Fighting the open floor plan concept

[ktgrok]

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/03/06/miss-walls-cry-for-help-from-woman-living-home-with-open-floor-plan/qLl9QX8REvsQ5gKmaeCvFL/story.html?fbclid=IwAR0bYL7ICzuaAB7egbhbcb9dugawdnfWpPFfDI-YUGtzG_ndpNTjnuBjf2Y

[Terabith]

I adored our open concept house in Texas when my kids were toddlers.  I still miss it.  But we also have a lot more stuff than we did then, too.  Could be a problem.  

[HomeAgain]

We had an open concept home in our last place.  It was so fantastically annoying that I vowed never to do that to myself again.  We didn't have the separation we needed, and since the bedrooms were right off that large open area, it meant no privacy for anyone.
Our house here is just right.  The kitchen is open to the dining and main living room, but we have a separate tv room that is closed off.  The bedrooms are on a whole other floor.  I like the balance we have now much better than the more modern floor plan of our last place.

[AbcdeDooDah]

I like walls. With sharp corners, not bullnosed.

[kbutton]

Our last (and only other) home was semi-open, and it drove us nuts. It was really more of a traffic-flow issue than a problem with open floor plans, but the lack of walls in the right places made me realize we'd never like a strictly open floor plan either.

 

[lavender's green]

Our house is semi-open. The rooms are definitely separate and have walls, but there are no doors, and some of the doorways are quite wide. We hear almost everything, especially cooking noise while others are watching TV. I'm sick of them turning the volume way up just because I have the vent fan on, or I'm sauteeing. And we normally try to run the dishwasher at night, but if it has to be during the day...ugh. 4 hours of swooshing and odd mechanical noises. Oh, and the floorplan is a sort of figure-8, so the kids just chase each other around until I yell "Upstairs or outside!" I'd hate to live in anything more open than this! I am all for walls.

[Ellie]

I don't want an open-concept home. Mine is open enough, and even that is almost too open for me. Like lavender's green, there are no doors between the kitchen and family room and living room and dining room, and it's noisy, even with just Mr. Ellie and me here.

And I sure wouldn't want my whole house open to strangers who come to the front door. Or even friends who come to the front door. o_0

[Ellie]

Similarly, I don't like the current trend in home design, where architects are avoiding hallways, so bedrooms open off little niches off the main entry, and there's a long hallway--oh, wait, not a hallway--thing sucking you from the front door to the back of the house, sometimes with the living room and "dining room" open right there, to the family room, and the master bedroom opens right into the family room, which is tucked around the kitchen, which is tucked around the entry to the garage, and the door to the backyard is right off the family room (or living room, if there is only one).

Edited March 13, 2019 by Ellie

[TechWife]

Our first home was open concept and we liked it for the toddler years. We moved to a house with distinct rooms and missed some of the togetherness for several years, but the distinct rooms were an advantage during the teen years. The house we are building has the living room and kitchen open to each other and I am looking forward to it. We won’t have a tv on that floor at all, so that won’t be an issue. I’ll be able to see kitchen, family room and out into the patio, which will be screened. The dining room, office/library, master bedroom and a powder room are also on that floor but they are all distinct rooms. 

[Chris in VA]

I love houses with a kitchen that opens to an eating area and then a den, but has a separate dining room that opens to a livingroom. And I want an office that is separate, too. My friend has the perfect home in my opinion. She has a large deck that is off the den, too. 

Our current apartment has a large kitchen with a table in the middle, and then a huge "great room" that has 3 sections, only defined by 3 groupings of furniture. Dh ends up using the bedroom to be on his computer and for studying, since I like to watch tv movies in the evening. It means there's nowhere to get away to. 

[LMD]

5 hours ago, Ellie said:

Similarly, I don't like the current trend in home design, where architects are avoiding hallways, so bedrooms open off little niches off the main entry, and there's a long hallway--oh, wait, not a hallway--thing sucking you from the front door to the back of the house, sometimes with the living room and "dining room" open right there, to the family room, and the master bedroom opens right into the family room, which is tucked around the kitchen, which is tucked around the entry to the garage, and the door to the backyard is right off the family room (or living room, if there is only one).

Oooh yes I hate this! Soooo much. A friend just moved into their new house and it's like this and I would hate it.

I do quite like open plan kitchen/living area though, with bedrooms off a long hallway. 

Edited March 13, 2019 by LMD

[Ellie]

9 minutes ago, LMD said:

Oooh yes I hate this! Soooo much. A friend just moved into their new house and it's like this and I would hate it.

I do quite like open plan kitchen/living area though, with bedrooms off a long hallway. 

My kitchen has a pony wall open to the family room, and it's a PITA for anyone who is watching TV (because that's what you do in a family room). 😞

[LMD]

I had to Google pony wall 😄

The house we're building has a big square open plan with kitchen, dining and living all together. Because we are off grid and both cooking and heating is with one wood combustion stove, it just works better to have it all together. 

[PeachyDoodle]

Open concept is my idea of a nightmare. I can't tell you how many places I marked off my list because of it when we were house hunting a few years ago. Places I otherwise really liked. I thought we'd never find a house that wasn't open concept. Even the older homes had walls knocked out to create that "open feel."

The last thing I need is someone coming in my front door with an open line of sight direct to the dirty dishes in my sink. No thanks.

Another thing I've vowed never to have again is a house where the family's main entrance is directly into the main living space. Our last house opened from the garage directly into the living room, so everything that came through the door got dumped into the living room. Mail, coats, bookbags, you name it. Not to mention the dirt and leaves that accumulated, especially in the fall. I could have swept out the garage twice a day and it wouldn't have made a difference. 

Our current home has a mudroom, and it's so nice to be able to hang things there and sort the mail. When ds came home muddy from baseball practice the other night, I was able to have him strip down before he tracked mud all over the carpets.

[DawnM]

27 minutes ago, LMD said:

I had to Google pony wall 😄

The house we're building has a big square open plan with kitchen, dining and living all together. Because we are off grid and both cooking and heating is with one wood combustion stove, it just works better to have it all together. 

 

I had to google pony wall and bullnose corners.  

[Laura Corin]

You don't see much open plan in Scotland - maybe kitchen-diner, sometimes diner-sitting room.  It's just too expensive to heat.  Where you do see open plan, it's where the overall space is fairly small and the ceilings not too high, for example here:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-60819693.html

Edited March 13, 2019 by Laura Corin

[madteaparty]

I’ve never had a open concept home nor wanted one. I joke that people who want these must not really cook. Along with all the love also flows the smell of onions sautéing.😀

[HomeAgain]

38 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

You don't see much open plan in Scotland - maybe kitchen-diner, sometimes diner-sitting room.  It's just too expensive to heat.  Where you do see open plan, it's where the overall space is fairly small and the ceilings not too high, for example here:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-60819693.html

There's that, too!  Our home here has separate heating for each room, which is a blessing.  We had very similar in Europe.

[Wheres Toto]

I found the note at the end about open space offices interesting.  The last place I worked was switching to an open floor plan right after I quit.  I have to admit that it was a small factor when weighing the pros and cons of quitting.  I'm a super introvert so I knew I would absolutely hate that.  I've been back a few times to do contract work or to visit and yep, I would absolutely hate it.  

Our house is a bungalow so lots of walls.   We don't entertain anyone except parents and probably never will, and we are far from minimalist.  But we also don't have low ceilings except in bedrooms, our living room is actually cathedral ceiling with a skylight, so things don't feel too closed in.  

[PrincessMommy]

10 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

We had an open concept home in our last place.  It was so fantastically annoying that I vowed never to do that to myself again.  We didn't have the separation we needed, and since the bedrooms were right off that large open area, it meant no privacy for anyone.
Our house here is just right.  The kitchen is open to the dining and main living room, but we have a separate tv room that is closed off.  The bedrooms are on a whole other floor.  I like the balance we have now much better than the more modern floor plan of our last place.

We're still waiting to start our kitchen reno and the final look sounds similar to this.  We will knock down *one* wall to open up the kitchen to the front of the house (it's about 17')  But we keep the wall (and actually close off a 2nd entrance) to our tv/family room.   We also use our sunroom as a family/large dining room.  It's also closed off.    I definitely can't wait until the walls is gone from the kitchen, but I'm glad we're keeping the family room separate.   The only downside is that the kitchen will be even more visible from the front door.   

[PrincessMommy]

12 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

There's that, too!  Our home here has separate heating for each room, which is a blessing.  We had very similar in Europe.

I'm coming to realize that there is a lot of wisdom in that concept for certain houses.  Our previous house was big and open on the main floor.  It also had cathedral ceilings.  It was *cold* in the winter.  I hated heating up the whole house just to stay warm in the 2-3 rooms I was in during the day.

Our current house, which is smaller, has cold spots... like our Master bedroom.  I put an electric fireplace in there and it works perfect for our needs.  I'm rarely there during the day. I heat it up at night for about 45 min.  Then I'm good to go for the rest of the night - usually.  I also have a heating pad that will warm me up when it starts to get cold around 4am.  

[Pawz4me]

I'm not a fan of open concept houses, but what bothers me more than the openness is the super high ceiling in the main living area that often come with them. Those high ceilings are terrible for acoustics, heating/cooling, cleaning and painting. Sure they give a nice roomy feel and can look dramatic (until you get used to them, and then they're just as ho hum as anything else), but they also lack a cozy feeling. IMO the cons vastly outweigh the pros. But to be fair--I'm much shorter than average, I might think at least a bit differently if I were taller than average.

[HomeAgain]

8 minutes ago, PrincessMommy said:

I'm coming to realize that there is a lot of wisdom in that concept for certain houses.  Our previous house was big and open on the main floor.  It also had cathedral ceilings.  It was *cold* in the winter.  I hated heating up the whole house just to stay warm in the 2-3 rooms I was in during the day.

Our current house, which is smaller, has cold spots... like our Master bedroom.  I put an electric fireplace in there and it works perfect for our needs.  I'm rarely there during the day. I heat it up at night for about 45 min.  Then I'm good to go for the rest of the night - usually.  I also have a heating pad that will warm me up when it starts to get cold around 4am.  

It really is very nice.  We keep the upstairs at 58-60, or turned off completely in the last bedroom when it's empty.  Our basement can be turned off.  That means during the day I heat only the rooms we're using (radiators) and keep our bill to under $200 in the winter, as opposed to our friends who have central heating and are paying $400+.  And since we have 3 separate systems total (gas stove, radiators, baseboard electric) it has come in handy.  We've also had two separate situations in the house where we lost at least one of the heating systems due to either a power outage or water issues.  We just move the family to whichever room has a different system and sleep there.

No cathedral ceilings here, thank goodness.  That's another thing I hate.  And they're always in the worst climate for those houses when they do build them.

Can I throw in my other pet peeve with newer houses?  Stupid decorative elements.  Pretend balconies. Columns for nothing.  Tall archways.  Half landings that take up room without adding anything.  Just give me usable and functional and all will be good.

[PrincessMommy]

49 minutes ago, HomeAgain said:

It really is very nice.  We keep the upstairs at 58-60, or turned off completely in the last bedroom when it's empty.  Our basement can be turned off.  That means during the day I heat only the rooms we're using (radiators) and keep our bill to under $200 in the winter, as opposed to our friends who have central heating and are paying $400+.  And since we have 3 separate systems total (gas stove, radiators, baseboard electric) it has come in handy.  We've also had two separate situations in the house where we lost at least one of the heating systems due to either a power outage or water issues.  We just move the family to whichever room has a different system and sleep there.

No cathedral ceilings here, thank goodness.  That's another thing I hate.  And they're always in the worst climate for those houses when they do build them.

Can I throw in my other pet peeve with newer houses?  Stupid decorative elements.  Pretend balconies. Columns for nothing.  Tall archways.  Half landings that take up room without adding anything.  Just give me usable and functional and all will be good.

I'm there with you on that too.  Our previous house had a pretend balcony - or something I would call a pretend balcony.   IT was a little alcove in the upstairs hallway that was open to the family room with the cathedral ceiling.  I laughed when I saw that space.   My dh used it for his "office"... we put a partition so we could hide his mess from the front door (it was right at the top of the stairs).  We were able to utilize the space, but really it was such a wasted spot.  

 

[Carrie12345]

My house is only 1100sf, so open concept does go a very long way in making it feel more spacious.  The trade of is zero functionality.  You walk directly into the dining area on the right and see the entire kitchen (separated by peninsula) on the left. Directly ahead, with no separation, is the living area.  To top it off, the exterior walls that are there all have multiple windows, so vertical storage is extremely limited, despite the vaulted ceiling.

Closing each of those spaces in would be bad. But so is trying to live with it, lol.

[ashfern]

My kitchen and family room are totally open to each other. There is one little pillar to hold up the 2nd floor. The family room also is 2 story and there is a walkway upstairs. I HATE it. I told me DH that our next house will not have any 2 story rooms. The open area is nice for entertaining as our kitchen is really big (I call it ridiculously large) with a double island, room for our 8 person rectangle table, and I put a sideboard to have a bit of separation from the family room.

[Arcadia]

7 minutes ago, Carrie12345 said:

My house is only 1100sf, so open concept does go a very long way in making it feel more spacious.  The trade of is zero functionality.  You walk directly into the dining area on the right and see the entire kitchen (separated by peninsula) on the left. Directly ahead, with no separation, is the living area.  To top it off, the exterior walls that are there all have multiple windows, so vertical storage is extremely limited, despite the vaulted ceiling.

 

Mine is 865sqft. My dining room which we use as a store room is on the right and kitchen is on the left. Everyone who visits is used to my kitchen being messy and I could put a Japanese style doorway curtain (https://www.amazon.com/slp/japanese-doorway-curtain/7c4nnj2cuqsb5zt) for my dining room entrance if I want to block the view. My living room is separated from the kitchen by the bar counter. Easy for me to pass food to DS14 over the bar counter as we eat in the living room. My living room has a fireplace on one wall and the patio screens on the other wall. I have to put my upright piano on the only living room wall that has no window or furnace. The hallway to the laundry area, bathroom and bedroom can be “blocked” using a Japanese style doorway curtain as well for more privacy. My parents used a beaded doorway curtain (e.g. https://www.urbanoutfitters.com/shop/bamboo-beaded-curtain) for my childhood home.

One thing I do like about my floor plan is being able to see my kids doing their work in the living room while I am in the kitchen or laundry area. They goof off less when doing their online homework when they know I can look over anytime.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, PeachyDoodle said:

Open concept is my idea of a nightmare. I can't tell you how many places I marked off my list because of it when we were house hunting a few years ago. Places I otherwise really liked. I thought we'd never find a house that wasn't open concept. Even the older homes had walls knocked out to create that "open feel."

The last thing I need is someone coming in my front door with an open line of sight direct to the dirty dishes in my sink. No thanks.

Another thing I've vowed never to have again is a house where the family's main entrance is directly into the main living space. Our last house opened from the garage directly into the living room, so everything that came through the door got dumped into the living room. Mail, coats, bookbags, you name it. Not to mention the dirt and leaves that accumulated, especially in the fall. I could have swept out the garage twice a day and it wouldn't have made a difference. 

Our current home has a mudroom, and it's so nice to be able to hang things there and sort the mail. When ds came home muddy from baseball practice the other night, I was able to have him strip down before he tracked mud all over the carpets.

That’s the big No for me, too. When we’re having guests, it is a virtual certainty that I have been cooking/am still preparing food when guests arrive. The last thing I want is a view of the kitchen in the midst of doing it’s job and me buzzing around when people first walk in. (I grant you, they will see this soon, since the kitchen is off the foyer, but still...) 

I have been railing against totally open concept for the past twenty years. I do like some open flow between the main rooms, but I do not like no walls at all. I can’t even see the big benefit about toddlers playing while I’m in the kitchen. My toddlers were just in the kitchen if I was in the kitchen. *shrug* 

We have also always eaten in the dining room for our main meal of the day. 

[Farrar]

I adore our giant sliding door between the living and dining rooms.

[Junie]

2 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

It really is very nice.  We keep the upstairs at 58-60, or turned off completely in the last bedroom when it's empty.  Our basement can be turned off.  That means during the day I heat only the rooms we're using (radiators) and keep our bill to under $200 in the winter, as opposed to our friends who have central heating and are paying $400+.  And since we have 3 separate systems total (gas stove, radiators, baseboard electric) it has come in handy.  We've also had two separate situations in the house where we lost at least one of the heating systems due to either a power outage or water issues.  We just move the family to whichever room has a different system and sleep there.

No cathedral ceilings here, thank goodness.  That's another thing I hate.  And they're always in the worst climate for those houses when they do build them.

Can I throw in my other pet peeve with newer houses?  Stupid decorative elements.  Pretend balconies. Columns for nothing.  Tall archways.  Half landings that take up room without adding anything.  Just give me usable and functional and all will be good.

Yes!

We have a plant shelf similar to this above out front door.  It is completely useless.  And impossible to clean.

[frogger]

I guess I'm the odd ball. I think halls are wasted square footage. I need every inch, well I used to and now I hate heating the extra space.

 

I do like having one extra main room so that family members doing incompatible things can separate. My mother's house only fits 20-30 people for Thanksgiving because of the open concept.  I on the other hand can't fit any guests without people being separated into other rooms because my immediate family fills the entire contained dining area. 

If people can not figure out I need to dirty dishes to cook, I don't know what to say.  

Edited March 13, 2019 by frogger
Grammar

[MeaganS]

I actually like open concept houses for the most part, so long as I have a bonus room or something I can send the kids to if they're bugging me. And I love having the kitchen open to the living room. Cooking is a big social activity in our house, so it helps. 

Eta: I grew up up in a large family and would take open concept over crowded room/kitchen any day. 

Edited March 13, 2019 by MeaganS

[Junie]

Other than the aforementioned plant shelf, I mostly like the layout of our house.  The living room is kind of open to the kitchen, but we have a very large plant on the counter in between that acts as a sort of barrier between the two rooms.  

I do wish we had a vaulted ceiling in our living room.  I had one during my teen years and got used to it.  Now the ceiling seems so low.  And then there's the ceiling fan which brings the ceiling even lower.  I'm short, so walking through isn't a problem; but, if the ceiling fan/light is on while I'm trying to watch a movie, it is a total distraction.  My upward peripheral vision will not let me un-see the ceiling.

[Ellie]

3 hours ago, Arctic Mama said:

I think cooking smells must bother some people differently.  I love a house that smells of sautéed onion or garlic 😋

 

I love cooking smells until after we finish eating. I don't want to smell sauteed onion or garlic several hours later, lol.

[forty-two]

Well, I grew up with an open concept house with a cathedral ceiling, and I've measured every house I've looked at since by that standard.  I feel closed in with standard 8' ceilings in the living areas.  And I like the living areas all open to each other.  Our current house is just about perfect: it's semi-open, with the living areas arranged in a U-shape, and the ceiling peaks in the middle at about 11' (versus my parents', which peaked at 14').  (There's 9-10' ceilings in the master bedroom, which I love, too.)  There's a wall between the living room and kitchen, so you can't see the kitchen from the front door or anywhere in the living room, really.  I have a little standing desk in the dining room that allows me to see almost all the living areas, plus down the hallway.  Most parts of the dining room can see most of the kitchen and living room.  The main downside is the comparative lack of bookshelf walls, but we managed to fit our 20 shelves in anyway ;).

[wintermom]

We knocked out a couple walls to make an open-concept main level in our 2-story house. I love it as we have plenty of room for 4 teen-agers to move around in the kitchen at a time. It is louder, but it's also so much brighter. In my northern location, I LOVE to have as much opportunity to see sunlight as possible. 

We have our tv viewing area in the basement, so that avoids some of the conflict over sound. 

[PeachyDoodle]

1 hour ago, Quill said:

That’s the big No for me, too. When we’re having guests, it is a virtual certainty that I have been cooking/am still preparing food when guests arrive. The last thing I want is a view of the kitchen in the midst of doing it’s job and me buzzing around when people first walk in. (I grant you, they will see this soon, since the kitchen is off the foyer, but still...) 

I have been railing against totally open concept for the past twenty years. I do like some open flow between the main rooms, but I do not like no walls at all. I can’t even see the big benefit about toddlers playing while I’m in the kitchen. My toddlers were just in the kitchen if I was in the kitchen. *shrug* 

We have also always eaten in the dining room for our main meal of the day. 

I agree on the open flow. Our living and dining rooms are open to each other, but the kitchen is its own space. The dining room opens onto the deck, so that makes it feel even more open. And we do have a cathedral ceiling, which I like, although as somebody else noted, it does get cold in here. The part of the vaulted ceiling over the dining room is taken up by a loft accessible via spiral staircase. It's unique, and I adore it -- but the loft isn't really the most useful space. Until we finished the rec room in the basement, it was a play area, but now I'm thinking of making it a craft nook for myself.

 

[shawthorne44]

I think a open-floor-plan was started by a lazy home builder.   

I once looked at a house near my parents that is known as 'the one room house' by the neighbors.  The owner was a bachelor who knocked down a bunch of walls.   3000+ sq.ft. house with three bedrooms, one bedroom hallway, one kitchen and one giant room.   One thing I noticed is that even without walls, there was several distinct rooms within the giant room.   The only advantage I could see to the lack of walls was that when playing pool in the 'game room' you wouldn't hit the wall with your cue as in every other residential game room I've seen.  

Our house came with a one-room addition of about 500 sq.ft.   That is our living room and kitchen.   I hate that people see the kitchen when they walk in the front door.  Eventually after more additions that won't be true anymore.  

 

 

 

[Carol in Cal.]

3 hours ago, PrincessMommy said:

I'm there with you on that too.  Our previous house had a pretend balcony - or something I would call a pretend balcony.   IT was a little alcove in the upstairs hallway that was open to the family room with the cathedral ceiling.  I laughed when I saw that space.   My dh used it for his "office"... we put a partition so we could hide his mess from the front door (it was right at the top of the stairs).  We were able to utilize the space, but really it was such a wasted spot.  

 

I have a friend who installed her washer and dryer there—she hung decorative quilts over the open railing across the hall way from it, so from downstairs you just saw the quilt of the season, which visually hid the laundry machines.  I thought it was clever, but would never never never put a large-amount-of-water-containing appliance upstairs.

[Bluegoat]

4 hours ago, Arctic Mama said:

I generally agree.

I’m a little Frank Lloyd Wright in that - some ceilings being higher creates drama and energy, but in relaxation spaces and bedrooms and hallways the lower ceilings feel snug and inviting, and varying those heights can be used to good effect.

I am NO FAN of two story entryways and living rooms except in magazine spreads.  Our last home up north had a two story entryway that opened into the upstairs bedroom hallway.  Not only was it noisy, but it it was the DUMBEST design for keeping heat in, which is kind of a thing in AK in the winter.  

So many home trends seem more aspirational than actually live well.  Even ones like islands - they’re not right for a number of the spaces they’re actually put in.  I guess I would like a return to dwellings thay are responsive to how people live now, which is honestly probably closest to the good old fashioned side split ranch or four square, but with ONE set of living spaces combined - like kitchen and dining, or dining and living.  The rest with walls or room dividers of some sort.

We have gone so totally nuts with drywall cathedrals and gymnasiums 👎

 

So, a lot of this discussion, and your post in particular, reminds me of the book "The Not So Big House".  Which I first read whenI was still living at home, so these problems aren't new.

She talks about al these problems of open plans, about not having a mudroom, about cathedral ceilings, and all the rest, and why it is they don't really work for people.

Anyway, for anyone that is interested, one thing she suggests is that a certain amount of open can work, there also needs to be a public area that is a bit more private, maybe with a closing door or more isolated - she calls it an "away room."

She also points out that if you leave out all kinds of extra spaces like gyms or double height ceilings, or crazy rooflines that cost a fortune, you may be able to afford nicer finishing details that will actually add a lot more to the enjoyment of the home.

Though I always took it with a little grain of salt because the not so big sizes she talks about are the sizes of home that I consider affordable for me even without the extra details.

[ktgrok]

And as someone with a toddler, I LIKE walls, because then I can use baby gates to contain the little rascal! Open concept at my mom's house means chasing her constantly from one side of the house to the other because there is no way to contain her. So we can't settle on the living room couch and chat because 2 minutes later little miss adventure is trying to open the oven to see what's cooking, etc. In my house, we can baby gate her in the room we are in and not worry about her wandering off to make mischief. 

In fact, when we remodeled my kitchen my mother tried to convince me to knock down a wall, and I refused for exactly that reason. 

[Kidlit]

We have a really long kitchen/dining room that are open (and we just reconfigured the cabinetry to make it truly one long room) and I love it.  Other than that, ours is a completely traditional ranch style home.  I prefer walls!

[ktgrok]

I do like what a lot of homes in this area have, which is that when you walk in the living area and maybe a formal dining room are in the front, and then you go down a hall to get to the second half of the house, where the kitchen and family room are. The kitchen is open to the family room, but not to the more formal areas. Then a hall off the living room going to the kids/guest bedrooms, and the master is off the dining area or something towards the front. I am fine with cooking in view of my family, but not in view of whomever knocks at my door. And you still have hallways you can gate off to contain rug rats 🙂

[DesertBlossom]

We just did a massive remodel on a home. Literally we took it down to a couple of walls and then rebuilt the whole thing. We could have done a more open concept, but I really don't like my kitchen opening up to a formal living room and those were the two rooms we left in their same location. My kitchen is very much it's own separate room and I prefer it that way. My house is definitely not designed for entertaining, but I am an introvert and that's not important to me anyway. What I do want is defined spaces so my gaggle of children are not always on top of each other making lots of noise in one giant space. For example, I prefer that I can have one child practicing the piano in a separate room while we homeschool in another. There are no doors, but at least the walls muffle some sound.

[LMD]

10 hours ago, madteaparty said:

I’ve never had a open concept home nor wanted one. I joke that people who want these must not really cook. Along with all the love also flows the smell of onions sautéing.😀

In my world, that's a bonus! And we love to cook here. 🙂

[Carol in Cal.]

38 minutes ago, LMD said:

In my world, that's a bonus! And we love to cook here. 🙂

I have a JennAir, an older one, in our great room at the cabin.  It is amazing how completely that fan that pulls across the burners and down below the stove top and out the exhaust pipe contains even the vilest of cooking smells.  I am VERY sensitive to cooking smells, to the extent that the smell of eggs cooking can make me throw up uncontrollably, and in this house we can cook anything and I barely detect it, if at all, and it absolutely does not linger.  This is remarkable to me—I did not know it was possible.

[lulalu]

I hate open floor plans! I don't want the volume on the tv to turn way up just because I am making dinner. Or for all the dirty dishes and counters to be seen all the time. Or for the whole house to smell like dinner. So many reasons having walls is nice. 

Some places I have lived in have doors to the kitchens, even better! 

[happypamama]

Not a fan of open floor plans either.  We have a good-sized country kitchen sort of thing (or at least we will, once the dining portion is done), bigger than just an eat in kitchen, and that is plenty open space for me.  I like doorway spaces.  Kids' junk get tracked into the kitchen enough as it is; I feel like open floor plan would encourage that even more.  In fact, when we redid our kitchen a few months ago, we planned it so the main kitchen work space is a U shape, with a peninsula that looks over into the doorway into the schoolroom.  Limited kid junk ends up in my work space, and I like it that way!  

 

Our kitchen/dining is the back half of the house, with the front east side being the schoolroom.  Then there is a small room that is the front of the west side (and there is a room between that and the dining portion of the kitchen) that is our family room.  It's only accessible from the schoolroom or the front door (which we don't use often), and I LOVE that we can close the door between it and the schoolroom and keep noise contained.

[Bluegoat]

5 hours ago, Ktgrok said:

I do like what a lot of homes in this area have, which is that when you walk in the living area and maybe a formal dining room are in the front, and then you go down a hall to get to the second half of the house, where the kitchen and family room are. The kitchen is open to the family room, but not to the more formal areas. Then a hall off the living room going to the kids/guest bedrooms, and the master is off the dining area or something towards the front. I am fine with cooking in view of my family, but not in view of whomever knocks at my door. And you still have hallways you can gate off to contain rug rats 🙂

 

A lot of people I have noticed, when they talk about wanting an open floor plan, will talk about how people always come into the kitchen when they have gatherings and such, to chat and socialise.  That may not happen everywhere but kitchen parties are quite traditional here, and anyway, people do want to chat when they visit in most places.

I think what they are envisioning is a way to have that kid of casual atmosphere where you can also work, but still have a place that seems like it is for guests and socialising, not just a little kitchen with everyone crammed in.  I think what you are describing kind of accomplishes that.

I like houses that have a "nook" for a kitchen tale and a dining room, but rather than having two tables, I like to use the nook for a more casual sitting area where people can chat to the cook, or the cook can sit and keep an eye on things while reading etc.  

[rebcoola]

Our home is semi open and I love it.  The living room, dining room and kitchen make a circle around a partial wall (almost just a big pillar) and the stairs down.  So the kitchen is obscured from the entry and most of the living room.  Than their is a pony wall between that and the sunken rec/family room. 

My BF has a completely open down stairs with cathederal ceilings its gorgeous to look at but cold and loud its a home they built to sell after a couple of years she won't be doing that floor plan in their forever home.