Moving -- what mistakes or fab things should we be looking for?

[hillview]

Hi all,
Just put our place on the market. We are looking for a house (been in a condo all our lives). My parents will be living with us and we hope to have 2 children (one DS, 15 months now). What should we be thinking about in terms of space and things you love / hate? What would you have done differently? Things I am wondering about (in addition to your thoughts):
- playroom required? which level?
- yard -- what is essential?
- # floors?
- type of kitchen?
- type of floor plan?
- mudroom?
- garage how large?
- what floor laundry?

TIA!
/hillary

[SnuggleBuggles]

- playroom required? which level?
Level with kitchen and other hub of activity so that all is within ear shot and quickly in vision

- yard -- what is essential?
Hmmm...we have a nice yard but I prefer to take him to the park for outdoor time for some reason. I'd probably feel differently if it were accessed easier. As it is now we eithe rhave to walk around from the front of the house or go out the door in the basement. If it were right off the main level that would be nice. Fenced in is good for the sake of keeping them in and others out (people, animals...). (Fences are no substitute for good adult supervision though). If you want a play sturcture you want flat and with enough clearance for safety. The AAP has guidelines on how much clearance you need for swings and such.

- # floors?
I like 2 so that you can be noisier at night downstairs but people can be sleeping upstairs. More floors aren't necessary but there are benefits to being able to spread out and store things more out of sight.

- type of kitchen?
Open style is nice in some ways BUT if you are hosting a dinner party I always hated looking into my kitchen from the table and looking at dirty dishe. I always try to clean as I go but there are inevitably dishes left at the end or some other mess. No real opinion here unless you have a baby in that case think about ease of childproofing (gates...).

- type of floor plan?

- mudroom?
Handy if you will actually use it. problem with a house is you never know how you will actually use it till you are there. So, make sure it is in a convenient place. Say you have a garage, will you always park in there or will you sometimes park in the driveway or street? What door do you plan to use?

- garage how large?
Depends on # of cars and whether you will have a work area elsewhere (like a basement).

- what floor laundry?
Convenient in some ways to have it on the level with the bedrooms but if the machines are too close to a bedroom you may find that they are too noisy to use while people are sleeping. I like my laundry chute/ basement laundry set up. I just need to install a dum(b?)waiter and then I'd be all set!

Of our friends most have their TV rooms/ playrooms in the basement and they find it to be a pain n the butt. I like that ours is on the main level. We have a playroom and a formal living room on the main level as well as the kitchen and a bathroom.

Beth

[SnuggleBuggles]

I did want to add a few thoughts b/c of the parents- ask a real estate agent if there are any homes in your area that have been done up to have "In Law Suites." It isn't uncommon in my city for the younger generation to take in the older one so there are homes that have seperate living quarters (kitchen, bath, bedroom, living room). These areas aren't spacious but I think all involved like the extra bit of privacy. You can always look at homes that you can add that on to yourself too.

I would certainly make sure you have multiple bathrooms for all the people. :)

Finally, consider the stuff you have now. Our first home had a large upstairs (bedrooms and office) and small downstairs. So, we filled up the upstairs with furniture. Now, our scheme is reversed and we have too much stuff and one fewer bedroom and the downstairs is quite sparse furniture wise (buying very slowly b/c we are being choosy- and cheap...a bad fit!). Make sure you will have enough storage and such if you do wind up with a floor plan dif't from what you already have.

Beth

[JBaxter]

Our playroom is actually the formal living room -- since we arnt formal its Nathan's room

Yard -- the bigger the better for kids :)

I like a big eat in kitchen

Would LOVE a mud room but we dont have one

Our garage needs to be bigger but it is what it is :) I wish we had 2 garage doors instead of 1 large one

Laundry... I HATE my 2nd floor laundry . Nathan always gets into something when Im trying to do laundry. His play room is on the first floor and I end up carrying the laundry down to fold it in the living room just to keep an eye on him. I wish it was off the kitchen IN a mud room.

OH yes look for lots of bathrooms. I have 3 full baths plus 2 half baths.

If your inlaws are living with you think about them having their "own" space ?? Maybe a finished basement w/ bath & small living room?

[dules]

Depends where you live, but for me closets are key - namely, a coat closet downstairs. We've owned 3 houses built from 1887 - 1910 and not a single one has had a coat closet. Made me really appreciate the TWO in my parent's 1930's colonial. :)

Have fun househunting!

Mary

[blueeyedb]

I don't have a ton of thoughts about houses and what makes them great, one family's perfect house could be a nightmare for another family.

I did want to say that we bought a house with a huge backyard thinking that it would be great to have with kids and we are now finding that it is way more work than we had originally anticipated. I had a big yard growing up and it was always immaculate, but my parents had a teenage son to help take care of it. We would have been much better off with a smaller yard and more time at the park.

[sadie427]

Playroom--didn't even think about it, just not my style I guess, hard enough finding a 4-bedroom we liked and could afford. Don't have lots of large toys, DS brings a few things from his room into the living room and we put them back at night. Anything really big stays in the basement.

Laundry--in the basement, with a laundry chute, although even without I think i'd prefer having the laundry far from the bedrooms so you can run the laundry overnight and not hear the buzzer.

Yard--not sure what's essential. Backyard has been pretty much unusable the year we've lived here. We just have a small front patio we can drink coffee on or play on. We go to the park if we want to run around, or walk around the block.

Kitchen--don't know what you mean by type, but plenty of counter space is key!

If it were me, I'd want my bedroom on a different floor from my parents, and if they are older and living with you for a while you should think about what will happen if they can no longer do stairs; eg should have at least one bedroom and one bath on the main floor, and no stairs up to the entrance.

[The Review Mommy]

Hillary,

I don't have a lot of time right now to answer your questions but thought I'd give you some great threads on the subject. ;)

Like/wish you had in your home
http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=37&topic_id=330419

Remodel
http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=37&topic_id=349191

Building
http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=37&topic_id=326470

Kitchen
http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=37&topic_id=292974

Corner of street
http://www.windsorpeak.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=37&topic_id=360053

There may be more in my bookmarks. I'll post again on Monday.

ENJOY! :)

Rebekah

[MartiesMom2B]

One of my neighbors has her mom living with her and they have two master bedrooms. One is on the first floor off of a small hallway in the kitchen, and the other is upstairs. I would look for that type of arrangement.

-Sonia
Mommy to Martie
& Li'l Girl Bunny to come Feb. 2007
http://bd.lilypie.com/Kchhm4/.png (http://lilypie.com)

[ljackson]

I would go for having the laundry as low as possible. Recently my second floor washer spewed water everywhere and it came pouring through the light fitting downstairs and gave us nasty stains on the ceiling. Thank goodness it's not my problem: I'm renting!

[HHCs Mom]

Our laundry is actually outside in our utility room. It is a pain in the winter when it's cold but great for times like this summer when DH forgot to reattach the drain hose from the washer to the drain. I started the washer and DS and I were playing outside right outside the utility room door. Water started pouring out of the door and onto the carport! Fortunately, the utility room has a concrete floor and two doors so I just opened both doors and the water dried up very quickly. If the washer had been inside, our floor might have been ruined.

That said, I definitely want our laundry room INSIDE when we move into our next house! :)


Kim
~ mama to a sweet boy named Harrison ~ 4.6.04
...and #2 due 5.24.07!

[miki]

We have a 2-story living room. All the sounds from downstairs carry like crazy to all the space upstairs even with the upstairs doors shut. That's the only thing that I would definitely not want again.

[Fairy]

So, how much is money an object? Here are some thoughts:

1. If ILs are gonna live with you, I'd go for multi-level so that you can honestly have some kind of privacy (unless you find a very large ranch)

2. I don't think a playroom is essential, but we don't use our formal livingroom, so DS spends alot of time in there. Most people are gonna say a playroom or at least a play area are really important. Without our livingroom, I'd agree.

3. for us, a basement was essential, and it had to be mostly finished. The only thing missing for us? A bathroom in the basement. Try to find this!

4. RADON! Make sure when you have your inspection that you get a radon test. Lemme tell you about radon. It's radiation. It's mostly harmless, but when it gets up past 4 pico-curies, then you "fail" the radon test. Bad news: there's only one way to mitigate radon; the good news, it's easy and cheap. You ahve to have a pipe stuck into your basement and have a fan at the top end of it ventilating. Most of the time this works. Our first house bid failed the radon test with a score of 10. Failing is 4. However, nuclear reactors are required to be below a 2. What does that tell you? High doeses of radon can affect fertility of our girls. In utero. Radon, radon, radon. Don't skimp here. If your house fails, say bye bye.

5. Look at all the bedrooms and make sure you can fit a bed, dresser, and desk/table/plaything in there, cuz only one of our non-master bedrooms can accommodate these things and still have elbow room. Wish we'd've thought of that beforehand.

I could go on and on. Those are my immediate thoughts. Especially the radon stuff. Good luck!

-- Fairy

[Karenn]

playroom required? which level? right now: on the main floor close to the kitchen. When kids are older, on another floor so I get some quiet

- yard -- what is essential? play area easily accessible that can be seen from the kitchen or part of the house where you spend most of your time, fenced

- # floors? 2 (3 was too many, 1 makes it hard to get "away")

- type of kitchen? eat-in so you're not always eating in the dining room and don't have to worry about kid spills


- mudroom? off the kitchen doubling as a laundry room I have this now and I love it.

- garage how large? 2 car for sure, 3 car if the rest of the house doesn't have a lot of storage, attached

- what floor laundry? I love having it on the same floor as the bedrooms *and* on the main floor, but it means having the bedrooms on the main floor which has advantages and disadvantages.

Other things I love or am missing:
*Decent entry with coat closet
*Pantry in the kitchen
*Ample sized linen closet
*Powder room in addition to kids bath and master bath
*Good storage

[KrisM]

You've had lots of good responses and I agree that it's hard to pick a house for someone else. One thing I love about our house and a friend wishes she had in her house is the layout of the kitchen and play areas. We have a playroom (was a formal living room) and a family room as well. I can see both from my kitchen. Since I'm often in there cooking in the evening, I like that I know what DS is doing in the play room and that I can talk to DH if he's in the family room. My friend can't see either of those places from her kitchen and she feels removed from what's going on in the house. Her husband ends up sitting at the kitchen table to talk to her and wishes it was a bit more comfy :).