That’s me in the above post, not LHoD. He thinks our house now is the perfect size, but I like things a bit cozier.
I plan on getting a larger house but I’m not sure how many sq ft I would need. My fantasy house (which I will never see) would have:
- (2) 12x15 bedrooms
- (1) 20 x 20 master bedroom
- (1) 20 x 20 library/office
- (1) 15 x 20 kitchen + separate pantry
- (1) 25 x 35 great room for entertainment
- (3) full baths
- partially finished basement for excerise room
- 3 car attached garage
- 2 car detached garage
I could combine the library/office and entertainment room into 1 large room
That’s probably over 3000 sq ft.
Well, we have about 2100 sq ft. Which on some days is too much, other days too little. Got a 16 y.o. kid who thinks he’s in a band. When the kids practice in the basement… the house is too small. When I want to REALLY crank up the tunes (500-watt with surround, 300 watt sub-woofer… and it isn’t loud enough) then it is also too small. When the mother-in-law who lives with us due to health reasons wanders off and we don’t know where she went or what she’s “helping” with… house is too big.
Starting to generally think the idea of the “American Dream” of home ownership is a crock. Add up the cost of property taxes, insurance, upkeep, and etc… even if the house were already paid for, that’s a big chunk o’ change tied up into something that I can’t easily sell. Once the Mrs. and I become empty-nesters, I’m going to see about seeling this place and renting a small place with really thick, soundproof walls.
I also agree with Foible… for us, a larger house would just be filled with more clutter.
Ours is about 6000 square feet, with a library, formal dining room, extended kitchen, living room, master bedroom suite, two smaller bed/bath suites, guest suite with auxiliary living room and kitchen, west wing with bunkroom and rec room oriented towards serving the beach/lake activities (we live on Lake Michigan), another rec room with home theater, downstairs family room, work room, storage room, and a total of 7 bathrooms and two fireplaces.
It’s on 70 acres, and I inherited it. I’d never have built or bought a house this size, but I love it. It’s on the site where I grew up, and it’s home! It’s big and rambling and you can see either the water or the woods/fields from most windows. Sometimes we have trouble locating each other in it, which is especially noisome when there’s a phone call for someone and it takes 5 minutes to find them, or walk over to where they are.
The taxes are horrible, and I’m grateful I have a job that pays enough to be able to live here. Someday we may decide to give it up, and then we’ll downsize, but for now, we’re living large! 
Not to be perverse, but what if this thread was entitled How big a 401(k) is big enough?
My point being, of course, that some home purchase decisions aren’t only driven by need or “trophy-ness”. 
My house isn’t huge by any means, but it’s sure been a better investment than anything I had in the stock market.
Kilvery’s Pagan, there are lots of variants one could discuss, but I’m just interesting in how much of a house people think they want/need and why. I don’t care whether the house is off the grid or built completely of recycled materials or constructed of all-virgin materials by unpaid itinerant laborers. Getting into investment values is a thread in its own right. I don’t mean to be snarky - I just hope this doesn’t get hijacked too far afield.
I think we watched the same show this morning–the brick house in the Chicago suburbs? That WAS a bit much.
Anyway, 5000 sf would be too much for me…but I do live in a 4 bd, 2 1/2 bath 2000 sf house and it’s just the 2 of us and the pets. Believe me, you do stretch out. The small nursey room next to our bedroom is now the king of walk in closets, the guest room doubles as a second office/storage, the 4th bedroom currently houses el hubbo’s drumset and the futon I refuse to throw away.
Really though, we only use about 1/2 the house. The front room is for entertainment and the dining room is hardly used. More than DOUBLE the house–no way. Who needs 3 livingrooms, a study and a library? Maybe if you have a HUGE family, but the rest is overkill. Too much keeping up with the Jones’s, I think.
What I’d love…
A bigger kitchen. We have the standard galley style and it gets a bit cramped since everyone loves to hang out in the kitchen. We have a large section that is useless since there is a door and window and laundry area.
A workshop…I haven’t parked in my garage in years since we are always building or remodeling something in there.
A BASEMENT! Man, I would love to have one of those for laundry (currently in the kitchen) and storage and the drumset!
:eek:
Qadgop the Mercotan is really Enzyte Bob?
My apologies - you are correct, of course.
You have too much house when it’s possible to be sitting in the basement, want something that’s in your bedroom, and decide that it’s just not worth the travel time to go get it. Or if you feel like a marble rattling around in a refrigerator box when you’re there alone.
I speak from personal experience. My parents’ house is nice, but nuts in some ways. Especially now that their last kid’s getting ready to leave the nest.
Assuming ample financial resources: Big enough means that everybody in the house has their own comfortable space–somewhere to play, hang out, do work, etc. It should be possible for everybody to be in a comfortable living space without having somebody else in the room (maybe this is just my introversion talking). And there should be one or two places for comfortable gatherings, whether it’s family, friends, or an office party. No room should be either claustrophobic or ridiculously huge.
Rooms I want: Master bedroom, bedroom for each child (1 or 2), guest bedroom, study/library, living/family room (possibly both), kitchen, dining area, finished basement w/ media room and a play area for kids.
I also wanted to address this–I don’t understand it either. My parents bought and renovated their big house a couple years ago with the understanding that it was an investment they’d probably be moving out once my brother and sister were both in college. They would never want to have to maintain it during retirement! The place is a nightmare in terms of logistics–three separate HVAC systems to maintain, and on and on. Ugh. Who needs that once they’ve left the stress of work? And yet there are several people in our neighborhood who moved there after all their kids were out of the house. My parents’ actual dream home (they’ve been looking at retirement places) is something much more like a farmhouse, still with plenty of space to have family Christmases and such, but nothing like the grand scale some people think ideal. I’ve always preferred the cozier model of living myself.
My house is perfect and I love it. We have about 1600 square feet–adequate kitchen, laundry room/half bath (added by us), big dining room/den/computer room, living room on the first floor; 3 bedrooms, bath, storage room on the second floor. Front and back stairs, unfinished basement, no attic. It was built in 1905, has high ceilings and wonky angles where things have settled unevenly. Since our daughter has gone to college, there are only the two of us here, and it’s just right.
The bad news, however, is that I hate the lot it sits on–no privacy, shared driveway (unpaved), and not enough space for outdoor living. It’s also on a busy street and the zoning has allowed an “adult boutique” down the street.
We think about moving. We go to open houses and have even worked with a real estate agent, but nothing I see is as nice as what we have in a price range we can afford. We think about building but that’s expensive too. I wish I could buy a piece of land and move this house onto it. Not really feasible. Maybe when we get daughter out of college, everything will move (HA!) into place.
BTW, when I first read the OP, I thought she had a 5’ X 8’ bedroom! Had to go back and reread! :eek:
Our bedroom isn’t huge, but it’s bigger than that! We have space for a king size bed, a chest, a dresser, and 2 night stands, leaving enough room for the dog to sneak in at night and trip me, should I get up…
In the biggest house we owned (about 2400 sq ft), the master bedroom was something like 15 X 26. That was waaaaaaaaay too big - the way it was configured, there was lots of wasted, unuseable space. I loved the house, but hated that room.
Oooooh, dream houses! I love fantasizing about that.
What I want, though, isn’t a house at all. Lawn? Garden? Garage? Pfui. I hate everything related to mowing/gardening/car maintenance. Let someone else maintain the lawn, grow the veggies/flowers, shovel snow, and so forth. We will live within walking distance of work places, and otherwise use taxis or rent cars for short trips.
Give me a nice two bedroom condo/apartment in a huge, upscale building in a big city. (Yes, the Trump Towers in NYC would do.) I want the master bedroom to be large enough to hold the usual furnishings (including a queen sized bed) plus a small private sitting area (a love seat, an upholstered chair, maybe a rocker, table, and a decent sized television.) The second bedroom would be mainly used as a writing room/office for me, but there’d be a murphy bed. The idea being, there would be enough space for guests when I want them, but not enough for unwanted ones.
Otherwise, one and a half baths. A large ‘public’ area that can be used a living room/dining area/media room as current needs dictate. A small galley kitchen for when I want to cook, and a telephone with speed dial settings for the ten or so excellent varigated restaurants in the building that deliver when I don’t want to.
No attic/basement/storage areas: they’re mainly trash bunkers ime.
Oh, make the main bathroom big enough to hold a washer/dryer as well as separate shower and bathtub, and two sinks, one of them a large/deep one for hand washables.
I have no idea what that adds up to in sq. footage, but it suit the way I want to live to a tee.
I live by myself in an old Colonial and it’s a mix of too big and not big enough. The realtor claimed, I think, 2100 sq ft, but lied through her teeth. I can’t imagine it’s more than 1600 sq ft.
I spend most of my time in one or two rooms, but those rooms really aren’t big enough. Well…ok, they are, but I wish they were bigger – I envy people with cathedral ceilings and enough room to have entertainment consoles. I have several rooms that I never use except to drop boxes of stuff in. And the basement is too small and dark for a decent woodworking shop.
So I wouldn’t actually use the space in a bigger house, but visually and aesthetically, I’d appreciate it.
Personally, I really enjoy the size of the house I am living in now, even though it is 3700 sq. ft. Really, it doesn’t feel that big at all, since it is a three story house with huge ceilings. The heighth is greater than the width and almost greater than the length. With only a loft, kitchen, dining room, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and living room, it begins to show what kind of house I enjoy most - open ones. Ideally, my house would be fairly large, but architecturally unique while remaining open, sprawling, inviting, and whatever in that vein. Maybe it is my vanity, but I really enjoy larger houses. (McMansions I detest, though.)
Oh, and this lot is almost perfect. We live on a couple or so acres, but the people behind us own 37 acres of fields and woods. What’s more. our house is in the middle of the woods, complete with a creek in the backyard, yet minutes away from basic necessities. Even if a house is larger than all get out, as long as it is on a similar lot I’ll be sastisfied.
Unfortunately, some of them don’t spend their golden years dusting, and their houses fall into disrepair. My mother lives alone in the house I grew up in. It’s an 8-room house (4BR, kitchen, dining room, living room, family roon, 1.5baths). She had made many, many comments over the years about selling the house and moving to a condo, but decided about 2 years ago that she could never do that. The house has too much sentimental value, she says.
Well, never the best housekeeper in the world (and she is physically in fine health, lest anyone think she just can’t get around enough to clean), she has allowed her house to become cluttered and dusty. She herself occupies one of the bedrooms, but the other 3 are just heaped with books and sewing supplies and paperwork, etc. The downstairs floors were worn from years of owning pets and not cleaning up well after them, and now she rarely actually dusts the florrs. My sisters and I have offered help, or discussed the idea of having someone come in to clean for her, but she genuinely thinks it’s not so bad. It’s not a health hazard, or like those houses you see on the news that the neighbors are trying to get condemned, but it’s certainly “too much house”.
Depends on whether garage space counts or not.
If it doesn’t, my parents’ 1600-sq-ft house is certainly big enough for everything. The trick is to have a relatively large attic and basement for storage and play, and two floors; this leaves four levels of 800 square feet each without the giant footprint and cleaning difficulties of a larger house. It was certainly big enough for the four of us and wasn’t cramped when two or three relatives came for a couple weeks. It also has enough room for the machine shop my father never got around to building (nothing overly fancy, just a lathe, a bandsaw, and a Bridgeport). I guess more than that would be wasted on me.
However, when you start adding garage space, look out. I intend to own no fewer than three cars at any given time, just for myself, plus karts. In addition, I would like to be able to disassemble, overhaul, and rebuild any part of any car I’d own; this’ll be important in the summers. So, figure on a four-car simple garage (no bigger than the average three-car garage), plus my Workshop Space. Ever see the Nextel Cup garages on television? I want something that’s essentially a small fraction of that; 20x25 of tile floor, a huge Craftsman or Allen tool box, what appears to be the entire Ingersoll-Rand catalog of air tools, a massive selection of SAE Grade Eight and aerospace-grade hardware, and enough space for two cars - a shell and all the machinery.
I like the size of where I live now. It’s a house we’ve owned for years, and we subdivided one of the bedrooms (16 x 13) into two smaller rooms with a shared entry from the rest of the house. The two rooms are now a bedroom (8.5 x 8.5, MOL) and an L-shaped den thing, 6 x 13, with a 4 x 7 hallway thing connecting the two, which taken together form the L. Add in the connected bathroom and walk-in closet, and it’s about 250 sq ft. This space is ideal for me, as I don’t entertain, and I don’t have (or intend to have) a family. If I were to add a kitchenette and laundry area to this, it would be my perfect space and under 400 sq ft. Everything I own (which isn’t much; not too material) fits comfortably in here – a desk with computer and chair, a loveseat, a coffee table, entertainment center with surround and largish TV in the den thing; bed, bookshelf, and recliner in bedroom; 75 gal aquarium in hallway; all my clothes and other such in the closet – with plenty of room for me and my two cats.
So, no, I cannot understand any place with 5000 sq ft. Who wants the hassle of taking care of such a place, or having half (or more) of a house that you don’t see on a daily basis? Feh.
I would like it if my place was a bit bigger - I’ve got about 1,000 SqF, and two bedrooms - a third would be really nice to use as an office - right now my confuter is in the spare bed room, but the spare bedroom is done in antique furniture, and the confuter looks god awful in here.
What I would really like is a bungalow. However, a decent bungalow around these parts starts around $285,000, which is out of my price range - I have to be able to buy shoes, after all. 
On the upside, I’m installing new flooring in my whole place (Funky vinyl, if you can imagine!) and it’s going to be pretty cheap. Yeah!