Comment by jmathai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmathai | Hacker News Reader

We recently remodeled our 1.2k sqft house to a 2.1k sqft one. My wife and I have 4 kids and 2 dogs. Our kids are 12, 10 an d 2x 1.5 (twins). That gives some context.

Before the remodel, we had 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. We made it work but it felt a bit small.

By American standards, 2.1k sqft for a family of 6 is not large by any means.

When remodeling, we spent a lot of time on the final layout, drawing inspiration from homes we felt good being in. My wife is an interior designer which played the largest role in our decisions. Interior designers have very technical backgrounds and a lot of knowledge in space planning.

Our remodeled house feels the right size. Not because of the sqft, but because of the layout. We looked at 3k sqft houses prior to remodeling and they felt smaller than our 2.1k sqft one despite an extra 50% of floor space.

All that is a way of saying that “space” matters. It’s not “bigger is better” and you can’t Marie Kondo your way out of tiny spaces. There’s an optimal space + layout that can reduce stress in your life.

To your point, I've noticed open floor plans often offer less flexibility. E.g. having a formal dining room allows you to turn it into an office or another bedroom much more easily.

Old houses are larger even when smaller - often because they have these things called “walls” and “doors” that make “rooms” out of open concept spaces.

I do get amused about how everyone hates cube farms but loves open concept.

kind of a gesellschaft vs gemeinschaft situation though

Do people (the workers) actually hate cube farms? Between open floors and your own cubicle, I'd take a cubicle every time.

I thought open floors only became a thing because companies realized they can save money and workers would put up with it, which doesn't seem to be wrong.

Oh open floors is even worse. The best is tiny little rooms - offices.

Cube farms at least you can customize and claim “your space”.

Yes. I still hear other people talking. Either give me an office or let me WFH.

At least give me a high partition so I don't have to watch my cow orker sloppily eating food with their mouth open and gesticulating wildly all day.

I can put on noise cancelling headphones but I can't visually block out physical shenanigans, my monkey brain is tracking for threats.

Noise cancelling headphones will help ambient noise. But it won’t help when you are being actively interrupted for “just one question”. When I’m at home, I can block time on my calendar for “deep work”, shut down Outlook and Slack. I set my Slack status to “doing deep work until X:00”

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/yes-the-open-office-is-terr...

> Our remodeled house feels the right size. Not because of the sqft, but because of the layout. We looked at 3k sqft houses prior to remodeling and they felt smaller than our 2.1k sqft one despite an extra 50% of floor space.

I'll echo this. We (family of 4) remodeled our 1500sqft 3BD/2BA to a 1600sqft 4BD/3BA, but the house feels larger than some 2k sqft houses because of the clever space design, because of a double height atrium and a large open kitchen.

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