How many bathrooms and people in your house?
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How many square feet is your "small home"
Comments (67)Before I launch of into the ether, LavenderLass..... Your husband is doing OK now, and y'all are over and out of perils and pitfalls that befell y'all? This is gonna be a fairly long ramble, 'cause I’m really good at such things, and I sorta kinda in a way wanna brag about it all anyway..... We started on our new place at the end of this past June. Well, if you count the well and septic as starting, it was the first week of June We have a nice 1888 sq ft house on a couple of acres surrounded by a couple of acres of county owned "Storm water run off ROW" right down town here in the middle of the big city, Well, OK, with the "finished basement" I reckon it's really more like 3456 sq ft, but around here nobody counts a finished basement as part of the house. It's kind of just expected. We have always had a place way out in the sticks since we first got together 33 years ago. We had a really nice almost 2.5 miles off the road down a private ROW in the middle of an Appalachian foothills hollow out of the way almost 40 acres that we bought when the kids started middle school and we decided I was keeping the "new" job and that we would move closer to the real world than our 105 acres in the middle nowhere Tennessee was. Then a moron in a great big hurry passed a school bus on a curve and there I was. To make a real long story short enough to bear, everybody but me thought that being a "Neurological disaster area" that far off the road with no neighbors and cell phone service only if you're in the right spot is totally unreasonable. My wife said she would be OK with me finding a place just as country just half as close to home (which would have been 13.75 miles) and half as far off the road with a neighbor or two...... Which of course no one thought I would ever be able to do. So, I asked everyone everywhere that I came across and looked and looked and drove down every un-named pig path around and at last found a very nice 17.3 acres located almost right where three counties meet right in the very middle of the NC Piedmont. Unbelievably rural for considering its' being just 7.5 miles from the square in the booming metropolis of Mocksville, NC. and pretty much equi-distant to Salisbury, Lexington, Statesville, and Wake Forest University/Baptist Medical Centerin Winston-Salem. And it's just 47 miles to the terminal entrance at Piedmont-Triad International Airport in Greensboro, NC. and 67 miles to the terminal entrance at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, NC too. C was at first in shock that I actually found such a place and was a tough sell on me getting us this, but she finally realized that I was never going to shut up about it said if I could swing the deal that she would sign her name on the dotted line right next to mine. Everybody concerned, the people selling it, the real estate agent, the neighbors, the county folks, the people down the road, everybody, said we were never going to get it at what I was willing to pay. Everybody, except me of course, had little enough faith in my unfathomable charm and and bull dog (though many call it bull something else) tenacity to think that I would ever be able to talk us into making such a deal. But, I DID! And so C just like she said she would ended up signing her pretty little signature right next to mine and it's since Dec 2013, it's ours..... Very private at a little over 1.3 miles off the pavement across three cattle grates through pasture and woods down an excellent shared private drive with one neighbor 500 - 600 feet distant on each side of the home-site. A school teacher couple with no kids on one side, and a retired serviceman and wife on the other, and an absolutely palatial estate behind across the river. Due to the location on an oxbow of the river, and being in a three county "Designated Agricultural District", that's all the neighbors there will be. And the "Designated Agricultural Area" is bigger than this whole one town one high school county of maybe 40,000 is, and near as I can tell has a population density of 32 per square mile, which for east of the Appalachians, especially in the Ga/SC/NC/Va Piedmont, means it's virtually empty. Sort of a pie shaped property with almost 2100' on the S Yadkin River. From a +75' bluff above the river down to several hundred feet of actual real sandy beach right down along and with two great big and deep swimming holes including one with a great big rock sticking up right in the middle for an excellent diving platform into its' 12 - 13 foot deep hole, with 300' fronting the "drive", +3000' along the longest side of the property with +1200' along the "opposite" side. And the river is from beginning to end one of the very few NC state "Protected Watershed"s and there willnever be any kind of development adjacent to it, no industrial plants, no sewer plants no nothing except woods and farmland. C had serious doubts about the rational of buying this place, but, the chances that anybody could now talk her into selling bit and buying something else, are substantially less than zero..... Approx. 5.5 acres of very nice and healthy pasture/field - with close to 12 acres in large mature hardwood's from level river-front floodplain to gently sloping to fairly steep hillside. And several acres of those hardwoods down in the flood plain that will one day make another several acres of beautiful shaded summertime pasture too. We have us a new permitted and tested and approved 282' well with static water at 60', and a new permitted and tested and approved septic system installed. We bought a really odd 14 X 68 half of a double wide with an odd 2 separate pitches roof that we stripped out from end to end and is now in the process of being completely and totally ever so slowly redone by ME formerly 2 bed/2 bath - now being turned into a luxurious 960 sq ft 1 bath, 1 bedroom with a small alcove, an entrance-hallway/laundry/closet, a 9'6" X 13' "spare" room (for ME!), and a large sewing room and walk in closet. VERY rustic in the outside appearance as the neighbors are like minded and none of us are concerned with what the drive by traffic that will never be, nor are any of us about impressing the county tax folks or anybody else except for the Great Blue Herons, Beavers, Bald Eagles, Deer, Turkey, Fox, Bobcats. Rabbits, Raccoons, Skunks, Possums, Wood Ducks, and according to one local lunatic, Bigfoot too, that are all in abundance here. A wonderful retirement place for us, our now grown and hopefully permanently gone kids, our 5 dogs, horses, cattle, goats, and chickens, and our peace of mind too..... You could look and look, but it's it's absolutely no exaggeration to say that no one will ever find another "almost like being in the mountains" place like this anywhere in all of the Ga/SC/NC/Va Piedmont. OK. The youngest of the great big Great Pyrenees wanting to go out and play in the snow, I am done with my brag..... As next week is the first time this season since early November that we'll see temperatures hit 60F, work is about to once again, begin in earnest. And regular reports of perils and "progress" and pic's too are soon to follow....See MoreHow many years before your bathroom looks dated?
Comments (20)You bring up a good point about Europe, but there are some key differences between Europe and the US and the way things are handled in Europe vs. the US and you touched on this in your second sentence. And this also applies to antique houses in America, too. Then there is the concept of what is a "natural progression" and I think this concept is something that has not been well followed in the US and that's why there is a problem with "dated". Many people live in houses that are hundreds of years old in Europe. There was no such thing as a "bathroom" in many of these houses for the first couple hundred years of their existence. So, whatever is the first "modern" (~20th c.) bathroom that would have been put in a particular house is always appropriate. And then any subsequent bathroom style up to about 1980. (And not much beyond 1980 or so, imo, which I will get into in a bit). In America, most houses probably got bathrooms in the Edwardian Era up to the Depression, and new houses built after 1900 probably had bathrooms, although I've seen plans without. However, for example, I lived in a building that had no kitchen until 1965, and it had several toilet compartments and probably a room with a sink and bathtub in it somewhere, but not a modern bathroom until 1965. So what's proper in this house? And is a bathroom that was redone in 1955 improper in a Victorian house? Probably not. Really any bathroom that is "newer" than the house (again up to about 1980 or so, imo) is appropriate to the house. Why? because innovations were taking place, and most houses aren't house museums. What happened after 1980 and what is still happening that's problematic in America today? (And maybe not so much in the rest of the world). First, in general, it's one thing to see a very slick contemporary bathroom and kitchen in a 300 year old house, but it's another thing to see a slick contemporary bathroom in a 50 year old colonial revival house. There is much more contrast in the 300 yo house. And what happened after 1980? Up until about 1980, new styles were --new--. the end of the Late modern period was in the 1980s or so and was followed by Post-Modernism which was more or less a statement about reaching an end point in modernism. There is not much left after the white box to pare down. So in the 1980s they started with the fake "Victorian" style bath fixtures and this was followed by revivals of other historic fixtures and elements, and now a prevailing style for kitchen and bathrooms contains a lot of Edwardian and VIctorian inspired elements. It's hard to find a bathroom faucet that is not either a basic style but exceedingly cheaply made; or extremely modern, or faux -Victorian. And that's the crux of the problem: natural progression of bathrooms was always moving forward with technology and new fashions, but now the new fashion is in retrograde, so people are putting in bathrooms that have many elements that are taking stylistic cues from 1910 -1930 more or less in contemporary houses from 1980. It doesn't make stylistic sense. People argue that this is the "current" style going into new construction so it's appropriate but I am not sure. If the current style going into new construction was a bathroom taking design cues from 1955, I think people would see that that looked goofy in a 1980 house. And then there are decorative styles in America that are displaced by geography or are version of something that doesn't really exist. To go back to the OP, there really isn't any such thing as a "Tuscan" bathroom, even in Tuscany. Not how it would be interpreted in America. And while much about the building style may make a bathroom in the Southwest look very appropriate: adobe and or adobe style plaster, wood ceilings, saltillo and talavera tile---that, isolated in a bathroom in New Jersey, when the rest of the house is not that style--again, was never really right, so when that's out of fashion, it looks really wrong. Finally, in new construction, kitchens and baths have gotten larger, more expensive, and higher quality material-wise, than before, and somtimes this is just too elaborate for a house from the middle of the century. There is nothing the matter with improving on quality, there is no need to replace a plastic tub surround with another. But a marble bathroom with detailed nickel fixtures and a crystal chandelier in a modest Cape Cod or rancher just looks displaced. It's the fashion now, so it's what people will do, but it's going to look more dated than something that fit in with the rest of the house better....See Morehow many & what type of people built your bathroom?
Comments (7)This depends so much on who you find. Also on what you know, what you can learn, how much time you can spend, and what the practice is in your area. I was lucky to find a general contractor who does everything but major electrical work and cement work. By major electrical work, I mean that when my sub panel ran out of slots, he told me I needed to hire an electrician to upgrade my service, but while I still had open slots, he was able to wire new circuits into the box and fish them through the walls and ceiling and wire the box or unit at the business end. He has done all the plumbing and laid the tile, attended training for different waterproofing methods so that he has the knowledge and later got the experience using them in his various jobs. He is a great carpenter and has built cabinets to match ones I had that had rounded corners and beadboard fronts. He put a skylight in the kitchen that brought light into a dark space and it has never leaked. He has added walls and removed walls and fixed I don't know how many errors he found behind our walls, left there by homeowners who did not know what they were doing. So if I want something done, he does it and I know it will be done right. He is picky and won't leave it be until it is right. I found him by talking to the guys at the contractor counter at the lumber yard. I was getting ready for a kitchen remodel and I asked them for recommendations for contractors who came there who seemed to know what they were doing. One guy took me aside and showed me some pictures of Jim's work and suggested I call him. I got the names for two other guys the same way, and then called them and asked them to come and see the job. The first guy never showed. The second guy showed and his eyes glazed over when I talked with him about one of my ideas and he never gave me a bid. Jim understood my idea, pulled out his tape measure and said that there was room to do it. We talked about how we would work it, and what he thought would work better. He added to my ideas in a positive way. He treated me like just another person, not like the way some tradesmen talk down to women. He has gotten every job in my houses ever since. Most people don't end up with a "guy" as I have had the luck to do. But I mention it because it is a possibility. Jim has a General Contractor license, which allows him to do any of the building trades in my state. He knows his limits and I trust him to not do things that are beyond him, but that is his character. Often, people doing a bathroom will hire a kitchen and bath business to do the work, and they will send out their subs as each phase comes up. All of the kitchen and bath places I visited, though, would only do the work inside an already finished space. They did not have anyone who would take down or put up walls. I bet they wanted the plumbing and electrical done already, too. They really were just glorified cabinet stores! Jim moved walls in both of the kitchens he remodeled for me. If you are a confident person and you have a good idea of what you want in your new bathroom, then you can start exploring bathroom fixtures and furniture and see what you like and what fits in your budget. Make a list of what you need this bathroom to do for you and prioritize it. Decide on your style. Do you want cabinetry that goes down to the floor with a toe-kick? Or do you prefer the more modern Euro look with wall-hung short cabinets, or an unfitted look with console sinks and separate drawers? There are websites galore that will let you price out many different styles and qualities of cabinetry and sinks. Same with faucets and shower/tub plumbing. Determine your style, so you can know where to go from there. Spend hours reading about remodeling disasters here in the Baths forum and in the Remodeling Forum so that you know what NOT to do and what kind of signs to watch out for when you come home at night and see what the contractors have done. Read up on showers if you plan to have a free-standing one. There are a lot of ways of doing them wrong, and a few ways to do them right. Hiring a contractor does not guarantee that it will be done right. If you are not confident and you would rather hand it over to a stranger, then hire someone to do the design and to manage the job, but know that you will still need to know about all of the possible disasters in order to know what to watch out for! I look at it this way, it is always my money being spent, my home that I will be living in, so I better be able to understand what is being done and what is the correct way to do it. You need to at least be familiar with waterproofing methods so that you can ask the companies that you interview what method they are going to use to waterproof your shower or the walls above your bathtub. If you have any other tricky installation that people sometimes mess up - like an acrylic shower base, I would download those instructions myself and make sure that the contractor is planning to install the base according to those instructions. Acrylic showers and tubs are often (always? I don't know) set into a bed of mortar. Even some heavier solid surface shower pans are. Not everybody bothers to read and do this. Things like this cost a lot to correct, and even if they are corrected by the contractor when they fail down the road, the inconvenience to you is enormous and your bathroom never looks "perfect" again. So I advocate that the homeowner should be aware of the installation requirements for their materials so that they can write them into the contract, or at least attach the sheet. Then, if you peek in at the end of the day and see something that you know is wrong, you can make a phone call to the general contractor and have it investigated....See Morehow many bathrooms should 4 bedroom house have
Comments (5)If one of the two baths is an en suite devoted to one bedroom, I would say it's worth adding at least a half bath. If you have the space, go for a full bath. An extra toilet is nice and even just a small standing shower can help make your home run more smoothly when all of the bedrooms are full. I don't know the exact trade-off on resale. There are a lot of factors that will determine that, including the finishes you choose in the bathroom, the cost of the work in your area, and the overall impact the bathroom has on how your home flows and fits together. A bad reno can be worse than just leaving the house as is, so the question of "will it help resale?" can be really tough to answer without managing the project every step of the way. Example: Removing the master bedroom's walk in closet to add a bathroom or adding a bathroom that opens directly into your once fabulous kitchen.... Probably won't have the desired trade-off. Those are some decently obvious pitfalls, but there are many, many other less obvious ones that would only come up on a case-by-case basis. That said, I've been doing a lot of research on bedroom:bathroom ratio. It isn't an exact science, and I didn't crunch hard data, but anecdotally, this is the estimate I come up with. If n is the number of bedrooms.... The number of toilets should be at least n-2. ... 4-2 = a 4 bedroom home should have at least 2 toilets. The number of toilets in the home gains little above n+1. ... 4+1 = a 4 bedroom home gains little value from having more than 5 toilets. So, having between 2 and 5 toilets is good for a 4 bedroom home. The home loses sell-ability with only 1 bathroom. The resale increase diminishes for more than 5. The number of showers in the home should be at least n-2. ... 4-2 = a 4 bedroom home should have at least 2 showers. The number of showers in the home gains little above n. ... 4 = a 4 bedroom home gains little value from having more than 4 showers. So, having between 2 and 4 showers is good for a 4 bedroom home. All homes should have at least one bathtub. If there is only one bathtub in a home that has at least 3 bedrooms, that bathtub should be kid friendly (most people buying 3+ bedroom homes are parents or people planning to be parents). I haven't figured out a rule of thumb for when it becomes necessary for there to be a second bathtub, but at some point, more bathtubs become essential to provide the luxury that fits the home. Hope this helps....See More
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Elmer, this is how you reply to others who relate their personal experience in a thread. It’s just plain rude. Or jealousy. Or envy. Or ignorance. I don’t know. At least that is how it is viewed in the place I come from.
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