Must haves when house searching that I don't 'get'

[Greenlightredlight]

All open plan.
Why? Much nicer to have separate rooms where people can do their own thing, and to not have cooking smells invading the whole downstairs.

Kitchen Islands.
Usually just become dumping grounds for loads of rubbish and take up loads of floor space.

Our house has a small kitchen compared to the rest. It still fits a table for 4, and lots of units but for a big house it is small. Our dining room is three times the size of our kitchen. People are always suggesting knocking through walls or reconfiguring house for a big kitchen diner. I'd rather just stick with the perfectly manageable kitchen we have, and pay off the mortgage. The previous owners were older and put in a very posh kitchen 15 years ago that is still in excellent condition.

We've just built a lovely open plan kitchen/lounge/diner with an island. Christmas day was so much better as no one was locked away cooking, it's so sociable and fun and the kids get more involved in cooking. However we also have another living room and a play room, I might not like open plan if it was our only living space.

I've moved a lot and can see past most things that put people off houses, I hated our house on first viewing, but knew I could make it home quite easily.

People obsessed with en-suites. My mum is and I've never understood it.

I live with mom, do she has the master and ensuite for the shower, and me and the kids have the family bathroom with the bath/shower.

The kitchen and diner are open plan, but lounge is standalone which we quite like.

My pet hate is cupboard sized bedrooms. As I'm currently looking at buying a flat in a bracket where open plan/semi open plan is pretty much what's on offer and they're not too big to start with, I'd like a bedroom with room to move round my bed & some semblance of storage. Else my entire life is in the living room.

Highlight was looking at loads of new build flats, supposedly great for couples. One of them you could actually only fit a single bed in the bedroom. The EA looked a bit annoyed when we laughed.

Massive bedrooms. All I do in a bedroom is get dressed and sleep (and other activities that take place in the bed). I don't need a seating area - much rather some extra space in the living room.

A house beside a green. Just means loads of hassle and noise going on until all hours during the Summer months.

I’m not th slightest bit worried about the size of bedrooms as all I actually need them for is to sleep and have guests sleep. I’m also not the slightest bit wanting a dining room. I’ve had one before and never used it as such. The sitting room size is also not important but having a fireplace is
However what I can never, ever go back to is a small kitchen. When I say small I mean like I’ve had before where you can turn and touch all sides at the same time. I would never live in a house where you couldn’t eat in the kitchen.
And I’d never live in a house that didn’t have some outdoor space for planting

When they put radiators in the wrong place. Surely under the window makes the most sense as you can't really use that bit of wall anyways? Most of mine are to one side of the window meaning I lose and entire wall!

I also don't like houses that start at the boundary line. So like when your front or back door open straight onto the path. I feel like I need a buffer from people.

And, I don't like staircase in the living room. I like a hallway. I think the noise travels more if it's in the living room and it's harder to get some peace!

Erm, I hate built in wardrobes. But I also hate old fashioned wardrobes...

I don't get open plan if dh or ds is pissing me off I want a fucking wall separating me , or en-suite either, or big gardens.

Now I've had it, my must have is three storeys, I don't think I could ever go back to a house without an escape floor.

my ideal:

big kitchen with a table or an island where you can sit and talk to person cooking. Family meal times etc. Maybe that could be a big open plan kitchen diner with a sofa.
But then a separate quiet space, living room. But not too small, so whoel family can be comfprtably in there.
In an ideal world there would be a third space which is the kids/music/PS3/teenage room depending on life stage.

I really dislike breakfast bars, especially if they are against a wall (why?)
I also really dislike kitchens where you can't eat, as we eat all meals at a table, and taking cereal through to a dining room woudl be silly.

Love my ensuite.
Love places with an office space.
Love a garage, or at a push a massive shed. Has to be enough for 5 bikes though (plus lawn mower etc etc)
Love a good sized garden too. Use ours all the time, not just when itis sunny enough to sit out.

I think open plan makes a small house feel bigger. DS has an open plan flat which makes it look huge.
I have a big kitchen with room for a sofa, table and chairs so it's easy to have company while cooking. I got rid of the island as it took up space and was inflexible.
If the house is a decent size then I much prefer lots of rooms, more so as DC get older. Our dining room was given over to table tennis when DC were small and then turned into a study /sitting room for them when they were teens.

The thing I would avoid that's currently fashionable is a wood burner (or in fact a house without gas). We have no gas and I've been lighting stoves for 30 years and the novelty has well and truly worn off.

I'd like a kitchen island purely because it would mean that I had a kitchen big enough to take one! I don't do as much cooking and baking as I'd like to because I only have a tiny galley kitchen in my current home, and there's not enough room. if I had an island I could use it for rolling out pastry and so on...

I can see the appeal of an en suite if you would otherwise have to go downstairs if you needed the loo in the middle of the night.

Features that do nothing for me are conservatories (nobody I know who has one gets a lot of use out of it, and it always ends up as a repository for defunct home gym equipment and unwanted furniture), open plan living spaces (draughty), and big garages that stick out in front of the house instead of being off to the side (no practical reason, I just don't like the aesthetics).

Who pissed in eurochick's Cheerio's? 😂

I don't like "statement walls" I'm guessing they are considered a must have to many since almost every house we look at his them. 😐

Personally I think open plan is fab when your children are younger as you can always see what they are up to, but as our kids are getting older we are putting an extension on to try and give us more space as not everyone wants to be in the same room anymore. As for the island I love mine!

*has them

rather than in the dining room - which we use when we have guests

See, I find neglected dining rooms very sad. Our house is a bit open plan which means the dining room is a main thoroughfare and it gets used every day. I love it.

Don't understand the love for en suites - although nice for guest rooms I suppose - but then I'd be happy if our bathroom was on the same floor as our bedroom!

Mind you, it's all academic anyway. We only had three "must-haves" when we bought this house and it has none of them!

Surely under the window makes the most sense as you can't really use that bit of wall anyways?

for me, this is the worst place for radiators.
If you have short curtains (to the window sill) then either all the hot air goes up behind the cutains and out of the windows.
Or, you have to tuck the curtains behind the radiator, which looks rubbish.

I love floor length curtains, they look beautiful and are very warm, save loads on heating, and you can't have them with radaitors under the window.

I don’t like open plan. The big thing I wanted with our house was a separate dining room I was fed up of having our table in the lounge/ diner. It just became a dumping ground.

large entrance hall, separate kitchen, lounge and dining room, downstairs cloakroom, utility room, on a cul de sac, off road parking and front and back gardens.

@Biancadelriosback so where do you keep your clothes??

I hate open plan too, OP, partly because I work from home, but also because it's nice for DS to be able to play on the Xbox with his pals while we watch TV in another room.

I could tolerate a kitchen island only either in a very large kitchen, i.e. with room for a proper table and chairs as well, or where there is a separate dining room. I cannot stand to see them taking up the only space in a property that might reasonably serve for a table and chairs, as so often seems to the case round here!

Oh and two sinks in the bathroom - just means twice is much cleaning surely!

*as

I'd always secretly wanted a conservatory and had imagined long summer evenings sitting there relaxing, or rainy days reading a book. Well, thank goodness we happened to rent a house for six months with a conservatory because certainly on that house it was the work of the devil. It was like a furnace on a sunny day, so hot you could hardly bear to walk through it, and on cold days it was like having a huge cold thing clinging onto the house, making the whole place freeze as well. I didn't sit in it once. I can see that the house itself just maybe wasn't suitable for the conservatory, but it really put me off. DH was thrilled as I've always (maybe not so secretly) wanted one and he hates them.