Reconsidering Rooms

Planning a dream house ought to include an idiosyncratic analysis on how one uses space at home. Perhaps the well to do can build abodes that have singular uses.  Then one merely needs to pay to build it, clean it and maintain it.  Most of us do not have that luxury.

Different eras had different needs and priorities.  I think about a place where my friend visits on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.  I suspect that it was a farm house built in the late 1800s.  The original structure had a sitting room downstairs and a kitchen.  Up a steep stairway, there was a Master Bedroom and another bedroom with a closet.  That's it.  Presumably prior to having running water, there was no loo. Minimal closet space.  Additions make the house more liveable as seen through the prism of today.

Until  the 1930s, American homes mostly did not have closets per se.  The norm was a  mobile wardrobe that took up some of the bedroom. Of course, people did not have as many clothes and would iron their "Sunday best" nightly to look presentable.  In the post World War II enviroment, closets tended to be narrow and modest by contemporary standards. Nowadays, people seem to devote rooms for their clothes.  Bathrooms have also become a big deal.

It used to be that everyone had a Parlor or a misnamed "Living Room", which typically was not used unless one hosted company.  There is the stereotype that some persnickety housewives sought to keep their good furniture from being soiled, so they always kept it in plastic seat cushions, which made it uncomfortable and not particularly aesthetic.  Up until recently, most homes were designed with formal dining rooms.  But from my experience, those rooms were rarely used, mainly for the holidays.

Since the advent of television in the 1950s, living spaces have been oriented to watch the flickering screen.  In the 1990s, I recall a boomlet in trying to hide a big TV in an armoire with doors, so that it did not appear to be a focal point of a family room.  But televisions are much bigger and flatter.  Fortunately, we have not (yet) "evolved" into wall sized interactive telescreens as George Orwell envisioned in 1984.

Whether or not people will admit it, most people still like to watch television for much of their entertainment.   This prompts the question of to where to position "the boob tube".

It would be nice to have an entertainment space that is not dominated by television.  But if our inclination is still to watch media, designing a Great Room without a TV risks making it into the Living Room, like those rarely used parlors from the mid 20th Century.  Yet by positioning a TV set in a room can make conversation rooms moot because broadcasts punctuate the space. 

When there were only three channels, there was little debate as to what to watch.  As the price of television sets plunged, the amount of niche programming exponentially rose and TVs could show broadcasts, recorded programming, video games and can even stream the internet, having a few different sets does make sense.

My initial concept is to limit the television to a media room/office and one in the bedroom. Technology continues to advance.  It is easy to anticipate that one could stream (or mirror) programming on a laptop computer or tablet if one wished to lounge in a comfy chair away from a TV.

At George Washington's Mount Vernon estate, the kitchen was detached from the main manse and needed ventillation space for cooking fires and caves for proto-refrigeration.

The kitchen at Mount Vernon, Virginia 

In 20th Century America, Suzie Homemaker would not want guests in the kitchen, so dining areas were away from the cooking zones (even in formal dining rooms).  Nowadays, kitchens often serve as gathering places, so they are designed to have breakfast bars or islands which facilitate gathering while cooking. 

Then there is the question of overnight guests.  For a relatively Tiny Home, my instinct is to have a guest room and an ability to have a convertable love seat/ bed in the media room/office.  It seems like a waste of space to just have a dedicated bedroom which is rarely used.  My hunch is to plan for a convertable room, with a Murphy Bed like unit (perhaps a chest bed), which could be folded up and the space used for crafts or just uncluttered.

Since my household has struggled with clutter, I have sought to design a large walk in Master Bedroom closet.  I anticipate having two storage areas on the ends of each wing, which would take advantage of a cargo containers end doors. 

But until it is built (and then lived in), nothing is written in stone.  I suspect that I will seek lots of input and have to make some compromises in the process.