A Place For Thread Detours

[dualstow]

I'm often eager to ask questions in a thread that are completely off-topic, so why not put them all here?

I agree. I live in an 1,100 sf house (3 person family) and people are always asking when we're going to move to a bigger place or build an addition. Really!? What's wrong with the place I already live? It's totally adequate for our needs. I don't get what people do with all the space. From what I can tell, most of the extra space in larger houses is wasted on huge entry foyers, lots of halls and passageways to get from place to place, unnecessarily enormous laundry rooms and closets, dining rooms that nobody uses, redundant living areas, and excessive numbers of bathrooms. No thanks.

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ot ... -class/15/

I live in about 1200 sq ft of house with my tenderoni, while my siblings live in much bigger places well outside of main urban centers. Because they have kids, they need some extra space, but I completely agree about the passageways and seldom used dining rooms.

I'm just wondering if your 1100 ft is all one floor, like a ranch house, or is it two? We have two floors (plus a basement) and while it is certainly adequate, we constantly dream of more space.
- We have solved privacy issues with shades, but it would be nice to have some part of the house that isn't so close to the outside, a kind of quiet isolated center. It doesn't have to be soundproofed (too expensive), just with more of buffer. If I had a massive house, I would make the center an outdoor courtyard surrounded by glass walls.
- Would love to have a vestibule just to seal off solicitors and anyone else who comes to the door. We're probably just going to get a nice foldable room divider for that.
- She needs more closet space. I am happy that our new smaller space forced me to get rid of some of my clothing, but...that's not something I can make her do. She's already more efficient than I am at storing her clothes. She's also petite, so that goes a long way. Still need more space.
-What we really need is a yard so that we can have a storage shed to save all the nice things suffering in our humid basement. I know humidity is not an issue where you live.

[barrett]

- She needs more closet space. I am happy that our new smaller space forced me to get rid of some of my clothing, but...that's not something I can make her do. She's already more efficient than I am at storing her clothes. She's also petite, so that goes a long way. Still need more space.

Dualstow, we are both with the same woman! We have a 6' X 8' walk-in closet/showroom that is somehow getting too small. Our foyer is so tall that I am having fits trying to figure out how to paint it. Speaking of being off-topic or drifting from one thread to another, these were not middle class problems 40 years ago!

[Pointedstick]

I actually lied, it's closer to 1200 than 1100. Like 1160 or something. I actually don't know the precise number, but it's irrelevant to me; the house is perfectly sufficient.

It's a long-and-skinny ranch. About half is a lovely big open living/dining/kitchen area, and a central hallway leads to the other half which has three bedrooms and two bathrooms. I am in the middle of gutting and remodeling the second bathroom, but it's just pure luxury, not necessity. We have been using only one for the last year. The family consists of two adults and one child, but another child is planned. We don't anticipate this requiring any more space. The master bedroom has a walk-in closet that's practically empty. I don't know what we would fill it with.

When it comes to space needs, I think it's highly dependent on your personal feelings, privacy needs, and relationships with the other people you live with. There are couples who easily live in 150 square foot RVs and tiny houses, and couples who need practically 1,000 square feet each to feel happy. I will say that it's easier and cheaper to modify your expectations than your house. More space comes with more problems: higher heating, cooling, and electric bills, higher property taxes, more time spent cleaning, more furniture needed to prevent it from looking awkwardly bare.

The only feature I wish the house had that it currently doesn't is a tower. Yes, a tower. Something two stories tall with roof that doubles as a little observation platform. The views here are exquisite. My in-laws who live nearby have a house with a second-story observation tower room thingy like this and it's just the most wonderful thing.

A yard is nice, but like a big house, it's a double-edged sword. We live on half an acre so there's tons of yard space. But it's the desert, and things don't grow so well unless they're very well adapted to the arid climate. I imagine in a rainy climate, you'd experience a different problem: needing to mow every week to prevent it from looking like a jungle.

[Pointedstick]

Fixing up your basement will be easy, and yield you more space in the house you already have.

If it's moist and humid, that probbly means that the foundation walls aren't waterproofed very well. Big expense to fix, so don't; waterproof the inside instead. Put up 2-4" of foam boards in two two layers with staggered seams all around the walls, and be very careful to seal all the seams with caulk, spray foam, and builder's tape (as appropriate). This will keep all the humidity in the walls... in the walls. That these layers of foam boards are airtight is crucial since the walls will be colder with the foam boards insulating them, meaning that humid interior air would condense into liquid moisture if it touched them. You can finish the boards with drywall and hide wiring in shallow channels you can cut into the foam boards (this is what electricians do for ICF walls). Once you've got the boards up, you can cheaply hire a drywaller to mud and texture them.

Insulate-and-air-seal the rim joists the same way, with pieces of foam board, sealed to their surroundings with caulk, spray foam, and tape.

Insulate the floor too, with more rigid foam boards (use the higher compressive strength type for these), then lay a new subfloor of plywood or preferably cementboard, and fasten through the foam boards and into the concrete below it with concrete fasteners. If you have a cementboard subfloor, lay tile. If you have a plywood subfloor, install any other flooring that you want, except for solid hardwood (engineered would be fine, but avoid laminate; it's crap). Even carpet could work here.

All this work will be surprisingly cheap if you do it yourself, and you can use recycled foam boards which are like half the cost of new ones. If I'm understanding that your basement is about 600 square feet, it seems feasible to accomplish all of this for easily under $4k.

[dualstow]

Many thanks for the replies. Barrett, is it my turn to be with the wife tonight?
PS, forget about my basement. It's a weird thing with the ancient houses in my neighborhood. One deep-pocketed neighbor told me she put $10K into having hers professionally fixed, to no avail. We all have crumbly basements and those who try to seal them or waterproof them end up with water attacking the foundation. They need to breathe, or something.

Again, much appreciated.

[WiseOne]

This is a great detour!

The square footage of a house or apartment is only part of the story.  There's a lot that goes into designing usable spaces.  My current apartment feels small, and it might not if the square footage was better used - there's a portion of one room that functions as a hallway plus a very badly designed closet, which basically means there's about 50-70 sq feet out of the total 600 sq feet that is not usable.  As a result, I find myself spending a lot of time/energy battling space issues.  It's possible to gut-renovate to a very space efficient design, but this would cost far more than simply moving to a larger space - 850 sq feet in a very efficient layout, which I think is going to be plenty.

My brother recently completely gut renovated a house he just bought, did all the design and most of the construction himself.  It's 1000 square feet with 2 bedrooms, but it feels much bigger.  He did a simple open layout with a flow from living room -> dining room -> U shaped kitchen, with a storage island separating it from the dining room.  He also did not put any closet doors in the bedrooms - he used tension rods and curtains instead.  I did the same with mine and it instantly opens up quite a bit of closet space, just because it becomes easier to access it.

Paring down clothes is always better than increasing storage space, but you can try to maximize it with underbed boxes or bed frames with storage drawers underneath, storage ottomans, and shelving placed over doors, high up in closets, above windows etc.  I was in an apartment once that had sort of a fake ceiling along part of a hallway, which made a loft storage space that was fabulously useful.  There's also those big plastic vacuum storage bags for out of season clothes.

[dualstow]

We're getting one of those storage beds from IKEA. Every little bit counts.

[Pointedstick]

I'm curious... Do you have outdoor storage space?  I figure you must have a bunch of tools to store.

No, I store them in the garage. We have a two car garage but only one car. I wish it were a one car garage, but oh well.

The only feature I wish the house had that it currently doesn't is a tower. Yes, a tower. Something two stories tall with roof that doubles as a little observation platform. The views here are exquisite. My in-laws who live nearby have a house with a second-story observation tower room thingy like this and it's just the most wonderful thing.

Awesome!  I suspect kids of all ages (i.e. anyone who can get up and down steps) would love this.

Can you post a picture of that house?

[img width=700]https://i.imgur.com/J7F0R9r.jpg[/img]

Two-story houses around here are rare, so their second story room counts as an observation tower in my book.

The view of that mountain you can see on the right is stunning.

[dragoncar]

Had to look up "tenderoni"

[WiseOne]

Wow....when you live in a place like that you don't need indoor space!  Nice, PS.

[Pointedstick]

Wow....when you live in a place like that you don't need indoor space!  Nice, PS.

They bought that house, including the half acre lot it sits on, for less than $200k.

The joys of flyover country...

[dualstow]

Very nice, PS! (in-laws' house). I see a treehouse in your future. Surrounded by Christmas cactus on three sides.

Tenn: yes, a small footprint indeed. It's a rowhouse/townhouse. The back"yard" is just a little bigger than our bathroom.

dragoncar: did anything even turn up for that word?

[dragoncar]

dragoncar: did anything even turn up for that word?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.p ... =Tenderoni

A pretty, young thing

Which of course begs the question: What is she doing with a homely old fart like you, Dualstow? 

I imagine Dualstow sitting at home alone with a single-portion serving of this:

[dualstow]

LOL. She's only ten years younger, even if she looks younger than that. I only wish I could have introduced her to WiseOne when we met.

[dualstow]

In other news, I think this would be the perfect avatar to go with the name "bedraggled."

[bedraggled]

Thanks.

Care to expand.

Bedraggled

[dualstow]

Thanks.

Care to expand.

Bedraggled

It's simply the mental image that comes to mind when I think of the dictionary defintion of the word.

[barrett]

In other news, I think this would be the perfect avatar to go with the name "bedraggled."

He will be at the Manhattan meet up on May 9. We will report back.

[dualstow]

Thanks, Barrett. Tuxedo, rags, anything in between. Inquiring minds want to know!

Maybe you could all show up in Harry Browne masks. Or, will that attract the attention of NYPD.

[bedraggled]

dualstow,

In the long dead Wealth magazine, the one that extolled the virtues of Enron and that management team,  Ian Anderson was interviewed.  Smart guy who invested and bought half the cod boats in Scotland.  The guy's apparently worth a bundle.  He said his big problem is preventing his kids from finding out how much money he has.  His tone was to encourage his kids to make it on their own, not to deprive them of an inheritance.  He is not taking the Warren Buffet path.  Good guy and talented!

Bedraggled?  Maybe.  I always feel like i swim upstream, being pulled 'this way and that.'  But life is good.  Being an American is like living in Rome at the height of the Empire.

[dualstow]

Nice!

[MachineGhost]

Which of course begs the question: What is she doing with a homely old fart like you, Dualstow? 

Green card.  He bought her from a mail order bride catalog!