Hello,
My wife and I visited a model home park for prefabricated houses yesterday, and we noticed that each house offered various features and floor plans whose practical benefits I don’t quite understand. That’s why I’m starting this thread, hoping you can explain the advantages of these choices or point out what I might be missing and why it still makes sense to design a house that way:
1. Almost every house had floor-to-ceiling windows installed. What’s the purpose of these? I imagine they would be terrible both in summer and winter. Wouldn’t it get extremely hot in summer? And in winter, don’t you constantly have to lower the blinds so that anyone passing by can’t look directly into the living room or inside the house? Also, isn’t the effort to clean those windows huge? Am I missing something? Do they have advantages that I don’t see?
2. There wasn’t a single house where the kitchen and dining area were separated from the living space; at best, the kitchen was separated from the dining area. I understand that having everything open makes the space appear larger and is better for hosting many people, but isn’t it very impractical? If I’m frying or cooking something in the kitchen, doesn’t the whole living room end up smelling like food? It would also bother me that as soon as my wife or I have guests over, the other person couldn’t sit in the living room and watch TV quietly, for example. This might sound a bit picky, but for me, it’s important that everyone can invite their friends without the other person always being within earshot or needing to get out of the way somehow. Why are open-plan ground floors so common? What are the real advantages?
3. The balconies on the upper floor are always accessible from one of the children’s bedrooms and the parents’ bedroom. Doesn’t that significantly affect privacy? I can’t imagine it’s great if my child can constantly knock on our bedroom door via the balcony, for example. Also, if you have two children, wouldn’t the one without a balcony be at a disadvantage?
I don’t want to bias you with my opinions here—I’m completely open to your views because I’d like to be convinced of the benefits. So I would like to know your reasons for including such features in your plans. Alternatively, has anyone built in a more “traditional” way and can speak to the practicality of these layout choices?
Best regards
My wife and I visited a model home park for prefabricated houses yesterday, and we noticed that each house offered various features and floor plans whose practical benefits I don’t quite understand. That’s why I’m starting this thread, hoping you can explain the advantages of these choices or point out what I might be missing and why it still makes sense to design a house that way:
1. Almost every house had floor-to-ceiling windows installed. What’s the purpose of these? I imagine they would be terrible both in summer and winter. Wouldn’t it get extremely hot in summer? And in winter, don’t you constantly have to lower the blinds so that anyone passing by can’t look directly into the living room or inside the house? Also, isn’t the effort to clean those windows huge? Am I missing something? Do they have advantages that I don’t see?
2. There wasn’t a single house where the kitchen and dining area were separated from the living space; at best, the kitchen was separated from the dining area. I understand that having everything open makes the space appear larger and is better for hosting many people, but isn’t it very impractical? If I’m frying or cooking something in the kitchen, doesn’t the whole living room end up smelling like food? It would also bother me that as soon as my wife or I have guests over, the other person couldn’t sit in the living room and watch TV quietly, for example. This might sound a bit picky, but for me, it’s important that everyone can invite their friends without the other person always being within earshot or needing to get out of the way somehow. Why are open-plan ground floors so common? What are the real advantages?
3. The balconies on the upper floor are always accessible from one of the children’s bedrooms and the parents’ bedroom. Doesn’t that significantly affect privacy? I can’t imagine it’s great if my child can constantly knock on our bedroom door via the balcony, for example. Also, if you have two children, wouldn’t the one without a balcony be at a disadvantage?
I don’t want to bias you with my opinions here—I’m completely open to your views because I’d like to be convinced of the benefits. So I would like to know your reasons for including such features in your plans. Alternatively, has anyone built in a more “traditional” way and can speak to the practicality of these layout choices?
Best regards
I am also a fan of open-plan living, dining, and kitchen areas. In our current apartment, the living and dining areas are already combined in one room, but the kitchen is separate. However, the kitchen door is always open. Always! Even when we’re not using the kitchen. So for us, the logical conclusion—and also our preference—was to have a fully open-plan living, dining, and kitchen space in the house. The room has an L-shape, which we like better, but I can still see from the living room into the kitchen and vice versa. I like that. The kitchen we chose looks nice to me. There is nothing I would want to hide from view. The kitchen is matte white, just like the furniture in the living room, and there are no bar stools or a breakfast bar (which I don’t like either). We also won’t have a hanging extractor hood, as I generally find those awful above islands, whether in open or closed kitchens. We are going with a downdraft extractor.
Typically, the kitchen is always tidied up immediately after meals; we still live in the Middle Ages and don’t have a dishwasher, so we wash up by hand—oops! It drives me crazy when it looks messy right after eating, even if the kitchen is separate from the living area and you can’t see into it from there. So tidying up quickly is just standard. Well, if there’s a special occasion like Christmas with a multi-course mega meal for many people, of course everything won’t be washed and tidied up immediately afterwards. But I guess I’ll have to survive that. That is not a reason against an open kitchen for me. Nor is the smell. We don’t have any bad odors. I actually like cooking smells. And since we always keep the kitchen door open in our current apartment as well, the smell does spread into the living area. Honestly, it never bothered me.
An open kitchen is a topic that divides opinions. But honestly, everyone should just do what they want. People and their habits are different. There is no perfect floor plan. Each of us has certainly planned some things for their home that others would find a total no-go. But that’s how it is. You don’t have to please everyone. If someone doesn’t want an open kitchen, they shouldn’t have one. If someone wants one, they should have one. Neither is wrong, and you can live well with either. Ultimately, it’s just a matter of personal taste.
Regarding floor-to-ceiling windows: We have several large floor-to-ceiling windows in the living and dining area, and I think it’s great. This way, we always have a nice view of the garden from all sides. Upstairs, however, we mostly avoided floor-to-ceiling windows. They look beautiful from the outside, but inside I find them rather inconvenient because they limit furniture placement and often offer “too much” visibility into private areas. For this reason, we largely decided against them and instead planned wide windows with window sills, to still keep the rooms nice and bright. But again, tastes differ.
Typically, the kitchen is always tidied up immediately after meals; we still live in the Middle Ages and don’t have a dishwasher, so we wash up by hand—oops! It drives me crazy when it looks messy right after eating, even if the kitchen is separate from the living area and you can’t see into it from there. So tidying up quickly is just standard. Well, if there’s a special occasion like Christmas with a multi-course mega meal for many people, of course everything won’t be washed and tidied up immediately afterwards. But I guess I’ll have to survive that. That is not a reason against an open kitchen for me. Nor is the smell. We don’t have any bad odors. I actually like cooking smells. And since we always keep the kitchen door open in our current apartment as well, the smell does spread into the living area. Honestly, it never bothered me.
An open kitchen is a topic that divides opinions. But honestly, everyone should just do what they want. People and their habits are different. There is no perfect floor plan. Each of us has certainly planned some things for their home that others would find a total no-go. But that’s how it is. You don’t have to please everyone. If someone doesn’t want an open kitchen, they shouldn’t have one. If someone wants one, they should have one. Neither is wrong, and you can live well with either. Ultimately, it’s just a matter of personal taste.
Regarding floor-to-ceiling windows: We have several large floor-to-ceiling windows in the living and dining area, and I think it’s great. This way, we always have a nice view of the garden from all sides. Upstairs, however, we mostly avoided floor-to-ceiling windows. They look beautiful from the outside, but inside I find them rather inconvenient because they limit furniture placement and often offer “too much” visibility into private areas. For this reason, we largely decided against them and instead planned wide windows with window sills, to still keep the rooms nice and bright. But again, tastes differ.
kaho674 schrieb:
What now? You're supposed to be cooking! Or what did you think?I never cook. When she works, which is three times a week, I take turns making Tillmann’s toaster schnitzel with Popp potato salad with cucumber and egg, eggs from cage-free hens, the microwave Pustateller from Aldi—three minutes at 600 watts, but only open the lid afterward, otherwise it’s an explosion—Meica Curryking with Agrarfrost oven fries and Danish remoulade on top. Those are the best days, completely vegetable-free. Karsten
C
Caspar202017 Jul 2017 15:02Nordlys schrieb:
These are the best days, completely free of vegetables. KarstenDanish remoulade usually contains ingredients like: water, rapeseed oil, white cabbage, sugar, distilled vinegar, cauliflower, pickled cucumbers (cucumbers, distilled vinegar, salt, flavoring),
You're not quite at completely vegetable-free yet.
Nordlys schrieb:
three minutes at 600 watts, but only remove the lid afterwards, otherwise explosionNow we have it. Microwaves are terrorist tools.
Nordlys schrieb:
I never cook. ...Those are the best days, completely free of vegetables. KarstenYou don’t need to worry about the microwave destroying any healthy nutrients in this food—there was never anything healthy in it to begin with. By the way, I would also use the microwave for food like that.
That said, I actually have a microwave to give away in black (almost new – an inherited item). Interested?
Caspar2020 schrieb:
Now we have it. Microwaves are terrorist tools A fellow apprentice actually singed the kitchen once because the microwave caught fire on its own. The manufacturer replaced it with a nice Nolte kitchen in exchange for his silence. A €10,000 (about $11,000) kitchen in a €200 (about $220) basic apprentice apartment. A sight to behold.
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