@Nrdsb4 , the only explanation I’ve read on the Houzz/GardenWeb home building forum for disliking closets off the master bathroom has to do with fear of odors and possible mildew. That never made sense to me since we’ve had that closet/bathroom layout in four houses (in the humid south) and never experienced any problems. We’ve always had exhaust vents for the shower as well as for the water closet and HVAC supply vents in both the closet(s) and bathroom. As others have mentioned, I like being able to shower and dress without waking dh, and vice versa.
Some people find water closets dark, too confining and/or expect them to be poorly ventilated. Ours have operable windows, exhaust fans and HVAC supply vents, plus 36" doors to make them more accessible. We prefer the privacy and the convenience. If I ever need a wheelchair again and am not able to transfer easily in the water closet, then I’d use a guest bathroom with more space.
Yes…I want a HUGE mudroom/laundry room between connecting my house and my garage. In it will be a closet, plus hanging space for coats and.
The laundry room side will have the washer/dryer and a wash sink. There will be cabinets to hold my laundry “stuff”and a broom closet. There will be a folding area…with a rod above for hanging.
And a pull down from the wall ironing board.
My sister has THIS laundry room, and it’s fabulous.
I really only want a one floor next house…so I won’t be carrying laundry up or down stairs.
My current laundry room is on the second floor where all our bedrooms are…and I really like that. It’s no big deal to carry a few dish towels up and down…and the occasional jacket.
Exactly. I was thinking OP should see if there is a Toll Brother’s new development around, or some other big builder, and walk through their model homes.
I have a built-in hanging rod in the laundry room that is about 8 ft. long with shelves above. We have a lot of athletic wear, and if I could do it over, I’d add a lower level rod for smaller items like shorts.
@marvin100 , which induction range do you prefer? I’m looking at induction cooktops for a hoped-for kitchen remodel to be used with wall ovens. Dh thinks we should consider an induction range instead, since the cost of ranges is often similar to the cost of a cooktop plus the cabinetry drawers beneath. We’d still do the wall ovens for ergonomic reasons.
I’ve read complaints about the high heat from oven self-cleaning cycles damaging the electronics of the cooking surface in some ranges. Do you know if any of the induction ranges have had such problems?
@Silpat - I’ve only experienced the one I have now, and I’m not even sure what brand it is (it came with my apartment–typical in Seoul these days). I’ve had no trouble with self-cleaning oven cycles.
@thumper1, I had that same laundry room you describe in my last house. Current house doesn’t have wall space for the pull down laundry board, and I do miss that from time to time.
DH had a carpenter over shortly after we bought our current house to take one cabinet off the wall in the laundry room (had him move it to a wall in the garage) to make room for a hanging rod. Problem was both the carpenter and my DH are pretty tall and didn’t even consider that I’m 7 inches shorter than DH and D2 is 11 inches shorter than DH! I have to stand on tiptoes to reach the rod. D2 has to use a stool.
I can relate to that, @Nrdsb4 . Dh is about a foot taller than I am. Last weekend I asked him to move my closet rods down. I need to look into the hinged clothes rods that can be pulled down with an attached grab bar.
Back to kitchens - we have a pot filler now. It’s never been used and I won’t replace it. They don’t make sense to me. If a pot of water is too heavy and cumbersome to carry when filled with cold water, how will the cook be able to move it to drain pasta (or whatever) when it’s hot?
I hope to one day have two wall ovens installed at waist height. My ideal kitchen would also have two tall dishwasher drawers (I think they’re 18" vs. 16") flanking the main sink instead of a standard dishwasher. I’d like most storage to be between 18" and 54" from the floor. Between bad backs and rotator cuff issues, plus my short height, both lower and higher storage is a problem for us.
I can totally relate to the rod heights! When we built this house, my builder wanted to set the rod heights in MY closet. No thanks fella…you are way taller than I am!! I’m so glad I did it myself.
He did DH’s closet, and the rods are way high (for me).
Try to keep all your plumbing within one core area - i realize this mostly applies to multistory houses, but even in a single story house, water and water leaks and water damage is/are your enemy. Try to keep the water pipes in one interior part of the house when possible.
Think about the extra plumbing needed to run a line in a wall or under a floor and up, to get water to a spot over a stove. And there isn’t a drain there. So when there’s a leak, a drip, a slightly eroded washer, and your cool pot filler over the stove drips… Where does the water go?
My inlaws once took a breezeway - unheated mud room in northern Wisconsin - and converted it to a very cool indoor hot tub room with windows on three sides and an attached bathroom… without adding insulation or thinking about frozen pipes. Now, 20 years later, they are too old to get into a hot tub, the hot tub sits unfilled and unused, and the toilet freezes every winter. The pipes have burst several times in the last few years.
It amazes me how many people juat install a thing because it is the “it” thing, without taking a hard look at the inevitable “What happens when it breaks?”
If you can possibly think through exactly where you are putting beds, I like to set wall outlets to the left and right of each bed. Where nightstands will be. Far superior to the outlet being located behind the bed. Also like to put sconces or reading lights left and right of the bed with separate switches you can use while in bed.
Also, think about putting an outlet next to the master and maybe powder room toilet. You might want one of those fancy toilet seats, or Your future buyer will appreciate it. And energy saving occupancy sensor switches to turn lights off when a room is empty.
Wow. The builder of our House1 looked at me and said that because I was about the same height as his wife, he would use his current house as a guide to make everything convenient to the chef and laundry master of the house.
Providing for ease of maintenance is big on my dream house features. Ditto ease of upkeep. No porous surfaces that need constant sealing or fingerprint magnet surfaces!
Just bought my 4 th house in 27 years and finally have huge laundry room with huge wash sink right as you come in from garage… storage cabinets and long hanging rack so dryer goes right to hanger … bench on one wall to sit and put on boots etc… might be my favorite room… house is only 2200 square feet unheard of unless you buy an 80s house
Our laundry room is one reason we nearly didn’t buy this house! It’s a 6’ x14’ corridor to the garage with the extra fridge, washer and dryer on one side and a long bare wall on the other. The best thing we did was add bars on the plain wall for hanging damp things. We bought prepainted white round curtain rods at Home Depot and mounted one about waist high and the other about 30” higher. They sit in prepainted decorative brackets and are finished at the ends with the matching finials. Took about 30 minutes to install. They have held up to 25 years of damp pool towels and laundry flopped over them. I don’t put lots of my clothes in the dryer, but our front loader gets them dry enough to hang over the bars and they dry overnight.
When we redid our kitchen I imagined hubby and I eating most of our meals at our enlarged butcher block island. Turns out I hate perching on a stool. I want a comfortable chair and my feet on the ground, not on a rung - especially if I’m barefoot. So for our eventual downsize, we need a kitchen table.
I’m a true believer in only drawers for lower cabinets. We had some reinforced to hold heavy items, but it’s so wonderful to just open the drawer (full extension runners) and see everything without squatting down.
I would like to have a geothermal heating/cooling system with solar panels and a windmill so that we could possibly go off the grid entirely for energy. I prefer a drilled well to public water IF it can continue to function in power outages.
I worry about water from a drilled well because one doesn’t normally test it that often. I know people who had uranium and others who’ve had radon in their water and they had no idea how many years their water was contaminated. Public water systems have to test regularly.
