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

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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 first family house was open plan and it was great when DC were little as I could keep an eye on them all the time. Then when they were early teens we moved to a traditional house with separate sitting/dining/kitchen/study etc. It’s been great as it means that we could be entertaining our friends in one space while they did their own thing in another room and there was always a quiet room available for homework and music practice. They are adults now and when they eventually leave home for good (classic boomerangs atm) we will downsize and I think I would prefer to be openplan again. I feel a bit isolated when we have guests over and I’m cooking and can’t John in the fun. It wouldn’t be a dealbreaker though - I am definitely led by my heart when choosing somewhere to live.

Dealbreakers for me would be living on a noisy road, only having one loo and not having big halls. All our houses have had big halls, upstairs and down and I love the feeling of uncluttered peace and space it gives a home.

Shutters! Over all windows everywhere. Like it's the deep South. Costs a bomb, less light in the room than there was before, bugger to clean, gives a 'prison bars' effect. Just why?

I don't like shutters either. I probably would if we had a caribbean climate but on a victorian terrace they look weird.

I love open plan!

I love having a giant space which I can switch up and change as often as I like and to whichever set up I want rather than being confined to certain rooms with limited orientations

I'm moving in with you CurlySpencer. I will need a swing seat for the veranda.

I don't care about, or want, the following:

Ensuite
Massive cavernous kitchen (I really don't mind a galley kitchen. I'm cooking, don't get in my way)
Parking space
Conservatory. Especially on built onto the back of the kitchen, so that you feel like you are boxed in and can't see out properly.
Those HIDEOUS office style grey front doors with the long metal handle that EVERYONE round here puts on their house.
Ditto grey cladding.
Wet Room.
Bi Fold doors.
Decking. Rats. That is all.
Garage.

What I would like is two reception rooms on either side of a hall. One for ds and his smelly friends and one for meeee. With naice sofas and blankets and cushions and books.
A massive garden with trees and shrubs and a good shed and a sunny spot for my lounger.
A pantry.
A utility room.
A bathroom with an original 1930s suite and a high tank with a chain. They are the best.
Secret back stairs.

Banquettes are great. We have a studio flat in a southern seaside town and are quite pushed for space. We eventually bought a 50s style Formica diner table and banquettes to go either side of it. It fits the space we have and is perfect for the nature of the area. Now I want to get one of those chrome condiment holders with a ketchup dispenser shaped like a tomato. We don’t actually eat ketchup but it would look great!

I wouldn't like totally open plan, we have a big kitchen/diner which I love but have a separate sitting room.

And I LOVE my ensuite! When the dc were young it wasn't necessary but now they're teenagers there's always someone in my house and I can have a shower and go to the toilet without wondering who I'll bump into on the landing and whether I'm dressed appropriately

Oh yeah, and the worst crime against property is when people rip out all the plants from their front garden and tarmac the lot. Then park their car on it so that all they can see out their living room window is the side of a Ford Focus.
Or when they rip out all the plants and fill the whole space with cat litter. Why???
Half my street has done this. Nice front gardens can make a street look so pretty. Cat litter, not so much.

We rent a farmhouse (farm no longer working) on a country estate (Lord x) on the outskirts of a village. Falling to pieces but bags of room - large country kitchen with an Aga and space for 6/8 seater table and chairs, large pantry (used as home office), boot room/laundry room/utility, shower room and two reception rooms downstairs, 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms upstairs, half an acre garden plus third of an acre orchard.

We couldn't afford to buy the same as rent is a fraction of what a mortgage would be. We have been looking to buy for financial security but would need to double rental cost to buy somewhere a quarter of the size.

Both my son's are autistic and HE with tutors (need to be in separate rooms) so we need the space and I have to be at home as f/t carer and DH works from home most of the time. Towns are too 'peoplely' and neighbours intolerant of meltdowns. We can't afford to buy somewhere with the space/seclusionto accommodate this. We try to save each month but can't afford to save in line with property inflation. I despair for the future.

In a different life I would live in a compact Edwardian house with an orangery in the centre of a market town!

I'd rather have no downstairs loo or ensuite than one of those macerator things.

I love the idea of a big kitchen with space for a table and a separate utility room for the washing machine so that I don't have to put up with the noise it makes.

I really don't like island units - the above-mentioned table in the middle is very appealing.

I love a traditional mantelpiece but these seem to have gone out of fashion, instead they are replaced with an enormous wall-mounted tv - not my style at all.

A conservatory and a garage would be great.

Sadly to get all this I need a winning lotto ticket.

Personally I hate open plan. I can see it works well with younger children, they can play while you cook and you can keep an eye on them. But for older children and teens, open plan is a disaster. We often have different things going on in different rooms - dh listening to radio in the kitchen or me cooking, one of the dc watching tv in the other room or playing the piano etc....someone else doing homework in the dining room and needs it quiet. Just wouldn't work in one big room!

Off street parking is a must for me. We're lucky enough to have a drive but we have friends who have no OSP and it's a nightmare to find a space.

A lot of these things hinge on having enough space. We have a kitchen diner (with central island too)... but there are another 2 big "public" rooms downstairs to escape the noise of the kitchen. Ensuite in the second bedroom (which opens off the same alcove as the main bedroom) functions as private bathroom for the main bedroom, and we use the now much smaller second bedroom as a dressing room. But the other two bedrooms are both double sized, so the big window and empty space on the landing gives the house a feeling of airiness and lightness, without any resentment the space could be used for something better.

Our conservatory ticks all the "no" boxes - S facing, no heating, so freezing in winter, hot in summer. Yet it's a room we use more than most others - it really comes into its own from about now, when you're desperate for sunshine but it's too cold outside, but you can sit in the conservatory having lunch, getting all the light and sunshine from outside, and the sun is enough to heat the conservatory. Then in summer it's great for breakfast if it isn't yet quite warm enough to sit on the terrace, and in autumn it's lovely to have an evening meal in there as the sun goes down, watching the sunset and the first emerging bats.

Oh I LOVE the idea of secret back stairs.

We had them in an old farmhouse we lived in as kids. Loved them.

morning we have a kitchen island attached to a table. Table top is same material as island (granite) but slightly lower than the island. It works really well.

What gets me, is when you watch A Place in the Sun, and you get retirees who won't take a particular property because the pool isn't suitable for their granddaughter, or something like that

I'll be fucked if other people are my main focus, at that time of life, when searching for a property!

Thankfully we’re all different!

I wouldn’t thank you for:

• a large garden
• off street parking or garage
• rural or small village location
• a room for “hobbies”
• a conservatory
• a pantry, I want my food right near where I cook and eat

On the other hand I would be looking for:

• a large open plan kitchen (as long as there is a separate place for laundry and a separate sitting room)
• an island and breakfast bar
• an ensuite (or at least a bathroom I don’t have to share with the DC)

One other thing I love about Edwardian and Victorian properties, they were built to catch the sun, the rooms you would be using during the day caught the early sun, along with the garden being in the right direction, hence the sunny veranda.

Now the houses are crammed in to maximise profit for the builders, with in many cases, just a strip of 'garden' at the back and a driveway/tarmac at the front.

Bernard, the kind of house I want to go back to would house 2 families easily so plenty of room for you.

Currently drawing up plans to knock through to our TV room and replace existing kitchen at th4 same time.
With an island

DaysOfCurlySpencer what about Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses though?!

I like having a living room at the front. I like seeing who's coming to the door, seeing if the postman's coming and generally watching the world go by. I felt too shut off when I had a house with one at the back. Ive always lived in quiet streets though, i suppose it would be different if there were people walking right by the window.

When we were buying the estate agent thought it amusing that I wanted a house with a 2nd toilet. I didn't think as a family of 5 it was that odd!
DH wouldn't entertain any house without off street parking.

That must be what a breakfast room is then Curly. Gets the sun in the morning. I always wondered what that was about!
steppmum secret back stairs are fab for sneaking out for adventures and raiding the pantry in the middle of the night.
I think I read too many Enid Blyton books as a kid!

I would love a pantry. Honestly I would think I'd won the lottery if I had one.

I love our open plan kitchen-diner with double doors onto lounge... we rarely close the doors as love the airy open feel throughout downstairs & we back onto lakes/woodland which is a beautiful view. All the noisy stuff is in closed off utility room though (washer, dryer, dishwasher).

I love my ensuite too

We have a stupid huge waste of space landing & a tiny downstairs hallway, they are the things that appealed to me least about this house!

I'm starting to house hunt at the moment and on my budget it will be a smol terrace/semi. Nearly every one I look at on Rightmove has had the entire ground floor knocked into one room. I cannot stand this. I am going to be letting one room to make ends meet, and will want to keep a reception room to myself, as a study/library/sitting-room. However I can't expect someone I let a room to to live solely in their bedroom. So I want a separate downstairs sitting room, kitchen or kitchen/diner at a push. It's easier to find somewhere with three bedrooms than a place with a separate sitting room.

I'm interested to see what people say about conservatories though, I like the way they look and was hoping to have plants in my potential conservatory, but if they are so problematic I'll think again. I would prefer a downstairs bathroom but don't really like ensuites. Who wants the steam from a shower in their bedroom? Don't want cooking smells outside the kitchen. Want a garden with GRASS and PLANTS not concrete in and absolutely NO decking. I keep seeing small gardens with expanses of decking and thinking 'well, that's a couple of thousand to take that crap out and dispose of it'.