Good tip!
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We have solid doors now so I might not have thought they would be anything else-good thing to remember when discussing doors-thank you!
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We have retired friends who designed a one story vacation with primary bedroom suite on one end and the guestroom/bath on the other end. Great room in the middle. It sounds like a good idea.
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That is a design we are currently looking at-plus one additional guest room (maybe bunk house style) in the basement. I want both adult children to be able to visit at the same time and feel like they have their own space/not have to go to hotel. There wouldn’t be a convenient place to stay nearby anyway.
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All of the one floor homes I’ve seen in the south have this floorplan. Guest rooms and a full bath on one side. Kitchen and great room etc in the middle. Master and bath on the opposite side of the great room. It really works well. With the right plans, you could have two guest rooms and a full bath on the other side from the master. One could be used as an office when no guests are there. That’s what my friends do.
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Haven’t read through all the posts but my husband is a builder, and we are getting ready to build our empty nest home on the coast. White kitchens with white (or very light colored) granite/quartz countertops are the “in” look. If you have room for an island, a lot of new homes are showing the island in an accent color (I’ve seen a lot of gray, navy & espresso). I plan to do painted cabinets in my empty nest home (a blue or green) with brushed gold “pulls” - but we are costal so those colors are not unusual there. My kitchen island will probably be white with a white top. Light wood flooring or even those with a gray tone (many people are also doing the manufactured vinyl products that look like wood - especially for homes near water or sand.) Most people are doing LED lighting tucked into their ceilings with just a few decorative lights, over their islands and dining tables. White is also the “in” color for the exterior of the house - lots of people going for the modern farmhouse vibe.
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White actually seems to be getting less popular here in New York. I’m seeing more gray in kitchens or sometimes lower cabinets with a real color and lots of houses are getting charcoal gray siding.
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That sounds like a great idea, especially if the basement area has its own bathroom. You can build it with space to be bunkhouse, even if for now you just have one bed in there and ponder its best use over time.
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Right now that is our plan–master suite/laundry/mud room one side–great room/kitchen in the middle-dining room(off kitchen w/ view of lake)that could be used as bedroom for a future home buyer, and 2 bedrooms/bath (one using for office) on the other side. I really questioned and still do having a formal dining room…I like my table and hutch so much and remember thinking that was something I really wanted when my H and I moved in to our first home we purchased together. We don’t use it a lot, but I was thinking about downsizing the kitchen table and then use the dining table more when guests are over even if a casual get together. Our current dining room was new but already designed and had carpet in the dining room. I never liked that idea–we are going with hardwood in dining room in the new house unless we decide to get rid of the formal furniture altogether. We will probably stick with stained wood kitchen cabinets/bathroom cabinets-but maybe white in bathroom. I want to have cohesiveness, but not too much white.
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I will never have a formal dining room again. I will have a nice large enough breakfast room area that a nice table can be put there…with perhaps leaves added when there are too many to just fit.
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Lots of great tips from someone in the know!! Thank you. I see that the brushed gold is all the rage on the HGTV shows…also all the white to lighten the rooms. I will most likely go with a cedar shake exterior with white trim on outside an in, as well as white interior doors. I don’t think I want the brushed gold but wondering what would be the best hardward choice that will be timeless-black/rubbed oil bronze (we have now and I like, but have stained wood trim/doors)/silver (had in another home that had white trim/doors.
I share the non-existence love for a dining room. I feel like it’s a “one-note” room. Most other rooms can be multi-use: kitchen for cooking/casual dining, family room for all kinds of gathering from tv to board games, bedrooms can function as sleeping space and office or exercise space or creative/craft rooms. Nothing happens in the dining room that we can’t do in another room!
But some people love their dining room space or furniture. I’d rather take that space and make it more usable.
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In addition to the kitchen nook, we have a “formal” dining room but it is just a space in the open floor plan where the dining table sits. We use it very often when we have company over for dinner; our guests love to sit where they can see the forest through the windows. Why am I posting this irrelevant stuff? I think guests would love to eat where the they could see the lake, so I would make sure the formal dining room has lake views.
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In both of our houses, we’ve had dining rooms adjacent to living room, with open wall between. That has been great for a spacious look and also for room for many people (extra table in living room if needed). Our dining room furniture has family attachment, having resided at BOTH of my grandparents homes. So I’ll be sadder than most folks when I have to give it away.
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We live in a small house and when the study needed to become a bedroom, we moved the study to the breakfast room and kept the dining room. We eat dinner nightly in the dining room, but that’s also where we do arts & crafts projects, play board games, entertain guests, etc. The finish on the table might be a little worse for wear, but our dining room gets lots of use.
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We are currently replacing our primary bathroom faucets because our ultra-hard water killed them. When we remodeled that room 17 years ago we went with oil-rubbed bronze. It’s still out there, but the choices were quite limited and a lot had been discontinued (which makes me think it is probably considered out of style). I would suggest going in a different direction than oil-rubbed bronze, probably matte black if you want something dark, so you don’t face limited options.
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We replaced all our oil-rubbed bronze bathroom hardware with matte black and swapped all three-hole bathroom faucet sets with single-hole sets. They look so much cleaner and contemporary, and the single-hole faucets are easier to clean around and leave more space on the counter.
Black is the new black.
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I love our formal dining room and we use it all the time, even if it’s just us.
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Thank you BB-the kitchen table will also have a lake view, but what you said was what I was thinking…a nice dining experience overlooking the view in the back of the house. Alternative, which is also tempting would be to have H’s office in that area. He may still work full or part time when we move and I could see that being nice for him. Otherwise the office would be by the front of the house which I like since he would have a view of anyone arriving. We should have trees views on all sides, lake in back. Eliminating a dining room would free up the space for office, but I am a little attached to my dining table/China hutch.
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I’m a first generation dining table/hutch owner.
I am still sentimental but definitely would be more sentimental if it had been in the family. What a nice heirloom.
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