When will open plan go away?

[Anonymous]

We have a range hood that vents to the outside. It makes a big difference. I also burn a candle after dinner.

That said I like the smell of my cooking! Cozy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP here. We are Indian-Americans and love our delicious spice and herbs infused foods. No, not just curry, but we use herbs, spices, condiments, garlic, fennel, onions, leeks, ginger, galangal etc for all the cuisines that we make - Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Middle Eastern etc.

We do the following to get rid of smells and smoke -
1) We have a hood over the cooking range that vents outside the house. We wash the filters pretty regularly
2) We also open the kitchen window and use two powerful vornado fans to vent outside. The hood also vents on the same side of the house, so we make sure that we are not pulling that back in the house. On the opposite side of the house, we open the windows to create some cross ventilation.
3) we close all doors on all levels to prevent the smell from travelling.
4) We shut down the HVAC to prevent the smell from circulating when we are cooking.
5) We makes sure that our jackets etc are stowed in the coat closet and the door is closed to prevent the smell permeating into clothes and outerwear.
6) We have a UV light in our HVAC and heavy duty filters and it basically removes all smells.

We cook a lot and every day and there is no smell of curry or anything else in our home. Having a seperate closed off kitchen will not change anything if you have the same HVAC system circulating air in the whole house.

This is a lot of work. I am Indian-American, and we just don’t have an open plan kitchen. Problem solved. And I can even leave the heat on while cooking!

[Anonymous]

Build an outdoor kitchen...

[Anonymous]

I like a closed kitchen. I hate cooking smells and they settle everywhere, including clean towels. When we sold our house with a closed kitchen the offers we got were all from immigrants who I assumed but don't know agreed with WASP me that kitchens should have doors.

[Anonymous]

we have a semi-closed kitchen and still have issues with the smells. I can't imagine that even a totally closed kitchen would help, as some smells end up all the way upstairs past a closed door.

[Anonymous]

Our last house had a very open floor plan on the ground floor. Now we are renting a typical colonial. I like some aspects of each. I followed a suggestion here to read Sarah Susanka’s Not So Big House and I think she pinpoints the issues well, though the book is not about the current trends. People want a sense of shelter (which can be missing from open floor plans) and it’s nice to have a quiet room in the main space. That’s what I’ll be looking for next time rather than just open or closed, I think some floor plans are better than others with the same amount of openness.

Now kitchen smells, I really want a good kitchen fan next time

[Anonymous]

We moved from an open concept to everything open except the kitchen. Its not completely closed but if you walk in the house you only see the table and chairs. Not the appliances . It's our first year and I like it so much better. So people like myself would buy a home that doesn't have an open plan.

[Anonymous]

I like an eat-in kitchen (with a proper table, not bar stools at an island ) but not an open floor plan. It’s odd to me how hard that is to find these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like my kitchen somewhat closed off. It keeps the hustle and clutter of the kitchen prep away from my guests. My living room and dining room are open but the kitchen has a half wall and cabinets seperating them.

Well, the idea behind open plan in most cases is that you have formal living and dining rooms in the front and the kitchen is open to a family room/informal dining room in the back. It’s only in smaller houses where there’s no formal dining room that guests can see the kitchen while eating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You’re not alone in hating open plan. Get the kitchen you want. There will be buyers.

+1 I also hate the open plan. It really is annoying to go to someone's house, walk in the front door and see everything. It is way TMI and people live a lot more messily than they think they do.

I think opinions about the open floor plan will swing back dramatically once the kids who live in them start buying houses. Why do I think this? Until March I drove a lot of carpools. You'd be surprised at what kids think about it and what they say about their homes' open floor plans.

What do kids say about their open floor plans?

They don't speak about them as open floor plans. They talk about their house versus someone else's house so they'll say "at my house..." and "at your house..." types of stuff. As they talk what I hear is that they don't like that there is no privacy, that they can't watch tv without hearing all the noise in the kitchen from dinner/whatever prep, that their house looks "messy" all the time (I think it is just normal living, like the paper on the coffee table, mugs on the island) and other houses don't, they talk about how loud it is all the time and no place to just chill, etc. It all speaks to the fact that everyone living in one big room isn't doing it for them. These aren't long conversations, just tidbits as they move from topic to topic.

[Anonymous]

We are completely done with open plans. Lived with one for four years. It's noisy, no privacy, messy and just creates unnecessary stress. We ended up building a wall between the kitchen and family room (the layout allowed for that). Now I enjoy my nice roomy kitchen that's all about cooking and hanging out, and people can watch TV and have phone conversations without yelling at everyone else to turn the volume down. Separation all the way,

[Anonymous]

A non-open floor plan and a tub in the master bath are my dream.

[Anonymous]

We had open in in our first house and when my kids were young I liked it. Now, with two teens I absolutely appreciate a separate kitchen and am actually going to add doors to the back family room because i would2 enjoy closing those as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like my kitchen somewhat closed off. It keeps the hustle and clutter of the kitchen prep away from my guests. My living room and dining room are open but the kitchen has a half wall and cabinets seperating them.

Well, the idea behind open plan in most cases is that you have formal living and dining rooms in the front and the kitchen is open to a family room/informal dining room in the back. It’s only in smaller houses where there’s no formal dining room that guests can see the kitchen while eating.

I don't think this is open plan. This describes my parents' house (built in the '80s), and I don't consider it an open plan design. Also, the informal space isn't dead-on looking into the kitchen, even though it's open to it.

I've seen modern, McMansion type builds where the kitchen is completely open to the Great Room, and it's the centerpiece of the house. I think having a separate formal living room is going away, which kind of makes sense. My brother is using the same architect as my parents, and his house is going to have an open kitchen looking over the the main living space. I don't get it. You have to keep your kitchen immaculate (or just have everything look messy), and the noise of cooking will bother anyone sitting in the main living space.

[Anonymous]

I had a kid who played the violin for several hours a day in a house with practically no walls. I also hate open plan.