SK, pique, and I are in agreement about open concept kitchen/living room combos. A kitchen is a utilitarian space. I no more want my guests to spend their time with my stove and refrigerator than I want them to spend time with my water heater and furnace.

One of the things I'm happiest about with our new/old house is that the kitchen is a confined space with doors. It's going to be weird to install a modern kitchen in there as there is precious little wall space, since it's all taken up by the door to the basement, the door to the entry hall, the door to the dining room, the back door, the door to the bathroom, the door to the (future) butler's pantry, the radiator, and a lovely bank of windows that are going to get in the way of kitchen counters. There's floor space for a sizable island, the back door can be eliminated, and the butler's pantry is good-sized, so this is why we'll be getting an architect or kitchen designer to maximize the space. It's a reasonably large room, so I'm sure the designer will manage.

The kitchen is probably awkward because it is a "recent" addition. Given the size of the fireplace in the basement below it, we're pretty sure that there were servants doing the cooking down there when it was built sometime before 1884. They may have lived down there, too.

The 1880s version of open concept shows up in the living and dining rooms, which are separated with room-wide pocket doors, so you could open it up for entertaining while still keeping the kitchen door firmly closed.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
A kitchen is a utilitarian space. I no more want my guests to spend their time with my stove and refrigerator than I want them to spend time with my water heater and furnace.

Exactly!!

quote:

it's all taken up by the door to the basement, the door to the entry hall, the door to the dining room, the back door, the door to the bathroom, the door to the (future) butler's pantry, the radiator, and a lovely bank of windows that are going to get in the way of kitchen counters.

Yeah, that's a lot of doors, and windows! Still, imo it's preferable to a room with one window. Ugh.

quote:

The 1880s version of open concept shows up in the living and dining rooms, which are separated with room-wide pocket doors, so you could open it up for entertaining while still keeping the kitchen door firmly closed.

Exactly my kind of open space!!

We shop for appliances at a locally owned appliance store that has a service department. Been doing so for decades.

Recently we needed to replace our clothes washer and decided to replace the dryer as they were a matching set from 1994 or so. Yes, they lasted almost 30 years. I did some DIY repair on them on a couple of occasions in the past 10 years but they were workhorses. Maytag.

We did not want all the electronics on most new models so we went with the new Commercial line from Maytag. Very basic with actual knobs and pushbuttons. The only things electronic on them are the timers and temperature sensors. If we could have found mechanical timers we would have gone that route but there is nothing available even from Speed Queen's commercial line.

Oh, our house is a mid-century, stone, 1.5 story ranch and we love it. It's is a unique house being custom built in 1950.

It seems like people get sucked into trends without really understanding their own functional needs. They just go for the current look/approach and then figure out later that the floor plan/cabinets/open shelves/whatever in the house just don't work for them.

The pocket doors MA describes are a nice feature and a good compromise. They allow for openness, or for privacy, as needed. As a practical matter it's not something we (personally) need. 99.5% of the time it's just Mr wtg and me; we don't entertain much.

We had true open concept in our vacation home and I liked it very much. In our Chicago house we only have a generous eating area that's set up like a mini-living space. I like people (Mr wtg and/or guests) nearby when I'm cooking, so I'm fine with a combined living/kitchen space.

I could live with painted white cabinets. Not a big fan of other painted colors. Prefer wood, and would probably go for a very neutral maple shaker style if I were doing a kitchen now. But I'm not a trend follower. Like Cindy I plan to leave things as is. Who knows what will be in vogue when we go to sell the house?

Never liked subway tile, and like it even less when it's installed vertically, as seems to be the new trend.

I used to think I would love high ceilings, but after living in a house with two story ceilings I'm not as much of a fan. Wasn't a big fan of my Mom's much lower but still vaulted living room ceiling.

I like the look of open shelving but only on a limited basis, maybe one or two shelves for plates and bowls that are used daily and that look tidy. Hide the other stuff.

I really like the design of this house that was built in a nearby suburb. I went to see it when it was open to the public. As far as the floor plan, the only thing it doesn't have that I would be looking for is a first floor bedroom.

https://plans.susanka.com/plan...plans-2-garage-37304

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
I’m curious to know if the American Standard toilet you bought is the same as an American standard toilet sold at Home Depot.

Does it have the same model name?

I was wondering about what the problem was with the Glacier Bay toilet being replaced. As long as the design of the toilet itself allows for good flushing of solid waste (there are some that don't do this well), and it doesn't routinely get plugged up, I'm wondering why one would need to go. The innards on most toilets (fill valves and flappers) are pretty standard, and can be replaced by the homeowner. We have Totos, which are higher end, and the moving parts still have to get replaced every so often.

https://www.hunker.com/1247285...-glacier-bay-toilets

My CA plumber actually liked Glacier Bay toilets because they are basic, easy to fix and get the job done at a low price. He stopped recommending American Standard because the parts are proprietary and they’re expensive.

Here in OH we use Mansfield toilets because they’re made about an hour from here and the quality is good. They were available in CA and he liked them as well but universal parts don’t fit. That’s not a problem here as everyone stocks the parts.

The lake house has Kohler canister toilets, which work very well and the parts are everywhere. Even as an AirBnB no one has complained that they don’t work.

They’re all available at HD, although not all of the models from each manufacturer. I’ve often wondered if the models sold at big box stores are inferior to the ones sold at plumbing supply places.

quote:

subway tile

Assuming I’m thinking of the right thing, I think subway tile is ok in bathrooms, but maybe too white and sterile for kitchens…

Since starting this thread, I’ve been looking at the white on white decor examples (like on Zillow) more and I think the current trends are just so sterile and sometimes even harsh.

White can be very bright and glaring, I prefer warmer tones, off-white, ivory etc.

Anyway, back to the original topic, and WTG’s comments somewhere above, I think the cookie-cutter tendencies, the tendency to follow a trend without thinking about its lasting appeal and/or usefulness, is part of the problem.

And re open floor plans with open and fully visible kitchens, maybe the other problem is that people are perhaps far too optimistic about how likely they are to keep spaces uncluttered and clean?
Because, an open plan looks nice in listing photos, but not so nice when a big meal is being prepared, and people come home from work and need to put their stuff somewhere.

Speaking of which, our rental house doesn’t have a coat closet anywhere on the first floor. Why would you design a house like that? And all the closets in the second floor bedrooms are fairly shallow.

Oh and there’s not a good place to put brooms and taller cleaning equipment like an upright vacuum.

Imminent danger of /threaddrift into me complaining about our new rental house…

Our new/old house lacks coat closets. (In New York? Really?)

There are a few hooks on the back of the door to the basement stairs, which is somewhat near the back door, but nothing really for guests. We're planning to find an attractive wall-mounted coat rack to put somewhere near the front door. Depending on how the remodel of the back doors go, there's a place where we might be able to put a tiny mud room.

There is a line of hooks near the garage door, but I prefer to keep my coats on actual hangers and only use a hook for temporary purposes, so the lack of a coat closet here is annoying to me.

First world problem if ever the was one, but annoying nonetheless!

Re guests, when we lived on one level, I usually took guest coats into a bedroom, but now that there's a second floor, and that's where all the bedrooms are, I'm not sure what we'll do. We'll figure something out I'm sure, but yeah, a coat closet is always preferable.

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
I’m curious to know if the American Standard toilet you bought is the same as an American standard toilet sold at Home Depot.

Does it have the same model name?

there are no american standard toilets sold at our home depot. the only thing they have with the specs we need (dimensions, water use, etc) is the Glacier Bay.

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The innards on most toilets (fill valves and flappers) are pretty standard, and can be replaced by the homeowner.

We did that. Twice. Made it worse. The parts were shite. Also bought at Home Depot. Now the damned thing won't even flush. This is with new replacement parts. And yes, the replacements were installed correctly.

You would want to replace our toilets, too. Their flushing power is marginal.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
Our new/old house lacks coat closets. (In New York? Really?)

There are a few hooks on the back of the door to the basement stairs, which is somewhat near the back door, but nothing really for guests. We're planning to find an attractive wall-mounted coat rack to put somewhere near the front door. Depending on how the remodel of the back doors go, there's a place where we might be able to put a tiny mud room.

lots of older houses in that part of the world don't have much in the way of closets. pretty common.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
You would want to replace our toilets, too. Their flushing power is marginal.

Not surprising. A lot of the older ones were pretty weak, especially the early water-saving models.

These newer models are much better.

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:
Our new/old house lacks coat closets. (In New York? Really?)

There are a few hooks on the back of the door to the basement stairs, which is somewhat near the back door, but nothing really for guests. We're planning to find an attractive wall-mounted coat rack to put somewhere near the front door. Depending on how the remodel of the back doors go, there's a place where we might be able to put a tiny mud room.

lots of older houses in that part of the world don't have much in the way of closets. pretty common.

Interestingly, there's tons of closet space upstairs. Two of the second floor bedrooms have big closets, and they've been there so long, unchanged, that they have shelves and hooks but no rods. I look in there and picture the much smaller wardrobe of even prosperous nineteenth century folks hanging neatly on those hooks.

The top floor is like a large refurbished attic divided into five bedrooms. (We think it might have been a boarding house during the Depression.) Three of those five rooms have closets.

Downstairs, though, there are none, unless there was some kind of storage in the area currently occupied by a bathroom. We don't know when the town got running water, so we aren't sure if it has always had bathrooms.

quote:

Originally posted by Mary Anna:

The top floor is like a large refurbished attic divided into five bedrooms. (We think it might have been a boarding house during the Depression.)

Very possible. Equally possible is that it got cut up after WW2 to house returning service personnel. Pretty common with large old houses.

You might be able to tell by the door hardware. Depression era houses still used mortise style handle sets (sometimes with crystal knobs) while post WW2 housing generally used some sort of tubular setup.