From the same book,
Building with Assurance, I bring you house #16. A slightly larger Georgian styled house, it measures in at nearly 3,000 sf, a number seen in the smallest houses built today.
This is almost too much of a house for me, what do you think? I love the gracious entry hall with flanking living and dining rooms. I would remove the doors to the front hall and open up the kitchen a bit more to get rid of the fussy breakfast nook and pantry, otherwise I think this is a great floorplan for modern living. In favor of a larger kitchen, one could forgo the seperate dining room and place a table in the sunroom, facing the garden with additional access to the kitchen near the basement stairs. Then the dining room and kitchen could become a very large eat-in kitchen.
On the second floor, a generous master bedroom with a fireplace and lovely porch is already in place, but I'm sure along the way it would have been glassed in. I'm ambivalent either way (glassed in or not) but I would definitely want to carve out an en-suite bathroom. The rear bedroom and existing bath would need to be reconfigured to that end, hopefully also providing a walk-in closet for the master suite.
While I'm getting rid of a bedroom (or possibly two) on the second floor, don't forget the attic has 2 bedrooms and its own bath!
From the same book, Building with Assurance, I bring you house #16. A slightly larger Georgian styled house, it measures in at nearly 3,000 sf, a number seen in the smallest houses built today.
This is almost too much of a house for me, what do you think? I love the gracious entry hall with flanking living and dining rooms. I would remove the doors to the front hall and open up the kitchen a bit more to get rid of the fussy breakfast nook and pantry, otherwise I think this is a great floorplan for modern living. In favor of a larger kitchen, one could forgo the seperate dining room and place a table in the sunroom, facing the garden with additional access to the kitchen near the basement stairs. Then the dining room and kitchen could become a very large eat-in kitchen.
The exterior is really lovely but with a family of 5 (sometimes 7)the main living area would be a bit tight for us. The main problem we found when shopping for houses recently was that bedrooms were often too small in both old and new homes and it appears to be true here too. I think you are right about opening up the kitchen more.
ReplyDeleteAnother charming house! I appreciate that the rear elevation would be articulated the same as the front. As I like to have dinner parties, the doors from the hall to the dining room would be used -- closed when guests arrive then opened to reveal the table set for dinner, then closed afterwards to conceal the remains.
ReplyDeleteI like your idea of combining the kitchen and dining room. My experience has been that such enlarged kitchens become the living rooms of a house.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kerry, in one of my former lives as a Realtor. The historic homes most often do not have adequately sized bedrooms for the size of today's furnishings, and the closets, well many convert a small bedroom or nursery to a master closet.
ReplyDeletexoxo
Karena
Art by Karena
Admittedly I'm only one person and don't take up much space. I still just want to say that many large families were once raised in 1200 sf ranches. Thats all I'm saying -to rethink this wasteful need for space -and that is the purpose of these posts. Personal opinion is all!
ReplyDeleteMark -guilty as charged. I live in the kitchen! It's always a force to move a party from the kitchen to the living room too. Maybe just give in and bring the kitchen into the house!
ReplyDeleteYou'd need to add a powder room someplace on the first floor, unless I somehow missed it. I'd want to open the back entry to the front so you could see it from the front door, bringing more light and openness to the interior. I wish that fireplace was on the exterior wall so it didn't intrude into the rooms so much. Upstairs, I have to think the sleeping porch would become the master bath, if that were possible per the plumbing. I'd keep all the existing bedroom and baths as configured.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I love to look at old floor plans and think about how I would renovate them if I ran across them in the real world. Which, when I lived in St. Louis, I did quite often. Lots of great old housing stock there, and yes, you'd sacrifice square footage for location.
I like old house plans too, are you familiar with antiquehome.org and antiquehomestyle.com? Tons of plans from the teens to the forties, check 'em out.
ReplyDeleteOn this one, you'd definitely want a powder room, at least, on the first floor. And the sun room is way too far from the kitchen to be practical. Think about it: Do you really want to haul all the flatware and china for 6 or 8 guests all the way to the sunroom? Plus all the food and serving dishes. Plus haul it all back after?
I think better to build a wide porch across the back of the house for that, plus a powder room. Just sayin'.
Russ, check in tomorrow when I answer both of those questions with some sketches I drew last night. It's only about 15' to walk dishes across the living room and I did squeeze a powder room in.
ReplyDeleteI love this post! Thank you
ReplyDeleteIf you move the enclosed porch to the back of the living room I've lived in this house. We had a number of rooms we never really used but all in all it was pretty liveable.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to your sketches. My mood lately has turned from finishing our reno to knocking the whole thing down and starting over, so I've been drawing too.
I'd turn the living room into the kitchen!
ReplyDeleteStefan, these are a delight---as you know, I share your taste for the highly civilized houses of the early 20th---and am mystified at the contempt that has built up around them (thank you hgtv) in recent years.
ReplyDeleteto me this is the perfect house- Imagine it today-I've been in a house very similar- and the family of four lived in it well until her boys starting growing by leaps-that does include No ds bath, but Yes I would add a bathroom ds because everyone is now too lazy to dart upstairs. Finding a little space for a 2nd small bath on the 2nd floor would be nice. But all in all the charm is immense-so much better than what goes on today, and I personally like rooms that are contained rather than the wide open spaces of today's plan.
ReplyDelete