Interesting to hear about other posters’ homes. Our House2 does not fit any particular style; it was custom-build in the eighties, with an architectural firm involved, judging by the rolls of blueprints we found in the house. It is Craftsman-ish, like most homes here in the PNW. Frankly, the front of the house looks somewhat ugly but we like it this way. 
The entire 1200 sft of the upper floor used to be one giant master suite with a “tub room” (whatever the heck it was; probably indoor hot tub). The next owner renovated the second floor so now it had two kiddie bedrooms, a kiddie hall bath, and a master suite. The downstairs underwent one major transformation (the consequences of which we had to fix before moving in) and a kitchen redesign. I like that all we have to do is to perform deferred maintenance and cosmetic upgrades with no major wall moving etc. although we will be gutting out the kiddie bath soon.
@BunsenBurner, I love the Craftsman-ish style homes in Seattle. So charming and have lots of character.
In my area, many of the quite expensive new homes being built are very modern in style. Nothing wrong with that, but what I have noticed is a complete lack of character in these homes. Aside from very modern white kitchens with all of the latest appliances and some very interesting backsplash (or really cool tile in the bathrooms),what is left is wide expanses of drywall and recessed lights. No character in ceiling treatments, few (or no) interesting built-ins or other features. Slick and minimalist, with little to justify these prices other than the lot value and square footage (all new homes in our old neighborhood are starting with at least 6500 square feet, most well into the 7000s), it is sad/frustrating. DH have missed our old neighborhood, and looking at homes, they are either so dated they need tons of work, or they are brand new, entirely too large, and incredibly expensive given their aforementioned lack of character.
My home’s living-family room, in which I do most of my living, is beautiful. It shares part of a wall with the dining room, which I rarely use. The rooms also share the cathedral ceiling and access to the fireplace (it has an opening on the living room side and on the dining room side). There are six sets of windows that look out onto the large backyard, which is bordered with many trees and bushes and bordered at part of the back edge by a nature preserve. The kitchen is small but big enough for my needs. It has a large pantry-like cupboard in which I store most food. The original owners added an additional room, without doors, sometime after the house was built; this dining area is next to the kitchen. The bedrooms are relatively small but they were fine for my children when they were still at home. Each daughter had her own room. The bathrooms are small; the larger one is, unfortunately, in bad shape because the roof leaked for many years. I don’t use that one now.
We aren’t technically Craftsman, but historic American Foursquare, a sister. Lots of A.F. across the country, including the PNW. I keep searching for one with a similar floorplan, to see how they worked around some of our issues, like two large bedrooms and two small, only one 2nd fl bathroom. Our kitchen is small (10x13; originally, only a maid used it,) but I laid it out to maximize use. (The problem is the door to the mudroom projects into the K, takes up that extra space.) 3 can work together. A 30x30 table fits 3 easily, could do 4. But we do value the separate DR.
I’ve thought of making the DR into family room. But it’s between the front door/foyer and the kitchen. We’d need to move the table into the LR. At times, for grins, we’ve put another table in the LR, dined or entertained there. But it means carrying food from the kitchen, through the DR, across the foyer, to the other side of the house.
Interesting thread. We have almost 3000sqft, family room open to the kitchen with eat-in space, dining room, living room and entry area are another big open space. Covered patio and a big backyard. We’ve used all of it regularly over the years. We are a house full of mostly introverts and we like our own little corners! We also frequently have enough people over to use both the kitchen and dining tables. The downstairs guest room has doubled as an office. But how we use the space is changing as kids leave. The kids each had their own bedrooms. When the college kids aren’t home, their rooms still get used for sewing, or music practice, or just to read a book. Our first has just graduated from college and moved out permanently, and that room is becoming an office. The guest room will finally be just a guest room. The second graduates from college and third will leave for college in a year. Maybe a sewing room/exercise space? With just two of us here we will use less and less of the space on a daily basis, but I love our house and hate the idea of moving.
@abasket in response to this thread I have been inspired to spend more time outside enjoying my patio and pool area.
My previous house was a historic craftsman, with gorgeous built ins. We had redone the kitchen and I lived in that room with the picture window looking into the back yard from the table. The house had numerous picture windows, and the light streamed in beautifully. Wis75, large windows, if designed for energy efficiency, make winter tolerable for some of us, and are not that much an energy drain. But the house was over 2000 square feet, and I am single. It felt like a ghost house except for holidays and summer, despite hosting foreign students at times. Being one of the bigger houses on the street, it also felt sad that there was no family filling the empty rooms as well as a total waste of property taxes and heat. My inability to get on top of landscaping the large yard and detritus from busy years in basements and closets drove me nuts.
The downsize house, built in the 1920s is less than 900 square feet, but with all the Midwestern extras. Free standing garage, front 3 season porch, large dry (knock on wood) basement, decent yard for gardening, and walk up attic. The kitchen is lacking in size, but I still can eat next to a window with light streaming in, and the living room/dining room combination is large enough for entertaining on a minor scale, about 10 max. This house feels right size for one person, sufficient for offspring and significant others to visit and stay and far less upkeep. There is room for all my toys, and am less overwhelmed, finally, now that the most essential projects are nearing completion.
We purchased our house back in 2002. It’s a 1959 ranch in what I consider the mid century vernacular style. It was only 1400 sq. ft. but does have a full unfinished basement. We joked when we bought it that by the time we could afford a bigger house we wouldn’t need one. That’s exactly how it has worked out.
D1 has graduated, gotten married, is employed and purchased her own home. Her room is now fair game and will be our guest room. D2 is still in college and we promised the kids until they were employed and self reliant we would consider their bedrooms their rooms once they were independent we could use them as we will and they would be guests when they came to visit. I like our unfinished basement. We use it for hobbies, laundry (I will relocate when the stairs become an issue) and of course storage. We are now starting to give away the things we were saving for the kids eventual departing. Beyond that we use most of our house ie. the living room dining room (we removed the wall between it and the kitchen so they flow together and of course kitchen and two baths. We have a side porch that I always imagine I’d use more than I do and a back patio that one day I hope to turn into a deck so we don’t have to walk down 4 steps. It is not a house to entertain large groups, about 12 or so makes it feel very full but is plenty big for the people we usually entertain.
If I had to add any space it would be an upstairs laundry and a half bath. Other than that it is home and I plan on it being my home until I move into assisted living or a box.
Someone mentioned windows above. Rooms with lots of light are HUGELY important to me. The only room I don’t get lots of light - and wish I did/could - is our kitchen. If we redo the room lighting will be an important item on the list to make up for lack of actual window space.
I’m glad to hear people reconsidering their space - indoor and out!
Mine was a 1400sq ft ranch until we added a family room addition - so now it’s about 1800 sq feet plus a 700 sq ft finished basement with forth bedroom that my son used when he was home on college breaks - because I turned his bedroom into a nice guest room.
After the addition my forms, dining room was opened into addition, but we only eat there if we have company. We eat at the kitchen island which is also open to the family room. Basically that is the part of the house we live in, plus our bedroom. A third bedroom is used as an office but, except when H is on extended work calls, no one uses it.
My whole house has basically been renovated and when we put all new windows in,I chose a massive bay window with windows on each side for the living room. Just that window was $5k. But worth it for the light in brings into the house in winter.
I also put three large long windows in addiction, plus it has slider on one wall leading to our deck. I don’t even have shades on any of those because I must have a lot of natural light - especially in winter.
We don’t plan on downsizing, since we never upsized, plus with an $800/month mortgage it would cost us a lot more money to move anywhere.
We purchased a compact 5 BR house in 1994. I think it had 2200 SF to which we added another 900 to 100 sf. It had a tiny kitchen and we expanded it and built a 500 sf great room around it (with lots of huge windows). To expand the kitchen, we made the formal dining room a little smaller. We eat in the dining room every day for dinner and entertain a lot. It is very heavily used. We added a master BR upstairs and converted one of the BRs into a very nice master bath. We put in an upstairs laundry.
Largely due to ShawWife’s effervescent personality (and the fact that people seem to find me pretty interesting), we have a constant stream of visitors. For dinners. For coffee from my cherished espresso machine. For exercise. Etc. So, generally the house is well used.
The rooms that are unused are the Living Room and three of the BRs. It is used once every light year. Since the kids are long gone, their two BRs are essentially unused except when we have guests who are visiting.
We’d like to downsize a bit, but really want a more energy efficient place. We can get rid of the LR if there is a nice great room and we could be happy with one fewer BR.
It is not energy efficient, which bothers me financially and ethically and can’t easily be retrofit. It was a great house to raise kids in. Both kids have told us that they plan to raise their kids in our town, which means we did a good job. But, I doubt either will for professional reasons. it’s now time to go, but we are having trouble finding what we want. ShawWife wants a studio next to the house (we built one on an adjacent lot when we moved in). I want a view (river, mountains from a hilltop, etc.). ShawWife wants it in walking distance of a town center. I want energy efficient. And we would prefer to spend no more on this than we receive from the current house/studio. It is hard to thread the needle.
If I were a younger me buying the house I live in, I would tear out the wall between the formal living room and the master closet/bath and create a retreat that would rival all the new McMansions going in around us. The real-age me doesn’t want to clean a huge new spa bathroom
And going back a bit, in my part of the world, decks are wood ( front or back) . Porches are concrete and door level, covered or not ( my front porch lacks any kind of weather protection) . Porches morph onto patios as one moves farther from the door and the concrete or brick area expands.
Sitting on the deck… enjoying these days of what is called “Indian summer.”
When I got pregnant with D3, we chose to remodel the house to make it a better fit for a family of 5. We moved most of the interior walls and made the living room much smaller and added a 5th bedroom. That small living room is almost never used but, otherwise, most of the house was utilized well. Our 5th bedroom is an office/guest room which was our second least used room (after the LR) but was nice to have for the occasional guest and for the desk/office/filing space.
Now that we’re empty nesters, we really just use the master, kitchen/great room about 90% of the time. Since we’ve no plans to move, we’re toward the end of an update to these areas so they are just what we want. This includes a deck of the great room with a built in BBQ which we’re eager to have compete. The downstairs, with the 3 kids’ rooms, playroom and bathroom go unused 90% of the time but I’m hopeful that someday we’ll have grandkids and will be happy to have the space.
We enjoy our house, bought it 27 years ago and live in California. With the way housing prices are as well as property tax laws, we have zero incentive to move.
Our house was built in 1923 and real estate agents around here call it a Dutch Colonial - it has a gambrel roof. First floor is brick, second floor was originally cedar shingles, but is now covered with aluminum siding. I put a modern (but fairly traditional) addition on the back that is Hardiboard in the color of the original shingles. Some day I’m taking off the aluminum siding and putting in Hardiboard to match the rear. Inside the look is fairly traditional except the window and door casings are something I’ve never seen anywhere but in our town - I think some local builder made them up. He ran strips up the outside and inside of the flat part of the casing past the frame to make a square in the corner and then put an edge bound around the outside. I like them and made my carpenters put them in the addition.
Speaking of types - one of my least favorite is a raised ranch. Ground level is the bedrooms, you climb stairs to the living room. Usually the top floor overhangs the lower floor by a foot or so. They look like two trailers on top of each other.