One last point - I am sick of people telling me about a house with a WOW factor. How often can you say WOW when you look at the floor tiles / open plan sitting room / etc etc ?
Do you come down the stairs every morning and say WOW ?
Your house is your home to live in, not a trophy to show off. Planning a space that you and your family feel comfortable in is more important than anything. (Small rant over)
Well, I don't say WOW every morning , but every evening when I walk into the house I do love the look of it. We've been in our house a year now, and I still get that "loving it" feeling about the house.
I agree with you though, my house is not a trophy to show off... first and foremost, it's very definitely a home that the 4 of us feel comfortable and happy in. But this house is a space that we will spend a huge chunk of the next 40-50 years in, so why should we not have a space that we love the look of as WELL as feeling comfortable in? We'd probably be comfortable in 10 different styles of houses, but this particular style is one that we are comfortable in AND love the look of.
How bad?
I wouldn't buy a house that only had one room downstairs (not including utility and toilet).
No. Way.
I'm sure your American house was fab, but what size was it ?
The OP is converting a 3 bed semi, not building a large house. As he said, going open plan in his house means having one and only one living space downstairs.
It sounds wonderful to have a large open plan living space but in an average size house in Ireland, this means sacrificing any chance of privacy or having 4 people of different ages doing different things at the same time ie one person cooking dinner, one person listening to music and one person doing homework, one person talking on the phone.
Also, the OP has said that they dont have kids. If you are spending time and money converting your house and planning an extension, how long are you planning to stay in it. If you plan to have kids in the next ten years, you should seriously think about planning a house that will be suitable or prepare to sell up and move then you do have them, leaving all your lovely expensive work behind.
One last point - I am sick of people telling me about a house with a WOW factor. How often can you say WOW when you look at the floor tiles / open plan sitting room / etc etc ?
Do you come down the stairs every morning and say WOW ?
Your house is your home to live in, not a trophy to show off. Planning a space that you and your family feel comfortable in is more important than anything. (Small rant over)
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