People who design houses should have to live in them!

[SweetMoon]

Went to view a new build yesterday on a new development. Nice looking house but there was a major WTF moment with its design.

It was a town house over 3 floors and had 4 bedrooms. 3 Bedrooms were ensuite. Bedroom 4 was the smallest bedroom and then right next to it a massive family bathroom. But the other bedrooms all had decent size ensuites, including 2 with baths so basically the only bedroom using the massive bathroom would be the small bedroom 4.

Why not just make that en suite aswell? Or better yet, use bedroom 3's big ensuite as the family bathroom (it could be accessed from the landing if a door put in) and have the massive bathroom as another bedroom or a study?

Or am I missing something? There was a seperate toilet on the ground floor for guests, so bathroom wouldn't even be used by a visitor.

Although quite a big house there was also nowhere to store your hoover or a broom or anything as no tall cupboard or even a space where they can stand. That was a little odd. The downstairs loo was huge, so again could easily have been half the size and then a lovely cupboard could have been next to it there.

AIBU to think people that design these new houses should be made to live in them for a month afterwards so they can realise all the little things that are just odd!

People seem very caught up with a place for their ironing board and Hoover. Mine live in the cupboard under the stairs (along with coats and shoes for 6). Surely everyone has a cupboard under the stairs?

You'd think. However, in new builds we viewed, the space under the stairs is a loo, or loo plus washing machine, and there's no space in the kitchen for a tall cupboard.

I don't iron or mop much, but I do iron and mop ever, so I possess a full size ironing board and mop and bucket and they have to live somewhere. We do have a wall mounted cordless hoover - that would be a useful tip for new build buyers ... if they have any wall space spare to mount it anywhere near a plug.

I think if you but a large expensive new build then there is some sort of thought gone into it but the smaller cheaper houses look like someone has a list of what rooms they need and they draw a series of rectangles and there you have the floor plan. It is the only reason I can think when you go into a master bedroom and the width of the room is only a few centimetres more than the length of the bed

Tinkly we have a cupboard under the stairs with a full size door but when you open it you’d have to be a toddler to get into. The rest of our understairs is the downstairs toilet (obviously separate from the cupboard before anyone thinks it’s a dual purpose cupboard).

Ah I didn't think about them putting the toilet under the stairs. I'm surprised about open plan stairs going out of the living room though: I thought they'd been outlawed due to fire hazard?

We lived in a tiny three bedroom newbuild semi many years ago. It was actually quite well designed for the size though.

We had room for a table and a washing machine and a dryer in the kitchen. Even squeezed in a small dishwasher. Our three kids shared one bedroom in shorty bunks and a toddler bed. We ran our business from the tiny box room. We had big IKEA wardrobes for our stuff, under bed storage, loads of Billy bookcases everywhere, tricks like using a big blanket box to double as toy storage and a coffee table in the living room.

We only had one bathroom though, and a downstairs loo in a sort of porch bit, so that saved a bit of space.

It was cosy and our bills were low. It worked okay for us while our kids were little.

People seem very caught up with a place for their ironing board and Hoover. Mine live in the cupboard under the stairs (along with coats and shoes for 6). Surely everyone has a cupboard under the stairs?

I lived in a flat, so there weren't any stairs. The only cupboards we had were normal kitchen cupboards. There was not a single full length cupboard in the place. For years my ironing board used to hang on a couple of hooks on the back of the kitchen door. My vacuum cleaner used to live behind the sofa in the living room. We eventually paid to have some bits moved and created a hall cupboard which was brilliant as we finally had somewhere to keep the vac, ironing board, steam mop etc. But it cost us over £1000 to do it! Next door was a two bed and had the same issue - but they had an en-suite...

Always seemed completely bonkers to me that you would plonk an en-suite in the plan but not a single tall cupboard - all for the sake of a bit of extra thought and design on the part of the builder.

having the washing mashine in the bathroom is standard in many european countries.
makes total sense to me. Yes I understand that

I just thought OP was talking about the UK

We live in a 3 bed 50s ex-council house, far more thought went into this then any of the modern houses we looked at.

Downstairs toilet, store, pantry, understairs cupboard, 2 double bedrooms with built in cupboards, 1 good size single (would be called a double in a new build), airing cupboard.

So at least 4 different places to store a hoover/mop out of the way

People seem very caught up with a place for their ironing board and Hoover. Mine live in the cupboard under the stairs (along with coats and shoes for 6). Surely everyone has a cupboard under the stairs?

Oh my god is that what the cupboard under the stairs is for?? Of course not everyone has one, that's the entire point of all those comments - they've done away with any form of useful storage in most newer houses

In the house we rented previously, which was about 10 years old, the understairs area was part of the lounge. The 'master' bedroom was 3.84m (12ft 7in) x 2.44m (8ft 0in). It was a 3 bed detached and worked fine for us as a couple as we basically had a bedroom with a bed in it, a second bedroom for clothing and other storage and the box room (7ft 5 x 6ft 5) as a study. Useless as a family home.

Haven't RTFT. In my area new builds are aimed at by to let so student market. The ensuite thing makes more sense. If I was renting for a term time year or max two l suppose lack of storage would be more acceptable. I vividly remember sharing a flat where one of the sharers did barely any cleaning so I'd have loved an ensuite. Agree lack of storage would now put me off, even though I'm single.

In new build houses with a requirement for any downstairs toilet to allow wheelchair access do the stairs have to be suitable for a stairlift. If not what's the point?