One thing I would have if I had a 5,000 sq. ft. house is a restaurant style kitchen strictly for working in. I would also have an approx. 900 sq. ft. area for informal dinning and living with a large granite island for serving and sitting with a sink.
What does a 4000-5000 sq ft home offer above what a 2000-3000 sq ft home does?
More points on the status scale?
My S.O. and I were living in a 1250 sf rent house until we finally got our own place about three years ago. We now have 3100 sf, but we don’t have a lot of extra rooms, just bigger rooms. The only additional rooms we acquired are a formal dining room(we really wanted that and use it all the time), one more bath, and a laundry room inside the house instead of in the garage. The small house had all the same basic “stuff” in it - there’s just more room for it now.
It’s nice to not feel cramped in your own home, and it doesn’t take any(well, very little) more time and energy to keep it clean. The S.O. says it is easier to clean than the small house because every nook and cranny isn’t jammed full.
What does a 4000-5000 sq ft home offer above what a 2000-3000 sq ft home does
In the words of George Carlin, “more room for your stuff”.
I was getting a little depressed reading this thread until I remembered that my modest home is paid for and I am very happy with it.
mmm
As far as I know, at least in Ohio (or in my county?) a bedroom has to have a window in it big enough for someone to escape through. So most basement bedrooms don’t count as bedrooms unless you dig window wells and put in person-sized windows.
Of course once you own the home you can call anything a bedroom.
I think I’ve heard of this rule on home reno shows so it’s definitely not just an Ohio thing.
The only time I’ve experienced agoraphobia (fear of open places, public spaces), was entering a large master bedroom (35x25).
Somehow I expect a bedroom to be a safe place. That just felt exposed.
According to this.
You need various size requirements (width, height, sq ft, window size), heating and cooling options, 2 means of egress.
Apparently the closet thing is not accurate, you can have a bedroom without a closet.
But when it says 2 means of egress, I’m assuming having 2 doors would suffice rather than having 1 door and 1 window.
35x25 is about the size of most of the apartments I’ve lived in. And those were 2 bedroom, 1 bath apartments.
In some parts of the country (typically rural), when you sell your house you are also constrained by how many bedrooms your septic tank is designed for. I mean, you can use it for a bedroom even if it’s not accommodated by the septic design, but the town won’t let you call it a bedroom officially when you go to sell it.
I would think the septic tank would be designed to accommodate a certain number of bathrooms, not bedrooms.
Bedrooms are more of a measure of how many people will be contributing to the septic tank.
He forgot to mention the blast shutters. He claims they are to fend off assaults by Lake Michigan during storms, but they look sufficient to survive an apocalypse. It’s an above-ground underground lair. It also incorporates non-euclidean geometries and I’m pretty sure the floor plan wasn’t precisely “planned”, the word “sprawling” comes to mind.
But it is a pretty cool house. And the Tolkien reference library is quite impressive.
However, last fall the husband and I visited a gent in New Hampshire whose “compound” put the Mercotan Estate to shame. This guy’s main house (he had three substantial buildings on the land) had a living room bigger than my entire apartment, a kitchen as big as my entire apartment, 4 bedrooms each with its own bath, and each bath with different amenities (one has a sauna/steam room, one a multi-head shower, one a tub with jets, etc.),laundry/maintenance room, and a combined gym/workroom/library. The bedrooms and laundry were all about 500 square feet, the other rooms all at least 1200 square feet each, some larger. The “guest house” a.k.a. “bunkhouse” could sleep 40 people (multiple occupancy per bedroom) along with two playrooms for the kids and a half dozen baths, and also a theater room. And a large deck/porch/patio on both the first and second levels. The “garage” had a three car garage on one side of the first level, and workroom easy as large as that on the other side of the first level, on the second level a billiard/game room with a half dozen game tables, a massive railroad layout, another gym, another library, and a bath/shower. The third level was an observatory with a 24 inch telescope.
They had a full time housekeeper/cook, and a driver. Other people to be hired as needed.
Thanks. They are to fend off assaults, both by and from Lake Michigan. R’lyeh is actually offshore from Manitowoc, you know. And the word for the floor plan is “chthonic”. 
I just added Beren and Luthien to the collection.
I don’t believe you got the tour of the other two houses on my property, Mercotan I and Seapasture. But they don’t rise anywhere near the level of the places you describe in NH anyway, and my telescope is only an 8 inch aperture. :o
The Mrs. (aka Cynthia) says “hi”.
My parents built a big 3500 sq foot single story house.
It’s a long, long walk from their bedroom to the den on the opposite end.
There’s an isolation that’s quite remarkable. You aren’t aware if someone is in the den or kitchen. You’re in a different world back in the bedrooms. Much like a cocoon
Certainly makes sharing a house easier.
We have one child, and when we were younger we built a 2,000 sq ft split level house. After we had our kid, we decided we wanted to move to a neighborhood a little quieter, since that house was built on a busy street and we wanted our kid to have a proper neighborhood to play in.
My requirements for the new house: It needed space for a minimum 12x20 home theater, since I wanted to build one. It also needed space for a home office large enough for each of us to have our own desk with a computer, and a space for a pool table. That was it. We didn’t care about entertaining or having huge bedrooms or anything like that. Just room for our hobbies.
We found a 2500 sq ft 2-story with an unfinished basement. That was the absolute smallest house I could find with a basement that would fit a pool table and still have room to build out our small theater. So I finished the basement, and now we have about 3600 sq feet of living space in a house with three bathrooms.
I will say that this is about the limit of what we are able to maintain in terms of cleaning and yardwork without hiring people to do the work. Big houses are often on big lots, and mowing is an all-afternoon affair for me. My wife spends a lot of time pruning shrubs, tending her flowers, vacuuming, etc. As it is, we still bring in Molly Maid once in a while for a thorough cleaning because we both also work,
I love my house, but I would never want anything larger. Everything gets more expensive when you go big. Replacing your carpet or repainting the house will be many thousands of dollars. We have two furnaces, and last year we replaced them and installed air conditioning on the furnace that serves the bedroom level, and it cost us $25,000. We put in a brick patio, and it cost $12,000 because of the size and amount of bricks required.
Bigger homes can be nice, but once you get past the 4,000 square foot level, you had better factor in a whole new set of expenses. Cleaners, yard workers, etc.
Off topic, but what is your ideal, obtainable home theater setup?
What kind of chairs, will you have a projector, what speakers, etc?