How do you really feel about the trends in homes - granite counters, open concept, etc?

[Spoons]

@CanvasShoes

And what’s all this crap about “I want to be able to see my guests while I’m cooking” anyway?

I don’t know, but when my ex and I were looking at houses, the realtor kept showing us open-concept, kitchen/living/dining area houses. When we protested that such houses were not what we wanted, we were told, “Well, you can keep an eye on the kids from the kitchen.”

When we told her that we have no kids, and no plans to have any, we were told, “Well, you’ll change your mind.”

We ended up buying the one that she reluctantly showed us, and didn’t think we’d like. But it had a separate kitchen, just like we wanted.

[kiz]

@aruvqan

And for the ones househunting overseas - Repeat after me THIS IS NOT THE US. You will probably not find a 4 or 5 bedroom, ensuite and dual walk in closets in the master, huge granite countered stainless steel applianced ultra modern kitchen on the beach with a beach view in Costa Rica [where it is illegal to build new structures within 300 feet of the beach, apparently] for $50 000US. $5 million, perhaps, but you will have to choose near the beach or statuesque view of the ocean from a hilltop, and hope to find an estate on the market cheap because american style houses are rare. What you get is a lot more ‘rustic’. If you are house hunting in a european city, expect tiny flats, tiny kitchens with maybe a tiny toaster oven sized oven and 2 burners, a tiny bathroom that may also have a washer only, and probably no dishwasher or huge fridge/freezer. It will also probably not have an assigned parking spot, nor an elevator.

The other night they featured a family from Texas who were moving to Budapest because the husband was offered a job transfer. The first thing they crowed before being shown anything? “Things HAVE to be BIG. We’re from TEXAS!”

I couldn’t help LOLing when only one of the flats they were shown had a master large enough for their “oversize king bedroom set”. I wanted to reach into the TV and throttle the hell out of them because YOU ARE NOT IN TEXAS YOU MORON.

There was another episode where a young couple was moving to Japan – the husband was in the military – and the wife insisted that their new flat had to replicate as close as possible to her family’s home back in whatever-state-she-was-from “so I won’t be homesick” :smack:

How do they find those [collected] morons anyway? Do they not realize that they are making insane demands of the poor agents? And what the freaking hell do all these morons do for a living that they can afford to blow hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on a second beach house in Costa Rica, or a pied a terre in Paris, or uproot and move to Amsterdam [well, OK. That stupid bitch just graduated school as a cheiropracter and hooked into a job in a town 15 minutes by train outside Amsterdam. Though I would have preferred to move into th etown I would be working in and save the trips to Amsterdam for special occasions.]

There was yet another episode not too long ago which featured a woman who chirped that this was her third or fourth time on the show. She loved the buying process and eventually got bored with whatever she’d bought previously, so every time she was hunting she’d call the Entitlement Whores producers.

Those who buy vacation homes somewhere? I imagine that either 1) they must be pretty high up on the income scale for whatever reason; or 2) they’ve been saving for a second home for decades. Or perhaps they inherited a crapload of $? Or, in the the case of the younger ones, Mommy and Daddy foot the bill?

[Cat_Whisperer]

@Fuzzy_Dunlop

I don’t understand how crown molding fits in the same group as granite countertops or open concept. I’ve always thought of any type of molding as an important element of older homes of various architectural styles. They might be original to the house or reclaimed or reproduction moldings put in by someone who cares about their house’s history. Not good or bad but sort of the opposite of trendy.

Are people doing some other nefarious thing with crown molding that I don’t know about?

Bonus question - why single out crown molding over every other style of decorative molding?

Crown moulding seems to have entered the real estate drinking game as one of those things that people “have to have” to even consider buying a house. I’m not sure why, either.

@chela

Double sinks in the bathroom, it’s do or die for the double sinks, I don’t get it. <snip>

That’s another good one. It makes even less sense when you consider that the people who “have to have” double sinks also “have to have” multiple bathrooms - can your husband not use one bathroom, and you use another?

[FlyByNight512]

@Fuzzy_Dunlop

Are people doing some other nefarious thing with crown molding that I don’t know about?

As far as I can tell, they’re doing about the same thing they do with granite countertops. “Oooh, everyone has it, we need it, let’s throw in the cheapest version we can find without any consideration of how it relates to the rest of the house.” It’s the newest ‘must have’ for McMansions and often ends up giving the same air of tacky grandiosity that double height foyers do. I agree that well done molding is beautiful and really adds to the character of the house. I intend to have fun putting in molding when I have a house of my own - but hopefully with some degree of taste!

Speaking of grandiose foyers, I hate it when a house has a beautiful entrance, but it only gets used three times a year when they have guests. Instead, every day after work the owners come in through the garage, up a “temporary” plywood step, through the laundry room where they trip on strewn-about shoes and get a pungent reminder to scoop the cat box, and then come out in the kitchen or some other back corner of the house. I want a house that greets the owners as graciously as it greets its guests, darn it!

What would actually be a major selling point for me is under floor heating. No drafts, no baseboard heaters to worry about starting fires, just even heat and warm floors. Mmmmm. It’s not a small upgrade, but can be effectively done whenever the owner’s redoing their floors, and will probably cost less than a shoddy kitchen makeover.

[aceplace57]

I’d be very careful about buying an older Ranch house (pre 1980) that had been remodeled into open concept. A lot of those walls bear weight and not every carpenter has the skill to put in the necessary beams. The show Holmes on Homes has fixed several damaged houses where walls were taken out wrong. Its a myth that the house will immediately fall in if bearing walls are removed. It usually takes a year or so for things to start sagging. If it sags enough there’s a good possibility of an eventual collapse. A dishonest contractor can cheaply flip a house and make it open concept. You buy it and then a few years later discover a serious sag in the ceiling.

If you really like open concept then imho its better to get one that was designed and built that way.

[Muffin]

My house is on stilts. Somehow I don’t see this as becoming a trend.

[johnpost]

open seems different, maybe spacious.

major downside of stink and sound travel. if everyone liked the same things at the same time it would be OK. people tend to have different needs, some isolation is good.

[Spoons]

@aceplace57

I’d be very careful about buying an older Ranch house (pre 1980) that had been remodeled into open concept. A lot of those walls bear weight and not every carpenter has the skill to put in the necessary beams.

I’m no engineer, but even I can go into the basement, read where the main beam is, and figure out which walls on the first floor support the second floor. So when my sister (an advocate of open concept) and I were chatting the other day, and she told me which walls she would have taken out of our childhood home to make the kitchen bigger and so our parents could watch us kids, I laughed out loud. I told her that our parents could watch us kids all right–falling from the second floor when the house collapsed. Sis wasn’t amused, but when she thought about it, she had to reluctantly admit that I was right.

[Moonlitherial]

@DiosaBellissima

I love the look, but aren’t those hard to keep germ free? I suppose the same could be said for wood cutting boards, but I actually wonder the same thing about those (I cut meat and such on my plastic cutting boards).

You treat it a couple times a year with food grade oil and nothing soaks into it. You shouldn’t treat it like a cutting board of course but I put pans out of the oven and off the BBQ directly on the counter fairly regularly and there hasn’t been any damage yet.

The only damage we’ve had in 5 years is a stain where the magic bullet died. Its death rattle was accompanied by an oil leak and the witnesses didn’t think wiping it up was a priority. They have been reprimanded.

And as Cat Whisperer has already linked to - wood cutting boards are actually better for meat than plastic according to the latest studies.

[Hilarity_N.Suze]

Hardwood isn’t trendy, it’s classic. When I went house shopping in 2007 everybody was all “Oh this kitchen has just been redone and has granite.” There is good granite and there is the shoddy stuff that house-flippers put in, and what I was seeing was the shoddy stuff. Example: They put granite in in such a way that there was a whole set of drawers that would not open more than a couple of inches. They were deep, but forget that, because you couldn’t get them open! Some really unfortunate quick-fix remodels.

I’ve seen some places with lovely granite countertops, but it seems too hard and cold for me. That is, it can look quite elegant. But I would actually prefer something softer. Formica, okay?

So I went with a house that was untouched by professionals, but had a lot of very strange stuff done by the previous owner (house built in '56, he bought it in '60 and spent the next 30 years doing weird electrical wiring and oddball plumbing).

I don’t like open plan because I don’t like food and I don’t like cooking smells going through the whole house. Even if the food smells good initially, it doesn’t smell good stale.

I think crown molding looks ridiculous unless your ceilings are really high.

I really didn’t care what outrageous colors the walls were painted, since I like to paint my own outrageous colors onto the walls.

I will say, I have had to rip shag carpeting out of every house I’ve bought in my life until this one. The owner ripped out it. Apparently, shortly before the open house. (Yes, there were hardwood floors under the shag.) He did not, however, add length to the doors, which were no doubt shortened so they would still close over the big carpet. Gaps a cat could get through.

Still, people want what they want. I wanted a fireplace. I didn’t want to look at a house that didn’t have one OR a house that had a gas insert. I wanted real, messy wood. And about the only way to get that in this town is to get a place that nobody has messed with.

[Lacunae_Matata]

And that’s the “different strokes” aspect of home buying: one of the features our new (to us)house has that I really didn’t want was a fireplace of any sort. Around here (SE Georgia,) it’s pretty pointless, although I can see how I might like one if we lived somewhere with real winters, or out in the boondocks where extended power outages are a real possibility. And I like that our master bath has all of the trendy stuff - soaker tub, separate large shower, and double sinks so that I don’t have to sort through razors and trimmers and shaving cream to find my mascara, but I hate the pedestal sinks. Storage under the vanity would be much nicer.

Hate “soaring two-story atrium” and vaulted great rooms - if I’m going to heat and cool that second floor space, I want it to be usable, and I sure as heck don’t want to use scaffolding just to clean windows! But our home is a single story, so no worries there. And we didn’t go looking for the magic triumvirate of granite, stainless, and open concept, but that’s what we got and I kind of like it. The granite is almost black, with quartz inclusions, so it doesn’t seem as “busy” as a lot of the “leopard-y” brownish stone I see in so many episodes of House Hunters. I don’t like that the fridge isn’t magnetic on the front, but it’s no harder to keep clean than any other surface - maybe even a little easier than the pebbled surface on the spare white refrigerator. The island separates the kitchen from the dining area, which works nicely for us, and there’s a large arch between the food area and the family room on one side, and between the dining area and foyer on the other. I can keep an eye/ear on everyone while cooking, but still keep kids and dogs out of my way. The hardwood floors are definitely nice, but hardly trendy, since they were installed when the house was built in 1967.

The only thing I really, really didn’t like about this house was the “waste” of having both a large den and formal living room, but the living room is being converted to a nursery to suit our needs.

[Muffin]

@Cat_Whisperer

I heard something recently that the two-storey foyers are some of the biggest wastes of space you can have in a house.

Aesthetics v. effeciency. I very much enjoy the two story main room of my place. It transforms the room into a living space. Could my place hold more stuff if the second level was a room? Of course it would, however, a more enjoyable living space is more important to me than more storage space.

[aruvqan]

@FlyByNight512

I want a house that greets the owners as graciously as it greets its guests, darn it!

What would actually be a major selling point for me is under floor heating. No drafts, no baseboard heaters to worry about starting fires, just even heat and warm floors. Mmmmm. It’s not a small upgrade, but can be effectively done whenever the owner’s redoing their floors, and will probably cost less than a shoddy kitchen makeover.

I agree with you. I love browsing architect sites looking at floor plans. I have very specific requirements, I love craftsman, queen anne victorian, and federal with an occasional swing into dutch colonial. I think I have found the [almost] perfect retirement floorplan for mrAru and self. Relaxed craftsman, check. Plenty of fireplaces, check. Lovely entry porch and foyer, check. Master suite that can be rendered handicap compliant, check. Not really open plan, check. Foyer that can be converted back to having an actual floor on the second floor converting the stupid open cathedral foyer into a lovely mini library reading area for the second floor, check. Beautiful back porch to sit on and enjoy the evening, check. Nice entry/mud room off the kitchen, check. We love the in floor heating elements to keep the feet toasty

@aceplace57

I’d be very careful about buying an older Ranch house (pre 1980) that had been remodeled into open concept. A lot of those walls bear weight and not every carpenter has the skill to put in the necessary beams. The show Holmes on Homes has fixed several damaged houses where walls were taken out wrong. Its a myth that the house will immediately fall in if bearing walls are removed. It usually takes a year or so for things to start sagging. If it sags enough there’s a good possibility of an eventual collapse. A dishonest contractor can cheaply flip a house and make it open concept. You buy it and then a few years later discover a serious sag in the ceiling.

If you really like open concept then imho its better to get one that was designed and built that way.

I remember the episode on Holmes where they essentially gutted the house out and rebuilt the entire thing after repairing the foundation damage. I swear, many of his jobs look like it would just be better off tearing the place down and putting in an entirely new building. I do not understand how some of these home inspectors that he follows can stay out of jail - the stuff they miss or ignore are pretty much criminal. That last place where they had a class 3 mold infestation - the attic had huge patches of black fuzzy mold that looked like some sort of alien invasion:eek:

[Colophon]

@Moonlitherial

You treat it a couple times a year with food grade oil and nothing soaks into it. You shouldn’t treat it like a cutting board of course but I put pans out of the oven and off the BBQ directly on the counter fairly regularly and there hasn’t been any damage yet.

The only damage we’ve had in 5 years is a stain where the magic bullet died. Its death rattle was accompanied by an oil leak and the witnesses didn’t think wiping it up was a priority. They have been reprimanded.

And as Cat Whisperer has already linked to - wood cutting boards are actually better for meat than plastic according to the latest studies.

I put in a new kitchen last summer and went for Ikea solid oak worktops. They’re extremely reasonably priced and look beautiful, and liquids just bead up on them once you’ve given them a good few coats of oil. I have a couple of metal trivets beside the oven for really hot dishes, but often put saucepans on the wood straight off the hob with no problems.

I don’t cut directly on the worktops - I took the square piece that I cut out for the hob, smoothed off the edges and put rubber feet on it and use that as a big chunky chopping board.

I don’t mind some granite but a lot of it is such horrid colours - those pinky swirly types that look like crystallised vomit, or the black ones with garish sparkly bits.

We did remove the door when we redid the kitchen, but not out of any great desire for open-plan living, simply that the kitchen is so small that the door took up too much space.

Edit: we put in underfloor heating too. Warm tiles underfoot are wonderful (the electricity bill not quite so great!)

[Bridget_Burke]

When I first began to see granite on those shows, the couple would go the stone yard & pick a slab that they loved; there are some beautiful options. Now the shows that “flip” homes feature cheapo speckled granite–which can be rather ugly.

Recently, I’ve seen them install butcher block, modern materials tougher than granite (but just about as expensive), custom molded & dyed concrete (again, not cheap) & Formica. Hey, Carrera marble is nice, too–not the easiest to maintain but supremely elegant.

We’re actually being shown a bunch of options. Only the most brain-dead of House Hunters insist on granite. (Why are so many of them brain dead?)

[Waenara]

@Bridget_Burke

Only the most brain-dead of House Hunters insist on granite. (Why are so many of them brain dead?)

I saw an episode recently that had the most brain-dead [del]entitlement whore[/del] househunter I’ve seen yet on that show. It was a young single professional (engineer of some type) woman looking for her first home (she brought along a friend to help her out). She had a huge list of “requirements” for what she wanted, that was typical of househunters on that show (e.g. granite countertops, stainless steel appliances and large kitchen even though she rarely cooks, three bedrooms even though she’s single) - her only requirement that made sense was having a small yard because she didn’t want to do a lot of yardwork. I LOL’d quite a few times during the show, because any of the houses that had tiles she commented on whether she liked it - and her sole criteria for “nice tiles” was that they were laid in a diagonal pattern. Just square ceramic tiles, but apparently diagonal = awesome, and perpendicular = boring.

But the most brain dead thing she did during the show was that she refused to even go into the first house the realtor brought her to. Seriously - my jaw dropped. The usual formula for the show is that the person views three houses and picks one of them. Well, she saw four. The first one she said she didn’t like the curb appeal/look of the house (IIRC she didn’t like the color of the house or somthing), and she rejected it without even setting foot into the yard - just standing on the street. And there was absolutely nothing wrong with the house! It wasn’t a dump or a fixer upper, the location was good, and the yardwork was fine. If you took pictures of the exteriors of the four houses she was shown, I guarantee you’d have no better than a 25% chance of picking out which one she rejected out of hand. My theory was that she was trying to show her realtor that she was very particular and discerning and had high standards, but she came across to me as an airhead and a moron who had no idea what she was doing.

[kiz]

@Athena

I’m sure it is. We live in the Frozen North, and homes up here are ultra-insulated. Plus, there’s no cracks under the doors, or loose windows, or even single-paned windows. They just don’t build houses like that here (unless the builder is really stupid or a crook).

Our heat is baseboard heat, using water heated via natural gas. That’s also pretty common up here, it’s a much more even heat than forced air.

For a 5000 square foot house, our biggest natural gas bill of the year is usually in January or February, and is maybe $275. The only other things besides our furnace that uses gas is our stove and our dryer, so most of that is heat. In the summer, the gas price goes down to maybe $50. Our yearly average is right under $1700.

Given that heat is not optional around here and we have a huge house, I don’t consider that bad at all.

$275?!?!? A yearly average under $1700?!?!?

:faints:

I have no idea what my SIL pays, but I’m betting it’s a lot more than that. Then again, natural gas prices are higher in my area because it has to be shipped in. Right now, though, the average price per gallon is a smidge lower, I think, than oil.

[Mama_Zappa]

@Cat_Whisperer

Crown moulding seems to have entered the real estate drinking game as one of those things that people “have to have” to even consider buying a house. I’m not sure why, either.

That’s another good one. It makes even less sense when you consider that the people who “have to have” double sinks also “have to have” multiple bathrooms - can your husband not use one bathroom, and you use another?

Preach it!

Both our current house, and the one previous, have double sinks. We have never had an instance where both of us were needing a sink at the exact same time. Now, the extra counter space is nice, each of us has a certain amount of stuff we like to leave out on the counter, but we could cut the length of our bathroom counter by 1/3, have a single sink in the middle, and have every bit as much available counterspace as we currently do.

Another trend that baffles me: We’ve owned 3 places since 1985. Not a ONE of them has had a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. OK, I know, nobody keeps meds in the bathroom (at least, you’re not supposed to), and there is under-the-sink storage, but most people have lots of little bathroom-y items that really don’t belong under the sink. You need shelves for small stuff. We’ve had to put wall cabinets in all our bathrooms. The powder room in our current place had NO storage for stuff like spare toilet paper - it’s a pedestal sink.

On multiple bathrooms: Elbows mentioned not even wanting a powder room. I have to disagree. With more than one person in a house, you need (if at all possible) at least a powder room in addition to a full bath. Yes, it’s an extra toilet to clean but there will be times where that’s a lifesaver.

[Athena]

@kiz

$275?!?!? A yearly average under $1700?!?!?

:faints:

I have no idea what my SIL pays, but I’m betting it’s a lot more than that. Then again, natural gas prices are higher in my area because it has to be shipped in. Right now, though, the average price per gallon is a smidge lower, I think, than oil.

Pretty sure natural gas is shipped in here as well. Not many gas wells in Michigan.

But yeah - it’s not too bad price-wise. We just switched to the budget plan where they average out the payments over the year, and it’s $140/month. And I forgot, our hot water heater is gas, so that’s in there too. Also, we have a gas fireplace that we run a whole lot in the winter. Like, almost every day.

Insulation makes a difference. A HUGE difference. Having grown up here, I can tell you, houses feel different than they do in other places. In any decent house, there are no cracks, no drafts, no windows that don’t-quite shut. House feel solid and quiet inside.

When I lived elsewhere, houses don’t feel the same. Even in Colorado, which gets cold in the winter (but not as cold as it does here!), the houses don’t have that solid feel that they do here.

[Athena]

Boy, I don’t understand all the hate towards open floor plans. To me, they perfectly compliment my lifestyle. I don’t want to be stuck away in the kitchen when Mr. Athena is in the living room; I want to be able to see and talk to him. And every party I’ve ever had or been to, people end up congregating in the kitchen. Doesn’t matter if it’s closed or open, everyone’s there. It’s nicer to entertain with the open floor plan because even though everyone is in/around the kitchen, we can still see the TV, sit at the dining room table, or whatever.

I’d never want to live in a house without the open floor plan again. Though, I guess in reality, what I have is a “great room”. The bedrooms etc. are closed off.

RE: 2 sinks in the bathroom. I had a house with that about 15 years ago, and I miss it. When Mr. Athena is shaving, I can be doing my hair or whatever, and don’t have to push him out of the way to wash my hands. I think it’s WAY nicer than just one sink. Now, we just take turns, or we squoosh each other from one side to the other so we each get turns at the sink.