors that can be mopped with strong soaps; fractionally non-parallel walls for better accoustics; embossed velvet 'papering' the walls, for even better accoustics; a tented ceiling where it once 'cathedraled', for soaking-up our family's cacophony; sturdy chairs, and a sturdy table... And "immediate family", for us, can easily fill the room. We totally fill up the room with people, at least once a week. I'm thinking that you're happy 'Yoopers' (or some sort of Central European/Alpine types, in a snowy part of America) with none of our Southern pretensions or obsessions. But still: wouldn't you be able to use an old-style English 'Long Room', with a long, rugged refectory/trestle table (a long, narrow, rustic table), in a more expansive space? A refectory table can be used for reading, computing, etc., when not used for dining. What I see on those plans just seems like the 'kitchenette' in a 1950s tract house... a tract house that just grew and grew. Your house is the size of a MANSION, but the dining area is like a breakfast nook in Levittown....See MorePlease help me sketch a floor plan
Comments (25)Olliesmom -- actually, I noticed a lot of natural light. It didn't feel closed in. The fact that all of the main rooms overlooked the courtyard made it feel connected to the outdoors. The courtyard seemed like the hub of the house. The POH house had cathedral ceilings in the family/kitchen and in the living room. The master bedroom had a cathedral ceiling. The dining room would have been cathedral, but they flattened it out at about 11' up and had an artist put a beautiful subtle design up there. If you walk through the plan: Living room -- large windows into the courtyard, there were small windows flanking the fireplace in the POH house. Whenever you have windows on two walls, you get more light. Dining room -- French doors onto lanai, large front windows. Kitchen/breakfast -- French doors opened onto the lanai. Windows over the sink on the opposite wall. Family room -- French doors opened onto the lani. Windows were put on the POH house on the opposite wall as there are no neighbors on that side of the 2 acre lot. The builder moved the fireplace to the inside wall of the POH house at the opposite end from the kitchen. That freed up the outside wall for larger windows. Master bedroom -- French door opened onto the lanai. Large bow window on the back. The only downside that I could see from building it as a one level house is that due to all of the cathedral ceilings, there was no attic space. There was a pull-down stair in the garage, so I believe that's where the only attic was located. Also, look for where you'd put a pantry (if needed) or a broom/vacuum utility closet. That's about the only thing that came to mind in my functional critique when walking through it. I noticed on the actual plan, there is a stairway up to the room above the garage. I didn't see a stairway, but I might have missed it in the POH house. There is a large closet off the foyer for storage. I did like the economy of that small foyer. It was enough to give you a transitional entrance, yet no space was wasted as in some foyers....See MorePlease help me review my floor plan
Comments (14)Thank you all for the nice comments. I am so excited. This is my first time doing a remodel and the last.Lots of good points made, now I am going to have to rethink some of this, darn it! LOL Thats all I have been doing for the last 2 years and driving my husband crazy. I dont think I can get him to talk about it ANYMORE! I see the point about the dishwashers, Ok how about putting 1 dish drawer with the other dishwasher? LOL I dont know why I think it would be really great to turn around and throw in a bowl, measuring, pan into a close by so not walking around to the other side. I wish the china cabinet could go into the dinning room but there is no room, its small. I agree about the wine glasses getting dusty, the last thing I want to do is dust anything. The reason I had the idea of the seperate counter area was because the china isnt that big.Each door will be narrowere than the wine fridge, so I didnt know how to make it look right with three doors being unequal sizes. The refrigerator that is shown is the all refrig from sub zero. I have planned the refrg/freezer door in the island and I do have an upright just outside the backdoor for the main storage. My husband wants me to put in another ref/freezer drawer on other side of kitchen for drinks and ice but I thought that was excessive. I am worried I will miss the sink in the island, its a big concern. I was thinking the fridge landiing and oven landing would be on that end of the island and thought the sink would get in the way. The other end is where I have planned to have seating....See MoreHelp Me Find This Farmhouse Floor Plan Please!
Comments (18)DML2000 I don't believe the person who initially posted about the pork chop eaves meant anything negative but was just saying they are noticeable in this particular house. I welcome the comment and the link to different types of eaves because building is new to me so I'm interested in learning all I can. I've never really thought/noticed eaves before and didn't realize there were different ways to finish them. I will talk to my builder about these and get his thoughts about the best design for the house I build. Don't know that we'll build this particular house but I thought it was good info to know and something to think about. :) MISSOURIBOUND - Here's a link to more photos of the house from the designer. Not sure if you've seen these or not. They may answer your question. Click on the 'portfolio' tab and then you see this house, 'North Maney.' http://jtaylordesigns.net...See Morerainyseason
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