Drove past a rather large house the other day, then looked it up on Zillow. The listing doesn’t say how many bedrooms, but there are 7 bathrooms and 7900 square feet of space. I don’t begrudge the owners of this palace, but I’m very curious as to what they do with all that space. My gut feel is that wealthy couples don’t usually have large families, so do they just have a lot of bedrooms for house guests? a home theatre, wet bar, party room? My own house is about 1/4 of that size, so I’m trying to imagine having the space of three more of my own houses at my disposal.
Do you live in a house in this size range? How do you use the space?
The largest I’ve owned was 5,500 back when my wife and I were first married. We had a house keeper who came one a week and with just the two of us the upkeep wasn’t bad.
We had frequent guests, one who lived with us permanently and then on top of that 1-4 more at least one weekend per month. We also had a lot of parties with up to 100 people coming to the house to hang out maybe 4 times per year.
Upstairs was 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms a living room, dining room and kitchen. Downstairs was library, TV room, guest suite, workshop, gym, and music room.
The house was poorly laid out, down stairs so you had to go from one room to the next. I really hated the layout and there wasn’t a good way to fix it. Overall I could see having a 7-8,000 home since both the workshop and gym were really small and I’d enlarge the library and add a home theater and then probably add a couple of hobby rooms. It’s much harder to have people over in our current 2,500 sqft home so our parties are down into the teens for number of people.
Not me, but I know someone. They are an older couple, that got married later in life. She had been a school teacher, of modest school teacher means, and inherited a pile of money from an aunt. So, they got an ostentatious manor home. Of minor importance, they happen to live in a very cheap area (Flint, MI), so the house didn’t cost that much compared to modest homes in more expensive areas. Her stated reasoning for wanting the home is to have guests and to entertain. IMHO some of that is aspirational. Over time reality sets in and you come to realize that you have only thrown 2 parties ever, and don’t really have a much of a social circle. But I don’t know if she has that self awareness.
Oh, and they don’t pay for a housekeeper, as she’s a neat-freak, so they obsessively clean the whole gigantic thing themselves. That keeps them busy.
As for us, earlier in life we wanted more and more, what I term the “acquisitive stage”. But after having been through that, we’re more into downsizing now.
Even counting our basement and garage, we don’t have half that much space - I can’t imagine 7 bathrooms!!
Something that perplexes me - people who buy their “dream house” after they’re retired and on their own. Yeah, it’s nice to have space for the kids or others to visit, but that thought of having a huge house at my age sets me to twitching. All I can picture, apart from having to keep it all clean, is huge heating and cooling bills, plus having to furnish all the rooms, not to mention window coverings - those things can be crazy expensive!!
I guess it’s in a similar category with people who like the newest, fanciest car or the latest in gadgetry - I don’t understand that either. As long as I’m not paying for it or cleaning it, I guess it’s none of my business. I stand by my opinions, tho.
While I live in a small apartment now, I lived in several huge houses in Jakarta, as homes rented to expats tended to be very large. Here’s how the space was divided up in the last one (my son went off to college just before we moved so it was just me and my then-husband):
We have way more space than we “need”, 3 BR and 3 bathrooms, yet I dread the thought of eventual downsizing.
Every year that goes by the horses are a bit more difficult to maintain (boy, I’d love to have an empty barn to winter boats inside though). There are times I spend hours searching for something I know we have, but between spare rooms, basement storage, two sheds, the barn, tack room, etc it’s a task.
When we do downsize my only real concern is that we each have our own bathroom.
My parents built their dream home on the ancestral family property back in the mid 1980’s, and sadly enjoyed it for only a brief time before both dying relatively young, in their early 60’s. So I and my family took it over. We’ve lived in it full time for over 26 years now.
Upstairs are two large bedroom suites and a large library with a rolling ladder to access the shelves. Main floor has the master bedroom suite, large living room, formal dining room, and a pretty spacious kitchen/eating area/office/laundry complex. Basement has recreation room, auxiliary living room with fireplace and overflow library, along with my mancave. In addition there’s a large workshop plus the heating/equipment room. Attached to the house is the garage with a guest suite above it and an auxiliary bedroom and living area adjacent. 6000+ square feet, 7 bathrooms, 220 feet of beachfront directly on Lake Michigan, year round hot tub outside the master bedroom overlooking the lake, 60 adjacent acres of fields, woods, swamp, and two streams, and a hella huge tax assessment. Now inhabited only by the Mrs. and myself. Finding each other can be a challenge, but fun.
It’s far more house that we need, but it’s home. I started my existence on that same piece of property back in 1957, in the old house that my grandfather built long ago. Adjacent properties are owned by assorted kin and neighbors I’ve known for 60+ years.
Eventually it’ll be too much for us to keep up, and we’ll sell. And that will be hard. But until then we’ll continue to love it, even though it’s more than we need.
You left out the part about the non-ecludian geometry layout. It’s a house to get lost in. And perhaps come out in Narnia. In some ways I am envious, in many others I’m glad not to have the upkeep and costs of such an interesting abode.
Yeah, the architect sure had some interesting ideas. The place has 5 different attic spaces, one of which I did not discover until 2013. Unfortunately, squirrels had discovered it before us. Which is why we eventually learned about it. I hate squirrels.
I haven’t but, a few years back when we were touring D.C. for a few days, we visited a couple in Maryland who do. There they were, two people, living in this gigantic home. It was the kind of home where you needed signs with an arrow stating, “You are here.”
From what we gathered from them, they live in that house simply because they like “big” and they like the variety of rooms they have to choose from. They are “house poor” because of the mortgage and the property taxes associated with something like that. They have a cleaning service, also, because they could never keep up with a place that large. It’s what they want, though.
Truly, I am boggled that you could have lived in a house for decades before you discover one of the attics. Yes, folks, the house is that big and that complicated.
Although it is not the largest residence I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. That was of a gentleman and wife that lived in New Hampshire. The proper adjective for their residence was “compound”. The main building had I think six bedrooms and baths, and workroom/gym, and a kitchen/dining/living room that must have been around 1000-1500 feet all on its own. Then there was the “guest house” that could sleep thirty, with baths and a kitchen/dining area of its own. The 12 car garage (only had 6 vehicles - half was work room) with the game area/library/gym above it, along with with an access hatch to a fully appointed telescope large enough to require motors to move and aim it, as well as to open the roof of the area.
Needless to say, they had a housekeeper and cook and a lawn/landscaping service. At the time we visited it was just the two of them living there, but they had had five kids, who had gone on to have kids of their own, and they’d have the whole mob over at times along with friends and acquaintances, hence the huge guest house, and apparently used to do quite a bit of entertaining in the past. They certainly did use everything there at one point or another.
Turned out investing in a small, obscure company no one had every heard of called “Microsoft” paid off very, very well.
The scary thing? Theirs was the smallest “house” in the area…
My SO’s parents live like that, Euro style (we live much smaller here). Let’s see, 400 m2 is around 4300 sq.feet. Two retirement age people with no hobbies or interests that took up a lot of space, in a house with room after room after room, most of which see very little or no use, but cost in many ways to keep. And then they spend one half of every year in Spain.
Ok, serious question, one I have - seriously - often pondered having once viewed a 4 bed house where the 4 bathrooms out me off - how DO you clean all the bathrooms? Do you have cleaner come every other day? I once lived in a mere five bed with two bathrooms and found the cleaning overwhelming.
Only two bathrooms get used with any great frequency. Cleaning lady visits every two weeks and does them and the others.
The house also has two built-in bars. And the Mrs. and I don’t drink. One bar is stocked up with a ton of kombuchas, various spicy tomato juice drinks, and a large variety of ginger beers. The other stores clutter.
A few of you have mentioned workshops. Our house has a basement, probably 1200 square feet, but it’s unfinished so it doesn’t figure into the official tally of livable square footage. Apart from a few shelves for storage of groceries and other items, and a couple of modest chest freezers, the rest is basically my workshop.
It would be nice to have at least part of the basement finished so we could make it into a comfortable space for exercise equipment. We have a treadmill in our bedroom, and it’s kinda crowded.
We have a 2-car garage, but a three-car garage would be better. In addition to two cars, I have a welding table and a motorcycle out there. The motorcycle is a hassle to wiggle out into the open for a casual afternoon ride (and to put back there afterwards). But that doesn’t figure into livable square footage, either.
Some of you have mentioned libraries. I guess if you’re an avid reader, that can be a cool thing.
I have two bridge friends who live in enormous homes. Both are extremely rich, so the maintenance is not a burden. One couple actually built the house after their children left.
Let’s see, they have… downstairs
a master suite that could be its own small house (it includes a kitchenette and a sitting room),
a large den with vaulted ceilings, a gas fireplace, a giant TV, and several couches
A spacious kitchen with two of most appliances, which they say is useful when they entertain. (One dishwasher is running as they load dishes into the other, for instance)
A… Breakfast area? Near the kitchen, that overlooks the grounds and has the most perfect bridge table, plus a long table they put snacks on. I’m sure it works well to feed people for Thanksgiving.
A formal dining room that they might use?
A grand entrance way
A formal living room, full of display cases holding neat stuff.
Upstairs there’s
A large room overlooking the “breakfast area” that holds a pool table and a poker/bridge table
A large rec room with a non-wooden floor for table tennis
Two spacious guest bedrooms that share a huge bathroom
And maybe some other stuff I’m forgetting.
They seem to use most of that space.
The other couple has a large Victorian mansion. I didn’t get the formal tour, and i don’t know what’s upstairs, but downstairs they also have a giant kitchen, large formal dining room, large formal living room, large informal living room (den) and an impressive entry way. (Which is one of the rooms we play bridge in )
