Re: What kind of home do you have?

Posted by JldDolphin

Looking to buy?

Re: What kind of home do you have?

I have a high ranch with a full finished basement. I love everything on one level, even laundry but climbing stairs either from the outside or the basement with bags of groceries is tough.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We have a cape.

Plusses - we have two full bathrooms which was really hard to come by in homes in our price range when I was looking.

Minuses - although we're partially dormered, it was done in the 50s before codes were as they are now so our ceilings are low (luckily DH is only 5'6'' and I'm 5'4''). I also don't have a lot of closet space.

We bought the house because we loved the location and the two bathrooms and knew we could make it into our "forever" house quite easily.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We live in a split level.

I like it because all of the bedrooms are upstairs away from the living areas and kitchen. The previous owners expanded it, so my kitchen and dining rooms are pretty big and great for entertaining.

Dislikes:
- no bathroom on the main level...you either have to go up or down 6 steps to get to one.
- I wish the basement was bigger or that there was an unfinished area to use for storage. The crawlspace is kind of a PITA.

Otherwise I really like it. I feel like it's fairly open - the previous owners raised the ceiling in the formal living room and makes the space feel so much bigger. And I feel like you can "get away" to different areas of the house without hearing everything.

Truth be told, I don't think we looked at a house that here on LI that was 100% perfect style wise - I can come up with positives and negatives for almost every style.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Colonial.

My dad is disabled so high ranches and splits were out of the question.

Ranches... lived in a few ranches and I prefer the bedrooms and full baths to be upstairs.

Capes... We planned on having two children and I wouldn't have felt comfortable unless all of the bedrooms were on the same floor.

This is our second home.
This time around I wanted separate LR/den, EIK, and formal dining room... so colonial it was.

There is one step into my house and one step at the end of the foyer, perfect for my dad to navigate.

Only thing we gave up is a full basement, we have a 1/2 basement.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Cape!!! and we are buying a cape!!!

I love the look of a cape with the doggie dormers on the front.

We have tons of closet space and finished crawl space.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Cape
I love the cottage-y feel of it.

I dont like that our 2nd floor is unfinished but I do like that when we get around to finishing it, we can do it exactly as we want to.
Don't like that our kitchen is not eat-in. I do love that, for a cape, our house has a pretty open floor plan.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Cape, Hi-Ranch, Colonial...etc? Cape

What do you like about it? It's cozy and I like that the kids are upstairs.

What do you not like about it? No attic. Since we don't have a garage, it would be great to have an attic rather than a crawlspace.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We have a split, I like that the bedrooms are away from the living areas, the bedrooms are really really large which I like, and our master bedroom has a full bath...
I hate that there is no bathroom on the main level,the kitchen is small and our den is small so most of our entertaining areas are small which I HATE!!! Our ideal house is a splanch

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Colonial:

I like the "look" of the house, and that our bedrooms are all upstairs.

I dislike the size of my house. All of the rooms are small and if we decide to stay we need to do a major expansion.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

our house was a ranch but a second story was added by a previous owner, its an unusual design that really doesn't fit into a category other than two story.

Now there are three bedrooms & two full baths on the main floor and two bedrooms & one full bath plus a loft on the second floor.
The main floor has a fairly open layout so its good for entertaining.
I know most people with young children prefer having all of the bedrooms on one floor but our kids are older & we love having the entire second floor as the "no-kid zone". Our master bed & bath, my craft room/office & our exercise room occupy the second floor so kids' friends or other guests have no reason to go upstairs. We love having a private retreat.
We have a full basement that is 1/3 finished as a family room, DH has his workshop, our laundry room & lots of storage down there. Plenty of potential to finish the whole basement if needed.

Things I love-
3 full baths
plenty of room for guests
our location
we paid peanuts for the house

Things I don't like-
no garage. we are planning to build a detached garage in the near future.
The exterior style of the house is blah 80's "contemporary". We are changing windows, roof & siding to correct that.
I wish we had more land but our property is actually large for our neighborhood.

We didn't choose based on house style, only on location.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We have a Cape

Reasons I like it-
*there are so many things you can do with a cape
* IF needed we could live on the 1st floor
*One bath downstairs/One bath upstairs
*Decent sized basement

Things I am not too happy about-

*Our cape is not dormered so the master is on the 1st floor because it is the biggest bedroom
*Also because of the fact that there is no dormer the walls in the bedrooms upstairs are sloped.

We really love our house though. I think capes are great. We both grew up in capes.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We live in a large split and the things I like are that we have a decent sized kitchen with lots of storage space, it's eat in as well..I also like that we have "flex space" next to the kitchen..

The entertaining areas are separate from the living areas and the bedrooms and bathroom are a good size...we also have a finished basement which we will eventually change from the current layout...

Generally, I like that it's private..coming from apartment living my entire life, I enjoy the quiet and the space of being able to be anywhere in the house...now if I could only figure out how to decorate it and get more furniture..haha...

OH..how could I forget the 2 car garage?! We love that!

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We live in a Tudor.

I love that all of the bedrooms are upstairs - I just wish there were one more of them (we have three and I wish we had 4)

I love having a large livingroom, formal dining room, eat in kitchen (though I'd love to do a gut remodel of it in a few years)

I really love the exterior of tudors - the combination of wood, stucco and brick.

I love our large livingroom with fireplace, the hardwood floors, the general flow of the house.

The previous owners finished the attic (full attic with stairs leading to it) and basement and added another full bath in the basement, which is great since the basement is our family room/tv room/daughter's play room.

When our daughter is a teenager she'll probably beg us to have the attic as her bedroom - right now it's pretty much a large empty room.

I wish there was a family room on the main floor of the house, and I want to convert our tiny sunroom into an office - but otherwise it's perfect for us.

In theory I'd love a large yard - but DH and I aren't very good at landscaping - so our 40x100 lot is fine for us.

Message edited 5/9/2009 8:35:35 PM.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We are now on our 2nd ranch and I love it.
I never thought I would but I can't imagine living in anything else!

My only complains
- only have a 1 car garage
- not enough closet space in the master - this can be easily remedied in the future
- no extra family room (although we have small den which is now a play room)

Love that we have so much more potential with our basement- which is about 1600 sq feet (although currently unfinished)

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We have a ranch with a finished basement. I love that everything is one level because we have kids and stairs in a bigger house would freak me out.
I just love the layout of the house. Bedrooms on one side and the kitchen, living room and dining room are on the other side.

We also live on 100x100 property without our neighbors on top of us.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We have a Hi-Ranch.

I don't like that the bedrooms, living room, dining room, and kitchen are all on the same floor.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We live in a lower-entry split level. I grew up in a ranch and we lived in a condo for a year.

Pros for Splits --

I love that the bedrooms are on a different level. When I was young and my brother would be watching TV in the living room, I'd never sleep! LOL.

I love that we have den and "mud/storage/etc." room on the first floor. Love that the laundry is on this floor as well (easy to do laundry and fold it watching TV!).

I love the second floor - open living format of the kitchen, dining and living room. This is really big for me -- I love open living and I love that I have a formal living room.

I think its a great entertaining house. Men downstairs watching the game, gals upstairs drinking wine!


Cons for MY split:

I don't have a basement, which I don't miss terribly but it would be handy. I have a 2 car garage so that makes up for it. We don't really use the crawl space because its creepy.

I actually wish it wasn't lower-entry -- the first room you see is the "man's room" and its ugly with sports posters, etc. Not fun. I wish you entered into my formal living room.

I would do a split again in a heartbeat though!

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Message edited 5/11/2009 10:37:20 AM.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

I have a high ranch and I have to say my husband and I hate the setup. We love our home but we have 2 under 2 and somehow our house shrunk. What I hate about it is that the family room is downstairs and my kitchen is upstairs. So when I am cooking I have to have the kids in my formal dining room or living room. So the beautiful couches I had my eye on I won't be able to purchase for a while because my kid will destroy them. It's just not a practical setup if you plan on having family. Ideally I would love to either have an expanded ranch so that the bedrooms are further away from everything else or a colonial. Right now I just feel like there are toys everywhere and that I can never have a grown up room because of the setup.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

I have a colonial.

Pros:
- Bedrooms are all upstairs. This was important to me when purchasing because I am messy, and I like that my "mess" is contained to my bedroom and bathroom.
- Laundry on the 1st floor (not the basement)
- Semi-open layout. My eat in kitchen is open to my family room, which is convenient now that we have a baby.

Cons:
- STAIRS... We have wood stairs that spiral... EVERYONE has fallen on them: me when pregnant, DH with the baby in his arms, MIL and FIL when they were staying with me. We are probably going to get a runner soon, but it kills me that I spent so much $$$ to have the stairs finished with hardwood and now I am going to cover them.
- Rooms aren't that big - this may just be the layout of my house though

If I had to do it over again, I think I would go with an Extended ranch or a Splanch.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Posted by TreAnt427

A Colonial from a cape, so the downstairs is still a cape layout.

There really isn't anything I don't like about it.

Re: What kind of home do you have?

Re: What kind of home do you have?

We have a ranch