A lot of the developers I’ve dealt with here in FLA tell me that they’d rather have 5,000 square feet of single storey than two stories of 2,500 square feet each. Apparently, the second storey is relatively the most expensive. Each storey above that is relatively cheaper (to a point) because it’s giving more and more return on the same amount of land. Keep in mind that developers are not always straightforward to us regulatory types, so take this with a grain of salt.
Yes. Shotgun houses don’t have hallways. Sort of. Charming sure, but I will take the hallway thank you. With a squarish floor plan you can have rooms off a main open area, but this has its own problems, mainly privacy and noise. Its great for a single person or couple that never has guests over. People in this thread do not seem to realize how much space a flight of stairs takes out of every floor. Also construction wise, a one story home is vastly faster to frame.
I live in what we call a bungalow here in Calgary but its probably closer to what Americans seem to call a ranch house. We have a hallway going to the bedrooms / studies (yay empty nest!) which is in no way a problem. They are good for running the cats.
I grew up in a ranch-style, slab foundation house. We thought it was fine. It never seemed too small for our six-person family. My mother grew up in a farmhouse with an outhouse (which her sister knocked down with a sledgehammer at one point, but that’s another story) so she thought a two-bathroom house was great! Also, she and my dad used to live in a fourth-floor walk-up in New York City. A one-story house has its advantages.
Obvious. But what does Ranch style have to do with basement?
Come out of a city and vertical living and the ranch style seems very nice.
On my own note: having owned a bi-level and now a ranch I prefer single level living to stairs. I occasionally go up into the attic where I have a little storage but rarely and I have a nice full basement but it is strictly my wood shop, storage and where our pool, pinball and ping pong tables are. Our washer & dryer are on the same level as our bedrooms. The garage and kitchen are on the same level. This is nicer than 2 stories for living to me. Though the bi-level is probably the single worse design ever.
A nice colonial or Victorian with the laundrey on the same level as the bedrooms is probably fine and I am sure I would get use to it quickly. Though as I get older my knees do complain more so I can see in 15-20 years absolutely hating stairs.
The house I grew up in had a crawlspace with a dirt floor. Would that be a slab foundation or more like a very shallow basement?
The front door of that house opened on a nice living room with a planter at one end that ran the width of the room. We were your typical middle class family, because we never used the living room unless there was company. There was a decent-sized room that combined the functions of a den and a dining room, which is where we spent most of the time. At the other end of the living room were the bedrooms, typically small for the era, and in that part of the house the hallways did seem to use up a lot of the available space, even going through a couple of zigs like a bridge intended to confuse bad spirits in a traditional Japanese garden.
A good thing about the ranch style, as in this house was that the TV (in the den) and kitchen were as far as it was possible to be from the bedrooms, so you could watch TV or use the kitchen without disturbing anyone in the bedrooms. For that to work, though, the house has to be big enough, though. A 1200-square-foot tract house in Carson or Gardena CA wouldn’t be big enough for that to work.
If you’re in a warm climate, another nice thing about ranch houses is that it’s easier to blur the lines between indoors and outdoors–but IMHO only the best and most expensive ones take full advantage of that potential.
Beautiful, at least judging from the linked images.
The Ranch Style homes I am familiar with are usually slab foundations without a basement. However, Ranch Style doesn’t preclude a basement or crawl space; it suggests a horizontal expansion rather than vertical.
A slab foundation is a non-basement, poured-concrete, single-layer, slab of concrete over dirt, gravel or other prepared material. Utilities (radiant heat, plumbing, even electrical conduit) may be imbedded in the slab. By definition, it does not have any crawl space beneath.
In your case, SoP, I can’t tell from your description. If you had a crawl space, you must have had some support of the story above, which could be cement block, poured cement, rock, or other. That would be the foundation (we’re talking the lowest walls, not the *floor *of the lowest level.)
These are not rigid, inflexible definitions here, folks. Regional differences may also come into play.
After fifty years, the plumbing leaks. :rolleyes:
That’s enough about you. We’re supposed to be discussing ranch houses.
I personally like the style. Not sure what the “split-level” hopes to achieve, but for the fact that the man of the house can have his “den”. I can still remember going over my friend’s house and seeing his dad laying there on the couch watching TV in the den. Sitting down there and watching people come down into the den as if it were an arena of some kind is something of an event, but I still don’t really get that they made the split level for that reason, there must be something else.
I am so emailing Thaksin with a Little List.
Well what about houses that have adjoining bedrooms mated together by a shared bathroom? What then, huh? APOCALYPSE.
Don’t be fooled. These days, they are just as likely to look like this.
I look at that house and I see potential. It needs paint, a new kitchen, and some landscaping but it could still be beautiful. I think you’ll find run-down houses of every type.
Maybe it’s because, like SpoilerVirgin, I grew up in an atrium Eichler (full disclosure-I grew up with SpoilerVirgin in an atrium Eichler) but that style of house appeals to me aesthetically. Personally, I think Colonials are ugly (particularly Dutch Colonials). They all look the same and when you open the door all you see is a staircase leading up (which incidentally I have been told is bad Feng Shui since the luck runs right down the stairs and out the door). I wouldn’t live in a glass house anywhere the temperature goes below 40 regularly because it would be far too expensive.
What I can’t understand is the appeal of Jack-and Jill bathrooms. Sure they’re great for kids but if you only have two bathrooms, the master and that one, then guests can only get to a bathroom by going through one of the bedrooms. Then, again, I do have 4 bathrooms and I live alone, which means there’s one for me, one for guests, and one for each cat-if I allowed them in there which I do not after the great toilet paper fiasco of 2004.
Well, clearly it needs a lot of work, but IMHO that’s better than if it had been altered and expanded beyond recognition. Of course that’s assuming there aren’t any major issues like termites, bad electrical systems, etc.
Someone’s been feeding you bad Feng Shui. Stairs are good, because it allows your spirit to soar to a higher level. And wood stairs are the best, as wood is the element most compatible with pleasant thoughts and dreamy living.
Oh, it has loads of potential. In fact, before going in to see it I predicted that “potential” would be in the first sentence on the real estate brochure about it.
But I’m not sure if those pictures convey the low ceilings and tiny rooms, in contrast to the pictures linked to earlier.
Neither: that would be the third option, “Crawlspace”.
Where I grew up in MI, basements were the most popular, followed by slabs. Here in NC, crawlspaces are the most common. I don’t have a solid answer for why, but best as I can determine it’s due to (a) not needing them nearly as much for heating and (b) basements in the clay that’s prevalent here are not a good idea due to bad drainage.
The foundation for crawlspaces tends to be posts sunk into the ground with cement footings below frost depth (deep enough to avoid frost heave).
I suspect there’s a difference in frost depth between MI and NC and that this could also be a factor (between crawlspace versus the other options).
Split levels are certainly practical on sloping streets because of the smaller footprint, not least because all the usable space for a patio/garden, not to mention the house itself, probably had to be graded anyway.