Nah, I follow realtor rules - unheated/non-air-conditioned spaces don’t count. Just actual living space. We’ve got an oversized 2-car garage, which I love, but it, and the storage sheds out back, and the attic, and the basement don’t count. If we finished and included the basement, we’d be around 3400, way more than the 2 of us would ever need. Instead, the basement has the laundry room, a storage area, and most of it is workshop. We talked about finishing part of it, but that’s not going to happen.
I live alone (well, mostly) and my house is just over 2100 sq. ft. Sometimes it is a big ol’ PITA to keep clean but I like the size of it when people are over, plus I love love love my huge bedroom and the huge screened in back porch. ACBG (the squeeze) has a house that is about 1500 sp. ft. He has too much stuff in it for the size house (what, he admits it!) he has. What’s funny is, his stuff would be just right in my house and my stuff would be just right in his house.
I keep thinking about enclosing the garage and extending the dining room and kitchen but I don’t know why. I don’t really want even more to clean. I just have this vision of how lovely it would all look.
Then, I think, one day I’ll sell this place and go for something smaller. I’d like something with two big bedrooms, each with its own bath and an open kitchen/dining/living room area, the whole place being around 1300 - 1400 sq. ft. With a small yard. Plus a nice screened or glassed in back porch with a hot tub. And an oversized garage. I have no idea how to make all this work.
Our house is about 5000 square feet, which for 2 people is horrendously large. We didn’t set out looking for a house this big, although we did want something at least 3000 square feet finished. We both work at home, and wanted offices that were not right next to each other since we spend too much time in each other’s faces when we have adjoining offices.
We took our time looking for a house - we wanted the PERFECT house, and we weren’t in a hurry. When we found this one, it was everything we wanted - a great layout, on 11 acres, and right in town. We liked the style, and it had a lot of the extras we’d wanted but were not deal breakers (high ceilings, lots of wood). The only thing was that it was WAY too big for us. The price was slightly above what we wanted to pay, but affordable nonetheless. We went for it.
Truth be told, we actually use most of the house. Unlike my home in Colorado, where we rarely even set foot in the formal dining room and formal living room, this house has a great room. We use it all the time. We have our home gym set up in the finished basement, and we built a sauna down there. We use our home gym - almost every day in the winter, less in the summer, but we’re still down there quite a bit. We both have our offices, and we have a guest room.
I really like having all this space. I didn’t think we’d use it at first, but it turns out we do. I never have to go searching for storage space, and when people come over it never feels crowded. We use our library (a loft that overlooks the great room), we use our basement, we use our great room. Do we need it? No, but it’s nice to have.
A 32 room, 7 BR, 9 full and 4 half-bath on 5 acres house was listed on our MLS. The taxes are $234,715.
Now that is a trophy house.
The house we live in is almost perfect for our family of four. It’s about 2800 sq. ft with 3 bedrooms plus a large room downstairs that doubles as a guest room and kids’ hangout room (it’s great for sleepovers). There are 3 1/2 baths, a large living room, a dining room/kitchen, a family room, and an unfinished part of the basement we use for a workshop, a pool table, and storage.
There are a few things I would change if I could. I’d make all of the bedrooms larger - I’d love to have a sitting area in the master bedroom, and the kids bedrooms are very small. I only really want a formal dining room about twice a year, so I could do without that, but in its place I’d have a library. I love to look at house plans and look for the perfect space, and I’ve found that I’d need around 3500 sq ft for my dream house.
At the moment, though, the house we’re in is pretty close to ideal.
I’m single, and I find a 1200 square foot, 2 bedroom apartment to be about right. It’s nice if there’s more than one bath, but I’m not picky about that. I’d actually like it to be about 200 square feet larger to include a storage room, but that’s hard to find.
I don’t want anything bigger, because I’m a hoarder and a slob. The more rooms there are, the more mess there ends up being, and it gets to be more than I can handle. Any smaller than 1200, and rooms are way too crowded, and the mess is concentrated to an unbearable point.
The only time I really give a :rolleyes: to people who seem to have a too-big house is when they build a McMansion that just looks like some big boxes on the outside and is all white and beige on the inside–with no character. So much money, so little imagination! This is the style of big home that predominates in Iowa. And they stick them on tiny little lots with no trees in the middle of what used to be a cornfield, which just looks stupid.
I also don’t understand peoples’ desire to have vaulted (cathedral) ceilings. All they do is run the heating/cooling bills sky high. I much prefer a house with ceilings a foot or two higher than the norm. They don’t feel like a cramped rabbit warren, and yet they don’t cost an arm and a leg to heat. But to each his own.
I do think there’s a definite pressure to “keep up with the Joneses” with respect to square footage. Mom knows lots of people in her age group (50s and 60s) who traded up after the kids left, but their homes are mostly empty, sometimes with rooms that aren’t used at all.
Since when? We have 25’ vaulted ceilings in our great room (it’s a big A-frame kinda thing). Our heating bills in this house are suprisingly low - in fact, we pay about the same for heat here as we did in our previous house, a 2000 square foot normal-ceilinged house, albeit with an older furnace. And we live in the frozen north, where heating costs are usually quite high. The vaulted ceilings don’t seem to add anything at all to the heating bill.
My parents have a ceiling that high, and the bills are murder–way higher than when they had a colonial. Mom bitches about it every month. They totally redid the heating system, and it didn’t improve matters much. Obviously, YMMV.
Yea, QN, assuming other factors aren’t at work, our house is solar electric. We have a giant wall of pure windows facing southwest and an equally large wall of sheer brick 1 ft thick for collecting of the heat. Surprisingly, it’s an effiecent (cheap) system.
I agree. I put my foot down on that one: I absolutely refuse to live in one of those neighborhoods.
My mother-in-law lives in one of them, where every house looks exactly the same, a sort of post-modern ranch. Exactly. There are only three permitted paint colors and they’re all shades of brown and grey. There is very, very little variation allowed in design.
Their house cost $250,000. I’d estimate it’s about 2000 square feet. It’s strange to me that someone would pay so much for a house that has no character or charm. Personally, I wouldn’t pay more than $100,000 for it. Other than its location in an expensive area, it doesn’t have anything which I feel justifies a quarter of a million.
But everyone seems to want to live in those neighborhoods. I’m quite sure we’ll have trouble re-selling the house in which we live now because it’s in one of the old neighborhoods in town, and there are small houses around it. (There goes the neighborhood! Poor people may move into them!) I sort of like that ecclectic feel. At least I don’t feel like I’m surrounded by Republicans! 
Yup, YMMV. I wouldn’t automatically assume that all vaulted ceilings are heating/cooling problems. I’d guess the building quality means a lot - our house, like any other up here in the Land of Big Snow, is very well insulated. No drafts, windows that shut tightly, and a good furnace help immensely. Our vaulted wall includes windows from floor to ceiling, and like I said, our heating bills are just about what you’d pay for any good sized house, vaulted ceilings or no.
My ideal house would be pretty big, actually. My dream house is an old brick Victorian with a huge verandah and:
- a proper foyer big enough for a bench, an umbrella stand, and a small desk
- a mud room (maybe around back or at the side, or off the kitchen maybe) where muddy dog feet can be towelled and scarves and boots and coats don’t clutter up the whole house)
- a big kitchen with lots of counter space, cupboards, drawers, a large pantry, and a big sunny eating area
- a sitting room with a fireplace
- a family room, also with a fireplace
- a formal dining room
- at least four good sized bedrooms, including a master bedroom with a walk-in closet and en suite bathroom (then two bedrooms for kids and one for guests)
- a bathroom on every floor, plus one in the master bedroom, and ideally one in the guest room
- an office
- a library/den
- a playroom (“nursery”, I guess)
- a gym area
- a studio for painting in
- a sunroom
- a back staircase
- a main or second floor laundry room, big enough to iron in
- a big basement (not necessarily finished, but in good enough shape and with high enough ceilings to have a nice, big, organized storage area, preferably with built in shelves and some cedar cupboards for off season clothes) with a workshop
I’d love to have a few acres with some woods and a small barn, as well.
That would end up being pretty big, I know, and I also know I’ll never have it, but boy, being able to have a place for everything would be such a wonderful thing to me that the cleaning would be a happy tradeoff.
Having moved last summer (and needing to have 4 bedrooms) I saw a fair number of McMansion type homes. Yes, they were large. But the space allocation was pretty crazy, IMHO. They had HUGE master bathroom suites. Usually the master bath was larger than any other bedroom. Other luxury “must haves” were there in spades, at the expense of space that people would actually use when they lived in the homes.
The dining and living rooms were present, but in many instances looked like vestigal organs. Tiny and off to the side.
Now, I like taking showers as much as the next person, but I don’t need to play polo outside the tub. I enjoy a walk in closet, but not if my children can’t fit a bed, dresser, and desk into their rooms.
Around here, no matter what the cost there was shoddy workmanship on the trim, hollow doors, and no built in or anything to give the home character.
I cam to the conclusion that these new, huge houses are designed to sell, not to be lived in.
I ended up buying a house built in 1960. It is not as large as most McMansions, but the space is usuable and the lay out makes sense, so it feels larger. It was also about $100,000 less than a new house of comparable size. That’s because everyone wants new. The materials used and construction is actually much better than what can be found in a new house.
It depends-if it was just me or me and an SO I would be happy with a cape.
If there were two/more kids involved I would want a room for each and a room to spare, a finished basement and another family room.
I grew up in historic Massachusetts before the mansionization craze so I’m not used to the concept of a big house and I don’t really have big house dreams. Our house in Canada was really modest as well.
I guess I have small-scale dreams in terms of house size b/c I never grew up with anything too large…should an SO want a McMansion or whatever in the future, I wouldn’t protest-my main issue would be resale/investment potential of what he wanted.
Spanish here, ok.
My mother’s house is a penthouse, about 1200sq ft of “flat” plus 500 sq ft of terrace (about 100sq ft of which are a greenhouse). 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (one with tub, one with shower), a very large kitchen with a tiny balcony (from which you reach the laundry lines), a huge living room and a 4th “bedroom” which she uses as a smaller living room.
I’ve just signed the lease on another flat in the same building; no terrace but still about 1200sq feet, etc etc. Three bedrooms, huge living room, big kitchen (smaller and more square than Mom’s), another room that I plan on setting up for storage/ironing/etc. I’m single, so I intend to search for a roomie among medical personnel: the local hospital gets 4 new residents every year (they stay for 3 years) and there are also doctors who live out of town but need a local place for “presency guards” - they have to be less than 15 min. from the hospital, but not in it.
I loved an apartment I had many years ago: 500 sq ft, but the only doors were the one for the street and the one for the bathroom. Big walk-in closet, the kitchen was just fine, and by furnishing the big space with a huge table and two sofabeds I had enough room for myself and 3 guests
Our house is 1800 sq ft. It is the smallest house on our block ( that Mr. Ujest built.) we have the lowest in taxes, mortgage and maintence. I know, we have everyone’s paperwork for the costs.
I likes it alot. ALOT!
Big house means more money in taxes and keeping up with the Jones.