We bought a house that’s got one more room than we need, because the house was otherwise perfect. It has a room for an office, a room for a workout room, a neat finished walkout basement with a fireplace and a wet bar, a nice kitchen, dining room, upstairs family room with another fireplace and built-in bookshelves, a sun room, and three bedrooms (not including the office, which is the 4th bedroom), so we have a room for our daughter, a guest room, and the master. What we haven’t accounted for is a formal living room. It’s directly to one side as you walk into the house, has gorgeous hardwood floors, and is probably the 2nd biggest room in the entire house, not counting the lower level. And we are not formal living room people. I don’t like having a random room in the house that NOBODY uses, especially considering the fact that the house has two living rooms and a sun room that can be used for entertaining. I’ve never known anyone who actually sat and did anything in their formal living room, so what’s the point of having one?
So what do we do with it? Do we put our workout equipment in there on pads and use the lower workout room (a much smaller room with a door and a cement floor) as storage? Would that look hideously tacky, seeing as the room opens directly to the foyer? If that’s just too awful to contemplate, what should be done with it? I think long-term we’ll end up knocking out the wall between it and the upstairs family room and just making a great room, but short-term I need to come up with something, lest I have a giant empty room to welcome everyone at the housewarming party.
Any ideas? Also, feel free to cross-post this to the “Problems you have that nobody will sympathize with” thread. I know, boo-hoo, my house is too big.
Hmm - line it with shelves and make it a library? A music room, full of cds, tapes, musical instruments, etc? (Especially a baby grand piano.) Looking at a few pictures, yes, you definitely need the grand piano.
A friend has a house that sounds a lot like yours, with a huge formal living room that nobody uses. They just don’t need it, because they have a family room on the lower level and a huge kitchen with plenty of dining space.
Friend plays piano, so that’s where the grand piano ended up (easier than moving it down to the family room). There’s a fireplace, so they put some seating around the fireplace. When they have get-togethers, it’s extra space, and a place to get away from the crowd. She has some family antique pieces that don’t fit anywhere else in the house, so part of the room has sort of a mini-museum vibe. Even with all that, the room still looks empty. Damn, but that’s a big room.
So there’s that, which is basically what Cat Whisperer said. It’s an art & music room, like a salon, I guess. But it’s basically the space you walk through to go to the kitchen or downstairs to the family room.
Do you have a dining room? My mom used to have a modest table in one half of her family room, and a spare living room that no one ever used.
One day she up and bought a huge dining room set (including a buffet and a china cabinet), got rid of the couches in the living room, and put up a dining room right in the front of the house.
It rarely gets used, except for when she hosts holidays, but it looks nice and was less expensive to furnish than a living room. Plus, being that it’s actually the room where the front door is, it’s handy to have a big table there when people come and go. It’s also a good place to spread out, like when we’re doing a craft.
I’d set it up as a playroom for your kid where all the toys are kept and an open space with no bed. Well that’s what I did in my house that has more bedrooms than normal. Playroom, master, guest room, office/ hubbys room, my room- exercise and second guestroom, babys room.
That’s my suggestion. Start browsing AVSForum and you’ll have that room filled out nicely in no time. I’ve got a 93" screen that wows everyone that sees it.
We’ve been in our house 15 years and haven’t quite solved this problem. We only use ours for Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners - we eat at the nice kitchen table every other day. We have the piano in it, but we don’t play it. We have a fireplace, but this being California we almost never use it. The stereo is set up there, but when you can bring your music with you, it basically is a place to store CDs. We had some bookcases there but that got replaced by a nice antique cupboard we got from my f-i-l when he moved out of his house. The TV is in the family room, and basically there is no good reason to be in this room. Our house is big enough (we both have offices) so that you don’t even have to go there to get away from everyone else.
We have a similar problem as the OP. Our living room is just to the left of the front door, and we don’t have to go through it to get anywhere else in the house. We have dining room, family room (with home theatre), playroom for the kids, basement, 4 bedrooms, etc. We have furniture in the living room (including piano) but it never gets used except for the Christmas tree and when the family comes over for the holidays. So, 2 days out of 365. It’s sort of a waste of space.
One wall is 75% the arched doorway from the foyer, two other walls are largely windows to the front and side yards. Furniture is on the 4th wall. We’d use it as the orgy room, but with all the windows the neighbors would look at us funny.
Sorry, you had me at library. Books, shelves, cat, and a few comfy chairs. That’s all I’d need. If my children were allowed anywhere near it, there would be multiple desks with a game-friendly wi-fi LAN, and I suppose I could put up with that if the room was big enough. And if the shelves screened it. And they used headphones.
The room is directly below the nursery, so I don’t think it’s going to fly as a home theater–plus, that’s essentially what we’d planned on doing with the lower level.
The ball pit is intriguing–I’m not sure how much damage a toddler can do to hardwood if we turned that room into a giant playroom for her right now…
We had the same problem. For the first year or so that we lived here, there was literally nothing in that front room. I think there might have been a pole lamp. We’ve gradually populated it with more furniture, and now it has a piano, couch, and several bookshelves. People seem to like to hang out and socialize in there when we host gatherings, and it’s a pleasant place to escape from the TV when someone’s watching something that you don’t care for. The kids leave their trains and stuff set up in there a lot, too.
Yeah, a front room is usually way too open for a home theater to be at all practical, especially with that downstairs area.
I like the idea of a library, but without all those pesky books. Do you have a hobby you could showcase here? Fill it with family photos, portraits, geneologies, heirlooms, etc.? Do you have one particularly unique piece of furniture that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of your stuff, but you love? Put it in there, and build/buy around it.
Since it sounds like this is a temporary use, and that it’s awfully close to the family room and kitchen, I’d make it as guest-friendly as possible. Maybe it’s a place where you take someone for a more private conversation while everyone else is in the family room. Maybe it’s a place with the most comfortable chair in the house to read in.
There are some decent enough ideas in this thread thus far, but I feel like I’ve definitely got the superior plan for you.
[ol]
[li]Sell all of your furniture and cars.[/li][li]Cash out all income from the sale of household items into gold coins. [/li][li]Fill spare room with coins. [/li][li]Pull a Scrooge McDuck and swim in that shit everyday.[/li][/ol]
