Cabin, cottage, mansion, house

[rebeccmeister]

This morning I wound up looking through some real estate photos taken by an acquaintance in the Midwest. This acquaintance is a fantastic photographer who is managing to make a living as a photographer in part by taking real estate photos. So occasionally they share their work on social media when they encounter particularly interesting projects.

In any case, the house in question was a mansion of some sort, and it was interesting to look through the photos because my reactions were, "Oh, those are some nice wood floors and fixtures" but also "I could never, ever, EVER imagine wanting to live in this kind of place!"

It just had too much of the classic McMansion character going on, where the space is HUGE and so it could either be filled with Stuff or it would just continue to give off an air of being HUGE. And actually, even if it was filled with Stuff I bet it would still manage to give off that HUGE air. And to no end.

That set me back to pondering what kinds of things I find attractive in a house. It's not that I want to go for "cramped," but smaller is fine, so long as it's well-portioned. I guess I have to think back to that Lincoln apartment. Somehow it was laid out so well, such that there was plenty of space in the bedrooms and living room for projects and other activities, but it never felt like either too much space or too little space. A garage certainly would have been nice.

Dogtown was cramped. Grandma House is okay but some aspects of the layout are a struggle, probably in part because the furniture we own wasn't necessarily intended for the space it's now in.

Altogether I think I would be quite content in life with something that fits the moniker "cottage."

Especially if it had a basement that didn't flood. Even the Lincoln apartment building had a basement that flooded, which was extremely unfortunate for the people who unwittingly moved into the basement apartment unit and then moved right back out again shortly thereafter.

Comments

[missroserose]

If there's one thing our adventures in real estate has taught me, it's that layout is...if not everything, pretty close to everything. Layout and lighting are, I'd say, probably 80% of a place's appeal. (The rest being stuff like non-flooding basements, functioning condo associations, etc.) We saw a few places that had respectable square footage but such strange layouts that they still felt cramped; there was another place that was frankly overpriced for its size, but the space was so well used and the windows so nicely placed that we gave it serious consideration. (We still passed on it, though, due to the lack of in-unit W/D or any ability to install one. If we were going to the trouble of buying our own place, we were not going to resign ourselves to shared—and paid!—laundry facilities.)

I totally agree about the feel of many McMansions. If you ever have a spare moment (hah!), there's a blog called McMansion Hell, run by an actual architecture student, that explains (in various humorously-edited pictures) exactly why so many of them are weirdly unsettling (disparate design elements, bad layouts, cheap touches like artificial stone exteriors). It's definitely worth a chuckle-wince or three.

[altamira16]

I live in a place with too much space. We unseriously looked at something last week, but the layout was really funky. There are a lot of potential buyers where I live. However, there are not that many sellers so the things that are out there are weird.

[annikusrex]

My space has been invaded by kid and cat stuff, so I'm not sure whether it's cramped or very spacious. The kitchen is certainly too small. The apartment that I think used space the best was that 900 sq ft one on 19th in Seattle. One big rectangle, that went from living room to kitchen to backdoor/bathroom/bedroom. A MUCH bigger kitchen than my current 1400ish sq foot place.

[rebeccmeister]

Yeah, the place on 19th had a pretty darned good layout going!

And yes - your current kitchen is definitely too small. Our kitchen here is pretty small as well, but maybe feels slightly more functional? I wonder if there are any people who are good at transforming small kitchen spaces to improve functionality. It seems to me that possibly your countertops are too shallow, for instance.

[rainswolf]

I hear you. Who wants to furnish, clean and maintain a McMansion, especially one of those ones with no yard?