I like polished concrete countertops.
It doesn’t matter what you buy today; it’ll probably look dated in a few years. Designers deliberately change what’s fashionable in order to spur sales.
That being said, I think polished concrete may be around for awhile for its sustainability and renewability. The green trend is probably here to stay, for political/monetary reasons if not for philosophical reasons.
Cannot view this at work; I will look later. Thank you.
I’m not looking for new counter tops right now (I could use them, but the living room carpet is my next home project; I had the bathroom redone a month or two ago); but that’s a great comparison.
Granite seems to hold up just fine. I have family in Brazil and they’ve been using granite in kitchens and baths since I was a kid. My aunt’s house was built with granite counters in the kitchen and bathroms and they still look good after 18 years.
From what I can tell, Brazilians really don’t care about luxury upscale kitchens like they do here in the states, so they tend to use granite because it is cheaper there and it tends to hold up well.
I heartily agree that House Hunters is irritating with the inclusion of the “Ooh- I hate that tile” and of course the PAINT issue.
If I’m dropping half a million on a house , I can afford some paint.
Also agree about the “Granite and Stainless” phenomenon:)
I love reading everybody’s comments about House Hunters. I end up watching it while making dinner, and get so annoyed.
My big question is - what activity am I not getting for the bathroom? I find it really strange when these people start complaining that a bathroom isn’t big enough to land a 747 in. The things I do in there are pretty straight forward and I can’t imagine needing a ton of room for them. Then again, the same with the bedroom. I have a family and enjoy being with them. I don’t quite understand why I need a huge bedroom.
So, what am I missing? What activities am I somehow clueless about that makes these rooms need to be the size of a football field?
Eric
Well, some of us need enough space for a wheelchair :smack: though the one Bang for the Buck show with a master suite that was optimized for a handicapped woman they trashed all her choices as “too specific” and the suite was all too small, but when you are dealing with a very urban apartment in an older building, I would love to know where you get all the huge spaces from for those palatial suites … :dubious: They really need to take into account that building space can be limiting the renovation and judge accordingly.
I’ve wondered about the need for huge bathrooms and bedrooms too. Our main bathroom is small, and there are times I’d like to have room for a chair, but I can just put the toilet lid down. 
Bedrooms – some folks like a sitting area in the bedroom. I can relate to that – a quiet place to read if the living/family room is occupied by TV watchers and game players or talkers. I suppose the bed would suffice for sitting, but a comfy chair and a little table would be nice. Some teenagers’ bedrooms need space for a desk, and you need space for dressers for storage if the closet is small, etc.
Did huge bathrooms and bedrooms come about because of open floor plans and huge family rooms? Because it might seem unbalanced if living areas are large and the bathrooms and bedrooms are quite a bit smaller.
Who knows where the urgent need for bedroom acreage came from.
And another thing that bothers me - the huge soaring vaulted 2 story entry ways and living room screws with the ability to have a second floor room there, so I prefer not to have the ultra tall rooms breaking up the second floor. I am neither Batgirl nor Lara Croft needing acrobatic space. And I suppose if one installed acrobatic ceiling furniture in those spaces the 2 snarks examining the place for Bang for your Buck would get all nasty about it being too personalized =)
I think every kids bedroom should have a built in storage area for toys - a toy chest and some shelves. I had a section in our playroom that was like that and it worked just fine, although I had nowhere near as many toys as kids seem to accumulate now. All my toys except for board games and puzzles fit into a toy chest the size of a standard military footlocker. We were trained that you played with one or 2 toys at a time, and put them away when we were not playing with them.
Hear! Hear!
I look at these two story family rooms and foyers and see a lot of air that needs to be heated before I can get warm.
I seriously considered buying the house I grew up in. However, I decided against it because it was out in a rural area and the job I was interviewing for made me somewhat nervous and decided to take a different one.
I think it would have been cool to live and own the house you grew up in.
There’s a show in Spanish TV whose name translates as something like “Show us your digs!” Some are neat: the Marqués de la Ensenada showing them the part of his family’s palace where he lives (not the part that’s open to the general public) and upon being asked why does he have a part open to the public explaining that it all started with his first kid’s history class visiting during middle school; talking about antiquarians and art historians gussing over some enameled tray, saying “this should be in a museum” - for him, it’s just great-great-something-grandma’s tray which they use to bring breakfast to bed when someone’s sick.
Others are architects or interior designers: they aren’t selling the house, but showing it is good advertisement and their responses often show that they are perfectly conscious of which choices would not be appropriate for others.
The ones that kill me dead are the ones who built a very personal mansion, often one which they readily admit is either “hell to warm up” or " hotter than Hell in the summer" and who want to sell it. Staircases without handrails (those may look very “airy” but are against code for obvious reasons), kitchens with no storage space (in some cases there is a walk-in pantry; others had simply not thought about it so the pots and the food have ended up strewn among three closets in three different rooms), a huge window which is mostly occupied by their coat of arms (that would make sense if I was buying from the aforementioned Marquis, but not when the house was built in 200x by an electrician who made a lot of money from the recent construction bubble - unless we happened to share the same lastname). Those utra-tall living rooms are very popular with this crowd.
Right now, I’m facing the opposite of House Hunters outrage. My dad is in a nursing home, and I’m selling his house. It was built in 1968, and considered an upscale suburban home for its time. They bought it about 20 years ago. Thing is, while they maintained the house, there were no updates since it was built. None. Original bathrooms, kitchens, everything. Entering the front door can convince one that time travel is indeed possible. All those feeyancy touches that were typical of local Italian-American builders from the era had are now seen as unbelievably tacky. My parents’ attitude was that if it wasn’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s basically the residential equivalent of a 1970s-era Cadillac with only has 20,000 miles on the odometer.
My Dad is wondering why we’re not getting any offers, even with a price that’s $40K below comps on the block, in one of the best school districts in New York State, in one of the most desirable Zip code in Western New York, in one of the few real estate markets in the United States that wasn’t effected by the housing crisis. all the emails of the comments from the showings either say “needs too much work” or “needs too many updates”. He doesn’t see where it needs updating; in his 81-year old eyes and blue-collar tastes, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with the “elegant” rococo kitchen or the rest of the house, and wonders why others don’t find the house as attractive as he did when he first laid eyes upon it.
Your dad reminds me of a different HGTV show that I forget the name of and doesn’t come on any more. It was about mostly delusional people (not saying your dad is) who needed to sell their houses quickly. Some of these people were in deep trouble-- looming foreclosure, double mortgages that they couldn’t afford-- and most of them refused to listen to the experts’ advice.
There was a semi-hoarder with one room filled with junk who refused to move any of it. Another with a one bedroom one bath hunk 'o junk who couldn’t understand why every real estate agent she dealt with told her that she would never sell it for mid-300,000.
The ones that bothered me the most were the ones that were advised to make mostly cosmetic changes. Paint over the purple and orange bedroom. Remove the wall-sized mural of your children. Un-theme your college football den. And these people refused. They LOVE their colors/children/alma mater and would NEVER change that.
Does anyone else remember this show?
I do, Biggirl, and you’re right - they were always so personally affronted that someone could DARE question their taste in decorative ducks for the entire house! What the hell was the name of that?
(elmwood - how much red velvet is in the house? 
)
There are two shows on now that are similar – *Designed to Sell *and Get It Sold. The focus with these is getting sellers to come down on their unrealistic price, and helping them update and declutter.
Occasionally the seller will get an offer immediately, but mostly they end with “We’re sure with all these changes that there will be an offer soon!”
It wouldn’t surprise me if some of these people didn’t plan to sell at all – they just want some free remodeling.
Designed to Sell is one of my top 3 favorite HGTV shows, especially when it’s Lisa LaPorta and Clivie. The show I’m talking about wasn’t anything like those two shows. It was more like an house-selling intervention show. I find that the Design to Sell sellers almost always sell their house (at the “two months later” denouement) the Get It Sold, not so much.
No velvet, but a there’s some full wall mirrors and “elegant” chandeliers, and plenty of French Provincial styled switchplates. And, yeah, maybe a bit delusional; not crazy, but stuck in a time warp himself. He just doesn’t think the house is dated, or that it should be an issue to a homebuyer.
The nursing home sucked away all of his savings, so remodeling isn’t an option.
I’m seriously getting to want to kill people who whine about not having stainless appliances.
And I almost think the real estate agents on these shows should do a little coaching or educating BEFORE they start taping.
“Look, don’t whine about the color of the walls or you look like a moron. There’s this stuff called PAINT and it’s really cheap. Don’t whine that the football field size bedroom is “too small”, or that the expensive corian counter top isn’t granite, or that the house doesn’t have every single thing you want. In fact, as far as that goes, just don’t be a whiny little shit at all because you’re just going to come off as a whiny little shit on TV.”