to be fed up with new builds having lounge diners and in built garages?

[mrscog]

We need to move house at some point in the next 12 months. At the moment we're just at the browsing right move stage, although would move if the correct property came up.

We quite fancy a new build but nearly all the ones I see have inbuilt garages (absolute waste of space in my opinion, we'd be looking to convert it in to more living space asap and just keep cars on the drive and 'household detritus' in a garden shed) and (even worse) lounge diners.

Lounge diners are a pile of fucking shit with a toddler distraughtly looks at carpet stained with sweet potato and yoghurt under the antilop. I want a nice kitchen diner which can be a social space and also have an easily cleaned floor. I know I could put a mat under the high chair in the lounge but it makes the room look even messier than it already is and it's harder to hoover. I hate the fact that the lounge is also a blooming dining room as a result we never eat at the table as the lure of TV slob eating is just too much. I thought kitchen dining was 'in', so why are all the developers near me not building them????

Even 'old builds' are somewhat lacking with this issue.

AIBU to feel positively murderous over this?

Well if you like horses it's lovely but I am from the city so need a bit more life. And allergic to horses!

I think Gavin from Autoglass went to Woodrush.

It is celebrity land no wonder Hollywood is next door!

I moved away 22 years ago. I hardly ever go back-it is probably very different now.

I am with expat I like it all open and 1 bathroom per person sounds about right.

I have my own bathroom. No-one but me allowed in.

I quite like the house you linked to. I would squeeze in a 4 seater table in the kitchen and use the 'dining' room for my books.

I quite like that Inclusionist.

We have three bathrooms. It has come into it's own now that our three eldest are teenagers.

Mrscog - that's a dire layout. It's not even a lounge diner - it's a living room that you can squeeze a table into.

And that, plus 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and another loo are squeezed into the same square footage as our small but well laid out (even with the one bathroom downstairs) 2 bed terrace. We have a king size bed in our bedroom and can actually walk past the end of it, even though we've installed deep Pax wardrobes on the facing wall.

And our lounge diner actually has a lounge and a dining room.

The downstairs in that one seems to be a Barratt Special (though i suspect you wish you could find that much bedroom space. And despite the photos, the development is nowhere near Durham Cathedral. It's not even in Durham)
www.rightmove.co.uk/new-homes-for-sale/property-41183135.html?premiumA=true

Open plan are a pita imo - all the kitchen smells waft into the lounge. If you have a washing machine/dishwasher in the kitchen you can hear it in the lounge in the evening when you're watching the soaps reading.
If the kids have the tv on you can't hear the radio and vice versa. Same with lounge/diners - you have to clear up straight away or your lounge looks constantly messy. And walls are good for heating.

Bring back walls and doors I say. Trade them in for a few of those bogs!

This is one of the reasons we're going to build in Oz (ok not the main reason by far, but it is a consideration!). I think I remember reading somewhere that Japanese new builds are actually bigger than UK ones!! It's a great shame I think, as so much more could be made of the available space with better design (but that'd cost I suppose...)

Open plan works for us.

We can all being doing different things in different parts of the room but all in together.

Love it.

I have 5 toilets and love it. Never having to go into a smelly bathroom!

Our new build has a seperate lounge, dining room and a kitchen diner as well as seperate garages so they most certainly are not all built as you say.

Open plan is the work of Satan. Our whole house is one room downstairs and we're putting a wall back in so we can use the washer and the TV at the same time.

Ah well, your problem there is the bizarre UK habit of putting the washing machine in the kitchen.

Crazy behaviour, even supposing you don't have enough room for a laundry.

Doesn't the bathroom make more sense?

Lots of UK houses were built back when bathrooms were not indoors. So the bathroom had to be added on, and isn't big. So at the point when washing machines became common, we got into the habit of keeping washing machines in kitchens (the only other room with water), so now houses are built with the assumption that you want your washing machine in or near your kitchen, not in your bathroom.

860 sq feet sounds very poky to me as well, for a 3 bed family house.

I've got a 60's terrace, was built with a through lounge and tiny kitchen just off the dining area. We put a wall up dividing the lounge and dining area and knocked down the wall between kitchen and dining area and now have a lovely lounge that isn't a throughfare, beautiful spacious kitchen diner and a conservatory ( we used the old dining window space to put patio doors into the conservatory). We love it.

We have friends who did the same with a 30's semi, they didn't add a conservatory though, they extended the kitchen to the side and put bi fold doors across the back of the kitchen diner, they have a lounge area in the back with an open fire as well as a separate lounge at the front. They also made the cupboard under the stairs a wc, their house is beautiful.

We have a 1950s house. Bigger bedrooms than a new build, separate lounge and dining room, I love it. No garage but we could put three cars on the drive so I'm not bothered.

1910 house, with attached garage here. The garage is only big enough for an Austin 7 though, so it's used as a utility room/shed. It gets us a short drive and makes the plot wider though.

The modern rule seems to be "Bathrooms = Bedrooms -1 + downstairs WC". Maybe it's a conspiracy between architects and the makers of Jif.

Also, given the choice between three houses with decent gardens and five houses with titchy ones, any developer will look at the bottom line. People seem to cover everything with decking these days anyway.

Having lived in a townhouse I'd never touch one again. You spend your life on the stairs.

Why do garages have to be designed to accommodate a car, but not consider that the doors need to open the let the driver and passengers out. My housing estate is modern (but not new anymore) and it's very rare for the garage to accomodate cars. Garage conversions are increasingly common as many of the houses lack downstairs living space compared to bedrooms, especially when there's been an extension over the gararge to upgrade from 3 to 4 or 5 bedrooms.

TrueStory

When you say: "Architects! Planners! Councils! Arghhh!" I have to say that very few house builders employ architects (most of their so-called 'designers' are technicians, engineers or cost controllers).

Planners have to follow the hundreds of regulations imposed by central government and are forced into accepting schemes they would never agree to if they were truly independent although I agree that there have always been bizarre decisions - usually politically motivated IMO.

Councils have less and less involvement with housing developments as such and the vast majority of residental projects are inspected by private companies such as NHBC.

As an architect, I find the whole situation incredibly depressing. :(

When we bought offplan I did the same as you sweetpeaandpies I asked if we could not have the ensuite and use it as a dressing room instead of having built-in wardrobes but the sales staff persuaded us to keep the ensuite because it would be easier to resell.

I can understand people with larger families benefiting from an ensuite, although our family of five managed without when I was growing up. But there are only three of us in our house which has 2.5 bedrooms, one family bathroom with bath, an ensuite with shower and downstairs WC. Realistically there are only ever likely to be three people living in it. Why do we need two bathrooms between three of us, and a toilet each?

Even more annoyingly, the family bathroom doesn't have a shower, so when DS is older and would prefer to jump in the shower than have a bath, he will have to use our ensuite.

I would much rather have a bigger bedroom and a dressing room than a toilet three feet from my bed.

I do much prefer our kitchen/dining room too. I wouldn't buy a house with a lounge/dining room.

We're looking for a new place at the moment and I'd much rather have separate kitchen, dining room and lounge. I'd like somewhere separate for homework/music practice/whatever from slobbing out watching telly. I don't think either lounge/diner or kitchen/diner provides that. Does anyone else prefer that option?
Naturally it's unlikely to be available within our budget.

And yes, any house with an en-suite loses points in my book. I would like a separate loo though. We've also seen houses advertised as so-many double bedrooms, when one is a box room that fits a double (or 3/4 bed) in snugly with nothing else!

We've just put an offer on a nice 70s build which has four separate downstairs rooms.

The problem I found with lounge/diner or kitchen/diners is that they're never actually the size of two rooms. It's always a kitchen or a lounge with a table squidged into a corner.

We have a lot of bookcases and need walls.

Looked around several 3/4 bed houses, looked at the downstairs and thought it would be fine for a single person but not for a family with books/DVDs/toys.

I have heard that new builds have to have a downstairs toilet. Annoying, because it takes up valuable space.

www.porterdavis.com.au/Our-houses/Home-Finder. We'd love to build one of their 2 storey homes. Why are planning laws, etc such that here in the UK it really does seem to be a case of "you get what you're given"? It's one of the biggest purchases you'll ever make yet choice is so limited...