conuly | (no subject)

On open plan houses. My mother has watched entirely too much HGTV and when she does, she sometimes rails against the stupidity of the open plan house. (Me, I rail against stainless steel kitchens. I can't decide if it's more ugly or boring. I keep waiting for the fad to die out, but it hasn't yet.)

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

stardreamer

I'd rather have a stainless-steel kitchen than an all-white one any day. My old condo had beautiful white kitchen counters, and they were impossible to keep clean, and if they weren't spotless the whole kitchen looked grimy. At least stainless steel comes clean with one swipe of a wet cloth.

Given my choice, I'd plump for granite-patterned Corian over anything else. With a stainless-steel sink (again, ease of cleaning) and black appliances.

From:

conuly

Thank goodness those aren't the only colors.

I'll tell you a little secret - I really, really love midcentury colors in kitchens. And superfluously rounded fridges.

From:

stardreamer

I'm fond of a contemporary look myself, but there are various ways to soften it. In that condo, I had kitchen wallpaper that was mostly white with cheerful diagonal slashes in bright red, yellow, blue, and green -- they didn't quite make a diamond pattern, but suggested it -- and bottles of brightly-colored transparent marbles in the window box (because I can't do plants), so it wasn't all neutrals.

By "midcentury colors" do you mean things like Pepto-Bismol pink and institutional green and pastel turquoise? I don't think I could live with those.

From:

conuly

Well, I do like turquoise, but I mean less midcentury, things like harvest and avocado. *shrug* But with rounded edges!

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

We had an avocado oven door and an a clothes dryer, but the harvest gold I ever saw looked pretty bad, but that could have been age and/or grime.

I'm rather fond of enamel. 'Soon' I will get the pastry table and the other Surface (it lost its furniture, I will have to build it a new body) into the kitchen.

From:

moem

Then you will probably like our new-old kitchen. It'll be some time before it materializes (well, we have most of the material, but we don't have the space yet) but it will look nice.
Here's a sample, a nice old stove that sets the colour scheme for the rest of the kitchen:

From:

conuly

Nice, though when it comes to stove I will jettison looks any day so long as they're BIG.

From:

fred_mouse

I love my open plan kitchen. Our social crowd do cooking as communal, and food prep is often going on as one of the activities in social gatherings. Older houses with separate kitchens didn't work so well.

But one of the things is that we aren't generally trying to heat that space. Cooling it down can usually be done with careful opening of windows (and separate kitchens were just horrid in summer), but when that isn't going to work the open plan is better than smaller spaces.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

The farm kitchen that spills about because that's most of the house is certainly a viable option.

That tends to encourage the Not As Good Cooks to know how to do the clean up so they can get fed again.

From:

conuly

Personally, I hate having people in the kitchen when I'm cooking. HATE it. I actively chase my family out, and my sister is going to comment here with "yup, it's awful" when she reads this. I just feel so crowded, even though our kitchen is actually pretty big.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

I will admit if I had people in my house my kitchen may pose issues, since the bathroom is on the other side of it.

It really depends on if you are a solo who wants to traffic interference or there is team cooking/someone is providing support services like a beverage or snack.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

It depends on what you want from a house.

Open plan: good for small houses that feel cramped if divided, for parents of small children who need lots of supervision, folks who move around their space vigorously, and for people who use sign language at home.

Closed plan: good for large houses that feel cavernous if undivided, big families that need private space to avoid tripping over each other, anyone who wants lots of walls to hang things on, and blind people who navigate by touch.

Stainless steel kitchen: good if you prioritize ease of cleaning and/or durability, if you're a chef, or you just love shiny things; pops very nicely against certain colors such as blue.

Enamelware: comes in white and whatever colors are fashionable this year, good for matching your decor, requires more care in cleaning and will chip. If you need to replace anything that isn't white, you're fucked, because the colors change regularly.

From:

the_siobhan

Can I marry this comment? Because I kind of want to marry this comment.

Different strategies and styles for different people and lifestyles makes a lot more sense to me than either "We need to have this because it's fashionable" OR "People only want this because it's fashionable and that makes it terrible."

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Yes.

Now "Universal Design" is all the rage. Okay, wanting to make things more accessible is nice. But people are different sizes, shapes, with different needs. When you legislate what must be done, suddenly only people whose needs fit within that law are permitted to have what they need; everyone else either breaks the law or, more often, does without.

And some of it simply thoughtless. Having a handicap-accessible bathroom is necessary if you have a disability and probably prudent if you're getting old. For everyone else, it is an enormous waste of space. That's irrelevant in a mansion, troublesome in a small house, and an absolute disaster in an apartment which is why nobody wants to rent those units except people who need them. If you mandate that as a building standard, it wastes everyone's limited space for the benefit of a few people who aren't living everywhere.

Doorknobs -- a lever handle is easiest to use, and I love them. But they're a snagging hazard. If you have functional hands but poor balance, that's the last thing you need. If you have cats or toddlers, you may need a door that requires higher dexterity to open.

There is no such thing as universal design. There just isn't. Because people aren't all the same. There's a list of options, and options are good. We need options. Certainly people with disabilities should have what they need, but almost all the mods are for wheelchairs or other mobility issues. You don't see places designed for Deaf people (outside of the epic architecture of Gallaudet) or blind people, but they need design features too. Opposed ones.

From:

the_siobhan

My employer, all well-intentioned, renovated all the bathrooms so that all the hand-dryers were placed below the sinks where they would be easily accessible for people in wheelchairs.

Which means all of us employees with bad backs, who wear back braces, or who have other physical issues that make bending a non-starter could not reach them.

So. Yeah.

(Conversations were had. Fixes were put in. But the number of people for whom "accessibility" means "wheelchair". Oy.)

From:

conuly

That's, um. Different.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Exactly. This is an issue that every drinking fountain has already solved by routinely placing hi-lo pairs. It is prudent with other facilities too. Because if you put them all at the same height, no matter what it is, some people can't reach. >_<

Another thing that enrages me is the trend toward raised-bump ramps. We started off with curbcuts for wheelchair users, great. They were slippery when wet, so people asked for and got things like indented grooves or grip-strips for traction. This worked. But then the blind people wanted a texture change for their convenience, and some brainless bastard made giant lego bricks which are now everywhere. By everywhere I mean stores are surrounding themselves with the stuff like a moat so you either go over it or can't get in.

The problem?

* The bumps create a serious tripping hazard for anyone, but especially small children, seniors, and anyone a bit unsteady. It's massively worse in winter because the ice creates an uneven surface.

* Falling on one is like falling on a cheese grater. The raised bumps rip loose pieces of flesh.

* And just to put the candles on a shitcake, most electrical wheelchairs have a "safety feature" that makes them stop when encountering a barrier. Which is about 1/8" inch, because they'll balk over every crack in a parking lot or threshold of a door. The curbcut originally for wheelchair users might as well be a brick wall to them.

All this could be solved if they just gave people a fucking choice, like between a ramp and stairs. Once you make something mandatory for everyone, somebody usually gets screwed out of access.

The stupid, it burns like hydrogen.

From:

amaebi

And walls are important for substantial libraries.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Or art collections, but yeah, for me it's books. The way I put it: Other people want a big house so they can have more room. I want one so I can have more rooms.

From:

conuly

An infinite library remains my fantasy.

From:

ysabetwordsmith

Yeah, that's my wing of paradise. I have an illustrated print. Keep your Pearly Gates; I want the Circulation Desk. :D

From:

conuly

WITH NO OVERDUE FINES

From:

robby

I have an open kitchen, and have thought about building a wall to enclose it.

From:

flexagon

You might be able to go halfway, with (something like) a chunky peninsula and some pendant lights over that.

From:

robby

I've thought of that, but an island might make the kitchen too crowded. Oh well, time to do the dishes!

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

A half wall (like the service hatch but less so) can give you some enclosing without exiling the cook and give some counter space without taking up quite as much floor space as an island. I think the best have a lower inside (I'm short, so full height counters aren't where I want to punch bread or roll dough) and then a taller out so it's sideboard when needed.

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

Open plan needs to be planned. You go about tearing out walls (even if only the non-structural) and you've got issues never intended.

Noise, visual clutter, smells, heat and cooling questions.

I do wish people had telephone booths to take their phones into. The ones like a study carol, with a seat and a place to prop the notepad.

From:

conuly

My parents almost bought a house with a phone booth, but it was really too much. (They told me about it when we moved into this one. If they'd bought that one after all, maybe my father would not have died. Also, we would've had an in-house phone booth.)

From:

peoriapeoriawhereart

I'm sorry about your loss.

My grandparents would close the dining room door if they had guests when a call came. That had been the front door. I can only imagine what it was like before the 'new' part of the house was on.

I was thinking more about public spaces, but the under the stair would make a fairly good phone booth and charger, if it's not the coat closet or a powder room.

From:

conuly

It was a long time ago now, so I can joke. (And of course, who knows, maybe the same thing would've happened then.)

From:

greghousesgf

I don't have a house, I have an apartment, and my only complaint about my open kitchen is it's too little.
I would have really liked to read the last Blockbuster article but I'm not paying for it or disabling my adblocker.
I thought that one article would be trashing McDonald's for making shitty burgers, not about economics like it turned out to be.
The building photographs were fascinating. I'd like to see more of that guy's work.

From:

conuly

I would have really liked to read the last Blockbuster article but I'm not paying for it or disabling my adblocker.

You're going to have that problem with all articles from the Washington Post. If you hover over the link you should see that the URL, when shortened, is wapo.st/somethingorother and then you don't have to click and be disappointed.

The building photographs were fascinating. I'd like to see more of that guy's work.

The American ones or the post-soviet ones?

From:

greghousesgf

The American ones, although the post-Soviet ones were interesting too.

From:

larryhammer

I rather like our open-plan house, built in 1953, but the place is on the small side and that plus the vaulted ceilings help it feel less tight. The kitchen is more of a nook off the main dining/living area, which helps with functional separation. More interesting is the split bedrooms: the door to master bed/bath is diagonally across from the hallway to the other two bedrooms + bathroom.* The kitchen has surround counters and the sink-stove-fridge triangle works well as long as no more than two people are kitchening.

(* Said hallway is the least-pleasing house feature: it's not vaulted because ducting and is a dogleg because closets.)

But it's not a plan for every one or every house. It was designed for THIS house, and we happen to like it.