Anonymous wrote:Geeze. How large is that skylight? Our kitchen has 3 smaller ones, and we have a ton of upper cabinets. The cabinets are up against the walls, so there's plenty of space for skylights in the middle.
FYI - if you can help it - don't get a custom skylight. My last place had one, and it was a big pain in the butt.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I might have missed this in the previous posts but have you thought about switching the living room and kitchen and making the kitchen more centrallly located in the plan? It looks like you’d be able to get a large island there, a window for the sink and the living room would be the room that opens up to the back yard.
Thanks! That is the other floor plan that I have thought about. There are a few things that make me think it is better in the back, do any of these factors affect your opinion?
1. If the living room is in the middle, there can be a skylight in the living room. If the kitchen is in the middle, the skylight is not possible (because it would be blocked by upper cabinets). Light is at such a premium in rowhouses, that having a skylight seems like a pretty big pro.
2. There will be a small porch off the back french doors, where a grill is kept (so you'd have to walk through the living room with anything grilled). The porch is VERY small though, no room for seating. It is literally just to hold the grill and for stairs down to the backyard.
3. The backyard is small. There is basically space for the stairs to walk down from the first floor and up from the basement. A very small concrete patio and then parking for two cars. The living room will not really "open up" to a nice large back yard area. You'll mostly see our cars. To be outdoors, we will go up to the third floor roof deck where there will be a couch and a dining table.
4. This particular block has alley house. So across the alley from my backyard is someone's house (i.e. a front door, their second floor has windows looking at my first floor). So they have a pretty good view into the back of the house. Would it be better to have the living room in the middle for privacy?
Here is plan of the backyard in case it helps visually:
Anonymous wrote:I might have missed this in the previous posts but have you thought about switching the living room and kitchen and making the kitchen more centrallly located in the plan? It looks like you’d be able to get a large island there, a window for the sink and the living room would be the room that opens up to the back yard.
Anonymous wrote:Where's the HVAC and water heater?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Why do you have the living room between the dining room and kitchen?
Is the 2nd drawing from the left the first floor? It's a bit confusing.
Yes, they are in order from left to right, the third floor, the second floor, the first floor and the basement.
The living room is between the dining and kitchen, mostly because I don't use the dining room that frequently and the middle space is MUCH larger (I don't need a table to seat 25), so I'd rather have more living space. However, I don't think there is anything going into either space that would force a future owner to use them in that way (i.e. no chandelier over the table) so if someone else wants to flip them, they can.
Where do you eat? In front of the tv?
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That's where I eat if I am home alone? Is that weird?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought.
What about putting the kitchen in the middle (the traditional dining room area and the proposed living room area) and the living room where the proposed kitchen is, at the back, feeding into the backyard via a nice terrace/deck, and the dining area up front.
Just to toss out an idea.
Great idea! (I'm not the OP)
That was my thought too. I'd hate having my living room area where I spend most of my time in the middle of the house and not directly by windows. Also think future buyers will be bothered by the weird layout of kitchen -->living -->dining area
Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought.
What about putting the kitchen in the middle (the traditional dining room area and the proposed living room area) and the living room where the proposed kitchen is, at the back, feeding into the backyard via a nice terrace/deck, and the dining area up front.
Just to toss out an idea.
Anonymous wrote:We are in a row house and have lived in it for about 10 years. We also use the front room as dining room, contrary to most traditional three room deep row houses. We did it for the same reason - middle room is bigger/more open and gives us more seating and options to arrange furniture and more privacy.
For the kitchen, one of those last pics you posted - that looks like a big wide space in the middle. That’s a lot of walking back and forth between sink and stove and fridge. Carefully consider your layout. Did you have a kitchen designer weigh in? One of our friends does have a similar, but smaller layout. They have a smallish mobile island they plop in the middle with a couple stools. We did a different layout and went with island in the kitchen. So we have cabinets and counters on two walls with fridge and stove there and sink in island. There wasn’t a better place for our sink, but it worked out well as we can talk to kids or guests while washing dishes. Our island has room for four counter stools. The other wall is blank - no cabinets or anything
The one thing that I didn’t realize about our home is that the back door would be our primary entrance bc we park out back and also have a shed where we keep strollers, scooters and bikes. So even though we don’t have strollers anymore, we still often go out that way. If we did it again, I would plan a storage/mud room something as well as a small seating area at the back of the kitchen. We kind of had to force the coat and backpack storage in there.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought.
What about putting the kitchen in the middle (the traditional dining room area and the proposed living room area) and the living room where the proposed kitchen is, at the back, feeding into the backyard via a nice terrace/deck, and the dining area up front.
Just to toss out an idea.
Great idea! (I'm not the OP)
That was my thought too. I'd hate having my living room area where I spend most of my time in the middle of the house and not directly by windows. Also think future buyers will be bothered by the weird layout of kitchen -->living -->dining area
We just moved into a new house and we inherited the seller's awesome and very solid dining room table (it's super heavy). They placed it in the great room (next to the living room). I'm not too happy with this setup, but we can't move it without a lot of help. So there it remains, but I would really like to move it in the area next to the kitchen.