While I LOVE this little house and the fact it’s paid for, it felt like it was getting time to expand just a little. With 2 adults working from home full time due to (waves at the world) and the oldest kid in college full time, followed in the fall by the middle kid… Well… The youngest is 14 and growing like crazy, so we are all feeling a little cramped with everything going on.
I have a sewing studio crammed into an 8×9 space. Oldest is a budding cosplayer who wants to take commissions and has no place to work. Middle is an aspiring costume designer who also has no room to work. Youngest is a violinist with no place to practice (that doesn’t drive the rest of us bonkers).
We’ve maximized the space we do have and have run out of room. The decision was made to utilize our vacant lot and just build a second house and let the college kids live in the OG house. Sounds great on the surface but the OG house needs a LOT of work inside. Which, incidentally will probably be headed by Middle Kid as she has serious PLANS for what the house will look like. She’s an old soul who appreciates vintage style & architecture and won’t run amok with knocking down walls and putting straw on the walls (if you know, you know).
HOWEVER! We can’t live in the house while it’s being renovated so we have to build first and then renovate. Have you ever tried refinishing hardwood floors in a house full of furniture? Yeah. I’m so not going there. We also had serious requirements for any house that we build:
It has to fit into the aesthetics of the neighborhood. That is, it has to look like it’s been here since our house was built or thereabouts. I’m not slapping a MCM thing next to my bungalow. As much as I dearly love MCM and will be incorporating it in the new build interior, it’s a hard no for the exterior.
It has to have a manageable amount of space inside. I’m not Suzy Homemaker because #VintageStyleNotVintageValue. I’m able to manage dishes, changing the sheets and stuff but as I get nearer to 50 and my health issues act up, the less able I am to do physical labor. And that’s not even touching my ADHD. You know that dog from Up? It me. So it can’t be a HUGE house. Has to be under 2,000 square feet.
It has to be at least 3 bedrooms and 2 baths. We only have one right now and while it has been doable for the last 20 years, there are 5 of us plus a cat that use that room. I WANT TO PEE IN PEACE. I want my OWN bathroom.
The kitchen has to be at the back of the house and be enclosed. I detest “open plan” houses with kitchens that are open to the entire house. There’s a reason old homes have kitchens closed off from the main area. It’s because people used to cook at home. And we do.
Finally, the laundry room needs to be indoors. Our current laundry space is on an enclosed back porch and in 20 years we’ve been through numerous washers and dryers because being exposed to the elements is rough on them. I want fancy ones but until they can live inside the house, that won’t be happening. That and the fact that the cat constantly tries to escape out the back whenever we have the door open to do laundry… Yeah…
On a lark, I decided to search for this unicorn of a home on some house plans sites. Imagine my shock when I found exactly the house we were looking for that ticked every single box (and then some!). Behold! There is literally one thing I would change about this house plan. I’d close off the bar in the dining room and put a door into the kitchen. And that? That is an EASY fix. I’d change it to a pocket door style so as not to interrupt the lines of the room. It is almost identical in layout to our existing home, too!
Each bedroom is super spacious for “modern” times. Most smaller homes give you barely 10×10 for secondary bedrooms but the smallest bedroom is 11’4″x10’2″.
The two full bathrooms are generously sized and the only change I’d make in the master is to separate the toilet from the bath/shower area and to make the bath/shower area more like a Japanese bathroom. We fell in love with Japanese bathrooms (and toilets!) last year and this floor plan will definitely accommodate this.
The living room will get built-ins on either side of the fireplace to house our growing collection of Gundam models, crowns, and souvenirs from our world travels. But where would we work? My studio is a converted front porch and that just can’t continue.
This is where the NHOTB truly delivers. The main floor is 1451sf, but there’s a “bonus room” upstairs that is a spacious1152sf, making this house 2600+sf. I did say I didn’t want a 2000+sf house but the way this house is designed, it doesn’t feel huge.
#WatchThisSpace for more developments! And I think I’m going to bounce back and forth between the OG House and the NHOTB. Compare/contrast as it were. Which is hilarious to me because maybe I’m not caffeinated enough, but if I had a nickel for every time I had to “compare/contrast” a topic…