I feel like I need more info. I am having trouble understanding why you would be going from a large, functional, built-in-2012 home to a 1925 with a 1970s addition and awkward layout. The overall layout sounds problematic to me, and like you maybe don't have enough space.
With two kids, I would want them to have their own rooms, if you were to have another kid. I don't care so much about a guest room, unless you truly have a lot of overnight guests. You can always have the kids sleep together for a night or two and give the guest their room. But then what about the office space?
I feel like I need more info. I am having trouble understanding why you would be going from a large, functional, built-in-2012 home to a 1925 with a 1970s addition and awkward layout. The overall layout sounds problematic to me, and like you maybe don't have enough space.
With two kids, I would want them to have their own rooms, if you were to have another kid. I don't care so much about a guest room, unless you truly have a lot of overnight guests. You can always have the kids sleep together for a night or two and give the guest their room. But then what about the office space?
This. I keep coming in here to see if you've explained why you're even considering this house because it seems a little crazy to me to move from what sounds like a perfect house to a house lacking rooms you currently use and has a really crazy layout. There's got to be a good reason like moving from a burb to a city or something.
Well we have 3 bedrooms and 2 kids, so we're maxed out. We converted a work room in the garage to DH's office. E2's room has a queen bed in addition to the crib, so that's where guests stay (when my stepmom visits next month, she will stay there and E2 will sleep in the PNP in our room). We also have the playroom and an air mattress so that's another option if we have more guests (which is where my sister will sleep when she comes next month).
Or, you could have your kid sleep in your room (on the floor or in your bed) temporarily and have the guest sleep in his bed.
Or you could have a pullout sofa or Murphy bed in your office, so it would be an office/guest room.
But I agree with others that I'm confused why you're giving up so much room for fewer rooms and an awkward layout. I would keep looking, tbh.
FWIW, I grew up in two houses that were both 4/2. We were a family of 7 (5 kids and 2 adults), so there was no dedicated office. The computer was always in the living area. Neither of my parents WFH FT though. When we had guests us kids were booted from our rooms to the pull out couch or other couch. Thankfully the majority of both sides of my family were local so overnight guests happened 1-2x/year.
So it comes down to what's most important to you and how things will work best for your family.
We would moving from the suburbs to the city. We are actually looking in the same area we lived in pre-kid from 2009-2012 in a 2/1 1920s house. A couple of reasons why we are considering moving. One, we just feel like we are more city people than suburbs. We miss the walkability we had. While we are friendly with our neighbors and socialize with them, our close friends are all in the city. When we moved to the suburbs it seemed like “that’s what you do” and moved a mile from my parents and built our house. We just kinda miss city life. The street where we lived before had a lot of renters and didn’t have a great community, but we are now looking at houses that are in areas with families. My husband also switched jobs from a hospital in the suburbs and now works at a university a mile from where we are looking with a clinic site downtown. Moving would cut his commute from 45-50 min to 15-20 min 3 days a week and from 20-25 min to 5-10 min drive/bike or a long walk the other days. Children of university employees are given preference for 2 amazing magnet elementary schools, so we have good odds of getting into a great public school (our house now is also in the typical “suburban great school” district, I think #2 elementary in the state) that also has the benefit of being more diverse than where we are now. We’ve lived in a small, older home and know the realities. We are pretty clutter free, well organized and I don’t have any concerns about a smaller home, this one is more the layout that concerns me.
I feel like guest rooms are a luxury. If you can have one, great. But most people I know don't have an extra room just for guests. We have family who, pre-kids, would always let us stay with them. But after kids, they simply say that they don't have room. So- we make other accomodations.
you don't owe it to anyone to have space for them to sleep in your house!
Don't get me wrong- I like having a guest room and we do have overnight guests occasionally. It's nice (thinking of one set of friends) to say "instead of driving an hour home, why don't you plan to spend the night?" and we can comfortably fit them.
Post by icedcoffee on Feb 20, 2020 11:23:09 GMT -5
With the added info I'd be ok with no guest room, but I would not be ok with no way to have the kids have separate rooms if you have another kid. So---if it's possible to move your office to the master in the event of a second kid then I would do it.
I think we need to go back and check out what kind of weird desk we could configure in the hallway room. The master is huge and could easily have an area walled off for a small office. The mudroom is huge and could also potentially have a small office but I hate to give up any mudroom space! We are probably 80% not going to have another kid, so it may be moot, but I’m not ready to 100% close the door and make sure it could work if we had 2 kids with separate rooms. I feel good about not having a guest room now, though.
Sorry I’m trying to hit all the questions. Our family is mostly local, so not a ton of long guests. We will probably have OOT friends or family 2x a year. The lack of guest space is totally doable. As for a forever home, I don’t know! I thought we would live in this house until our kids were in high school / college. So I hate to say forever. I imagine it’s a 10-year+ house.
I WAH and I've had my computer in a bedroom when we had a 3 bedrooms and then now I have my own office which is much better for everyone.
I can't really envision the layout you describe but I would encourage you to consider alternative placements for your office like the sun room mentioned. I was just at my DH's office and everyone has 2 monitors and a desk that looks like 3 to 4 feet. An arm that holds the monitors over a desk is going to make your set up much tighter in foot print (and probably more ergonomic since the monitor will be at eye level).
We have a 3/2 house that is just under 1700sqft and 3 kids. The big kids share a room, baby has a room and we have a room. DH WFH a lot and has a set upon what was the breakfast nook. It works well for us and I can see ya here for a long time.
It’s important to us that we have space for guests to sleep comfortably. We frequently have groups of 2-4 stay for long weekends or even a full week at a time since we’re both from rather large families, live in a destination area, and they want to visit our son.
We currently have a dedicated guest room since we have the space. However, when we have #2, we will lose that space in order to keep the playroom. When that happens I’m looking into probably a trundle daybed for the playroom that will sleep 2. I’ve also considered transitioning my son directly to a queen bed when he’s 3ish (mattress on the floor but eventually raised onto a frame) thinking he could give up his bed when guests stay.
We have 4 bedrooms. One of them is our room, one my two kids share, one is a playroom, and one is a guest room. Having a dedicated space for guests was important to us, but I would give up a guest room to live in a more expensive desired area as long as we had some place to have guests sleep. We only have one full bathroom, so guests have to deal with sharing with us in that regard. We considered rejecting this house for not having a full second bath (we do have a half bath)... but in the end couldn't stomach 10's of thousands of dollars just for the sake of a second shower.
We have 3 bedrooms and 2 kids, and no office or finished basement even though I WFH (my desk is in the living room). It's not ideal, but your situation actually sounds a little better. It sounds like the hallway bedroom could be an office and bedroom 3 could be a guest bedroom for now and a kid's bedroom if you have a second kid.
I wouldn't count on 2 kids sharing - mine are 5 years apart and opposite gender so that wouldn't work for us long-term. But we do have a lot of overnight guests. When we have guests, my daughter gives up her room (she has a queen bed for this reason) and sleeps in my son's room (he has both a twin and toddler bed in his room) or with us. If we have even more guests, they sleep on the couch in the family room. It's not ideal and I would kill to have just one more bedroom that could be an office/guest room, but we love our house otherwise and it has plenty of space so we manage! With a finished basement, you could always put guests down there (I don't think you need to add a bathroom), or you could give up your bedroom and you could sleep down there.