Kinda depends on whether you want to follow the "bedrooms are for sleeping, a small monastic cell should suffice" model, or if you're looking for a playroom you can banish them to so you can finish dinner in peace.
Bare minimum room size, I'd think, is a bed, a dresser, and a desk, with enough clearance between everything so you can sit and open drawers and so forth. If you make the bed a loft, you can put the desk and dresser under the bed. Turning that into square footage, I don't know offhand -- maybe 80 square feet? Cutting up a larger room is going to be tough, though -- I doubt there are many 240 square foot rooms that you could turn easily into 3 80 square foot rooms.
I doubt there are many 240 square foot rooms that you could turn easily into 3 80 square foot rooms.
If nothing else the dividers themselves (and doors/doorways) will take up square footage.
I've seen an attic with a tiny, tiny bed/desk room for each kid -- built into dormers, I think -- and the rest of the room the playroom. Very nineteenth-c., but it looked pleasant withal.
1 was my first thought, and I'd strongly recommend the bedrooms-for-sleeping model if you have room for a separate play area. Having a play area in the bedroom can make getting them down at bedtime very difficult.
Our girls sleep in the smallest bedroom in the house; just 7 by 9 feet, but big enough for bunk beds, a chair and a bureau. We let them choose the wall color and sheets, and they ended up settling on pink, pink, pink, so I'm happy not to have to spend much time in there.
Moderately relevant Dorothy West quotation:
"When I was seven, I said to my mother, may I close my door? And she said, yes, but why do you want to close your door? And I said because I want to think. And when I was eleven, I said to my mother, may I lock my door? And she said yes, but why do you want to lock your door? And I said because I want to write."
The problem with rooms is that it's very tough to be flexible down the road if your estimates are wrong. If you stick to cyclone fencing cages in the back yard, you can reconfigure at any point at very low cost.
6: Writing and masturbation are connected in so many ways.
cyclone fencing cages
Plus then you can have chickens out there, too. Kids love chickens.
Another thing to think about is that kids are often quite ingenious when it comes to tasks like this. Rather than dictating a subdivision of the space to them, why not supply them with drywall, a nailgun, and all the sawzall blades they need, and let them come up with their own solution.
10: I'd worry that my children would see a possible solution to subdividing the space by using the tools provided to reduce the number of potential occupants of the space.
11: that's just the wonderful creativity of childhood at work. Don't limit them!
Besides, dog is good eatin'.
Plus then you can have chickens out there, too. Kids love chickens.
I believe this book contains extended discussion about parenting, and the logistics of a large family.
I fear I can't come up with anything cooler than the Tonkses already have. The little Tonkses still, years after their current decorations were put up, grab all guests by the hand and head up the stairs, hooting, "Let me show you my room! It's so cool!" Little Miss Tonks's is so pretty I wish someone would do that to my room. [I'm only not describing them because it seems like too much off-blog sanctity, but presumably, Tonks herself will show up and decide what details to divulge.] All I will say is that if you're anywhere near the middle-ish of the country and you can hire them, you should. They're the shit.
These are good questions. Well, some of them are.
We'd like to have a separate area for playing, but we need to see how much this all costs.
How small can an ideal separate area for playing be?
The verbing of "parent" is a lost cause, isn't it?
- maybe 80 square feet? Cutting up a larger room is going to be tough, though -- I doubt there are many 240 square foot rooms that you could turn easily into 3 80 square foot rooms.
We're thinking of a long skinny room running along the back of the house, so it would be easily dividible into equal sections, modulo details. The only variable is the depth of the addition.
16: There are people who address these questions for a living. Some even comment here.
IME the tricky part isn't so much figuring out how much space is needed as fitting the various spaces together in a way that makes sense.
How small can an ideal separate area for playing be?
See, for this you don't even need fencing. Just dig a hole.
One thing I like about the shape of the Tonklings' rooms that I always wanted when I was a kid is for the bed to be under a low or slanted part of the roof. Waking up and seeing the ceiling really far away bothered me, and I like the idea of a little sleeping nook. There is less to stare around at if you're up in the middle of the night, and less place for light to go if you're reading in bed.
We're thinking of a long skinny room running along the back of the house, so it would be easily dividible into equal sections, modulo details. The only variable is the depth of the addition.
16x32 would give you two 8x10 cells in one end, a 12x16 playroom in the middle, and a bath and a slightly larger cell in the other end. But it might look like you backed up a trailer against the back of your house, and storage for the cells would be tricky.
22: Alternatively, you could just back up a trailer against the back of your house.
One thing I like about the shape of the Tonklings' rooms that I always wanted when I was a kid is for the bed to be under a low or slanted part of the roof.
Given JP's current rate of growth, I estimate he will vertically outgrow his room sometime in the 5th grade.
Sharing is all well and good but, at some point (10ish?), I think kids need their own space . Plus, how long is it okay for different genders to share a room? If the next hypothetical Heeblet is a girl, no problem, but if it's a boy won't they age out of a shared space at some point?
Why bother digging? Just dump a big pile of dirt.
The verbing of "parent" is a lost cause, isn't it?
"Parent" used to not be a verb? What did people say instead?
24: We're still working on getting Sally and Newt in different rooms (long story, involving running a small publishing business out of our apartment) and they're ten and eight, and the sky hasn't fallen. But we're hoping to get the apartment rearranged so they have separate rooms in the next month or two.
and the sky hasn't fallen
But you wouldn't be willing to leave the two of them alone in a room with power tools . . .
What did people say instead?
I fear you would be saddened, if not shocked, by the sexist language "parenting" replaced.
Myself, my older sister, and my little brother shared a room for five years. It was 12' x 15', had one regular closet which served us all; this room also served as playroom. Bunk beds were useful. I was in 1st-5th grades, my sister in 4th-8th grade, my brother was preschool-3rd grade.
It wasn't so bad, except my older sister got a tape-player for her birthday one year and then tortured us with whiney houston, debi gibson, and some other insipid crap which I think I've finally blanked out.
What did people say instead?
"Whuppin'"
I'm an only child so the concept of room sharing is completely abstract for me. I *share* a room with Mr. Tonks but he usually falls asleep in front of the tv on the couch so our room is really just mine.
29: Oh, pooh, not too much further back and the argument is between 'rearing' and 'bringing up'.
I don't know-a lot of only children were rudely awakened upon entry to the be-roomated class.
We're thinking of a long skinny room running along the back of the house
Hammocks! and sea chests!
I shared a smallish bedroom with two other siblings for about eight years. Then I shared the same smallish bedroom with one sibling for another five years. This despite the fact that my parents' house has four bedrooms. One of them was designated a guest bedroom, and the other was used, sorta, as a playroom. We weren't interested in having private bedrooms for a good long while, though. The only overcrowding problem I remember was legos on the floor. (ow!)
And rum! sodomy! and the lash!
Keelhauling! Scurvy! Burials at sea!
34 is possibly the rightest thing ever posted here. Freshman year of college would have been difficult under the best of circumstances, but the fact that my roommate and I were both only children made it so much worse.
Sharing is all well and good but, at some point (10ish?), I think kids need their own space . Plus, how long is it okay for different genders to share a room?
Some of it depends on their age difference. My brother is 5 years younger than I am, so I was probably willing to put up with him in the same room for longer than I would have been if he were closer in age, but by the time he reached age 7 or so (me being then 12), there was absolutely no way we could share space without beating each up other up. Which we did anyway, of course.
I'd call 10 the max for room-sharing in general.
I'd call 10 the max for room-sharing in general.
Even same gender? I shared a room with my sister until she left for college, when I was fifteen or so. (And she, of course, shared with me until she was eighteen.) Didn't do us any harm.
No, I can see same-gender, and of a fairly close age, going stably for quite a while. True.
I really like the tiny-cells-for-sleeping opening onto large-shared-playroom setup. We did not have this when I was growing up, but several friends did, and it seemed perfect- private space when you need it, plus a large enough shared area for multiple siblings/friends/games.
Also it seemed like it fostered sibling friendship, but maybe that was more correlated than caused.
Anyway those rooms were barely bigger than a twin bed (for the bedroom part) and probably 10' by 15' ish (for the playroom part.
34: I shared a room for about two months in college. Then my parents came to visit and we walked in on her and her boyfriend having sex in the middle of the afternoon. They freaked and made me move to a private suite. Haven't shared a room since.
Room-sharing in college is, obviously, a tool to prepare people for prison.
Assuming you want space to keep books and clothes, plus a desk, chair, twin sized bed and enough space to walk between them without squeezing, I'd say about one hundred square feet. I know from experience that a seventy foot room is not quite enough for the desk, chair, and bed unless the bed can be folded up.
43 sounds like a plan, particularly the part about fostering sibling friendship while providing private space when needed.
Hmmm. We've had various combinations of two out of 4 in a 9'x12' room - in twin beds or bunk beds, and now there's one in there in a triple bunk (small double on bottom, single on top). We had 3 in a 15'x12' (our biggest bedroom here) for a long time, which worked well - we had two sets of bunk beds in there for years. For a while we had 2 in that room, each with a set of bunk beds, with a wall of 6' Ikea Trofast down the middle, which was ok. After a while they wanted it opened up again so they had room to play.
We have a room downstairs - 9'x12' (immediately below the same size bedroom) - which has been called the playroom for the last few years, but tbh has always been a little small for that purpose, once you've got storage for toys in there, and 4 children.
At the moment, the 'playroom' is a bike storage room, waiting for us to sort out outdoor bike storage.
Kid A has always been more keen on her own space than the others, and has had her own room on and off over the years. I finally insisted Kid B get her own room just before she was 10 - she didn't want to sleep alone (but the other two kids' bedrooms have spare beds in, and she has a double bed, so that wasn't an issue), but I felt she needed somewhere to retreat to. Just prior to that she'd been sharing with her 7 year old brother. Now Kid C is 9 1/2 and he and Kid D (our 7 year old daughter) share the big bedroom.
But this year we are planning more change - move the bikes out; move Kid A into the downstairs playroom (same size as her current bedroom) with a high sleeper bed; leave Kid B in her 10'x10' room with double bed; move Kid C into Kid A's old room and old triple sleeper bunk; and leave Kid D in the big bedroom with a sofa and communal play/lego/watch DVD area.
Hmmm. We've had various combinations of two out of 4 in a 9'x12' room - in twin beds or bunk beds, and now there's one in there in a triple bunk (small double on bottom, single on top). We had 3 in a 15'x12' (our biggest bedroom here) for a long time, which worked well - we had two sets of bunk beds in there for years. For a while we had 2 in that room, each with a set of bunk beds, with a wall of 6' Ikea Trofast down the middle, which was ok. After a while they wanted it opened up again so they had room to play.
So that's four, plus three, plus two, plus another four you mention in the next paragraph, so thirteen kids total?
I loved my ten foot cube in one of my co-ops. It had a working sink in it, which turns out to be quite nice. Saves some of the treks down the hall to the bathroom.
49 - yes, didn't I mention them before? We keep the other nine in the garden now.
We just swap about a lot. In our old house, we had 2 bedrooms and 2 reception rooms, and C and I used 3 out of the 4 as our bedroom at various points in the 4 years we lived there. (Had first and second babies whilst there.) In this house we are into our 3rd bedroom too. And different combinations of kids works at different times.
It's funny -- I had a 10' x 10' bedroom for three years in a shared house during grad school, and damn that room was small. Room for a single futon (folded up during the day), a chair, a dresser, and a sort of clothes stand/coat-rack to hang clothes on. Stand on the bed to get to the closet.
Of course I was a fully-grown person. A kid would do better in that size room. It was kind of cozy, actually.
We moved to a different house later on which saw many of us get our own rooms. Mine was 6' x 10'. I really only used it for sleeping and reading.
I like NPH's plan in 22. How wide is the back of your house?
Hmm, maybe there should have been a comma in there.
If you can squish it down the shower drain, surely you can squish it down the sink drain too.
Rory want(s/ed) a theater theme room I got so far as installing track-"spotlighting" and we thought about the part where we'd hang a big stagey curtain. But we haven't really figred much more out.
59, see previous under 'making coffee'.
Just use cubicle dividers in a regular room. Add fluorescent lighting. Your kids will then find that the office environment reminds them of the happy, carefree days of their youth. A desk chair and a plastic mat will be their Madeleines.
via asilon, 22 again: 16x32 would give you two 8x10 cells in one end, a 12x16 playroom in the middle, and a bath and a slightly larger cell in the other end.
A bath?
It's so difficult to try to answer heebie's question when it's posed in an open-ended manner. My own family, and presumably many others, just worked out whatever could be worked out given the house at hand: it wasn't the case that the rooming arrangements could be built to spec. It's never occurred to me to dream-build in quite that way, though I admit I harbor thoughts about kitchens and studies and patios and such.
NPH's 22 sounds pretty good. Aren't there online floor-plan making sites that allow you to draw lines and move around square footage and so on?
15: Okay, just slowly catching up, but by middle-ish of the country... I probably couldn't afford them. But what if, say, people were to send them pictures or blueprints of the space and, for a modest fee, they sent back a design and instructions on how said people could effectuate said design...?
15: Okay, just slowly catching up, but by middle-ish of the country... I probably couldn't afford them. But what if, say, people were to send them pictures or blueprints of the space and, for a modest fee, they sent back a design and instructions on how said people could effectuate said design...?
Some crazy excessive ideas. All I managed to due was my glowy start ceiling thing.
Star, SP. Glowy star. We gotcha, no worries. Great glowy star thing that was!
Glowy satyr ceiling. Oh, the dreams he dreamed.
As for our current arrangements/plans, we have 3 and 5 year old boys in an 11x10 room with one closet that they don't currently use, each has a captain's bed for storing all their clothes (plus out of season things are in the attic.) The baby has his own 11x10 room, but if we ever had another they would share as well. No plans to change any of this until they go to college, although we might switch the pairings, like putting #1 with #3. Will report back on casualties in 10-12 years.
Indeed, if I make enough typos, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Will report back on casualties
They're all boys. Huh. I don't know how the casualties work there. They can probably work it out -- I'm thinking a Malcolm in the Middle situation.
15: I totally missed this. You're the best, Auntie White Bear. I linked pics of the Tonklings' room in the post that Heebie linked.
66: That is an excellent idea.
68: A tv in a nursery is asinine. Other than that, wow.
Huh. I shared a room with my brother (3 years younger) until I was 11, when we moved and I made the unwise choice of taking the larger but more exposed room. By which I mean it had twice as much space as his, but it was also the passageway from the stairs to his room and to the only bathroom in the house. I don't think I had a room to myself from then until my sophomore year in college.
||
Wow, I really haven't been following the news for the last ... week? The Colorado Springs thing, a massive reduction in city spending and therefore services, which someone alluded to recently here in some thread, will be quite an experiment.
|>
My sister and I shared a room until I was about 10 (and she was about 8), then I ended up sharing a room with my little brother until I was about 12 and he was about 6. My sisters then shared a room until the elder went to college. It all worked out OK.
When my sister and I shared, my parents divided the room with a row of bookcases down the middle, which I thought was awfully cool.
I totally want to go buy a new house now so we can do the "small monastic sleeping cells opening onto common play area" thing. Although I suppose that's just a description of a college dorm suite, come to think of it.
Sorry, offline for hours now, and about to offline again. But I have Thoughts and Opinions on this matter.
Big surprise, I know. For now, I completely endorse the cells for sleeping + big room for playing concept. Absolute max of 8x10 per enclosed bedroom, absolute min of... 15x10 for playroom. But that's off the top of my head.
Also, you only need 2 bedrooms, since 3 kids=2 genders at most. If the age/gender/relationship combos aren't working, you can always retcon the playroom into a third bedroom once the kids are old enough that "play" isn't their primary concern.
Although I suppose that's just a description of a college dorm suite, come to think of it.
Yeah, and man, you do not want to leave your stuff in that common area. I mean, not when I'm around.
This is all very helpful. The back of our house is about 40 feet across.
We could do an upstairs and downstairs and use up less of the backyards woods area. Would that still feel as cozy in the cells-opening-to-play-pen way? Cells upstairs, playroom downstairs?
Let me be completely clear that we do not need to be this swipple about designing our perfect space. I feel somewhat bashful about it.
If you have an upstairs and a downstairs, you're pretty much obligated to install a fireman's pole.
I do think bunk or lofted beds are a great thing for kids. But you have to expect a few falls. Probably the worst thing that will happen is a broken arm. Conceivably there could be broken necks or spines, but that is pretty unlikely! I rolled out of my bunk bed a handful of times (asleep). Ah, the limp musculature and bendy bones of a sleeping youth.
A firefighter was telling me the other day that fireman's poles are being phased out because when the firefighters are completely zombied-out in the middle of the night, they'll occasionally jump down the hole and forget to grab the pole. So they get hurt.
are you sure the firefighter wasn't propositioning you?
If he were propositioning her, I don't think he'd have told a story about how his pole was being phased out.
So far I've suggested hammocks and fireman's poles for Heebie's kids. Next up: indoor kiddie pools with crocodiles!
Then it would be "while supplies last," Misunderstandpipe.
90: need to add some nice fishooks and some actual fire.
Lawn darts and home chemistry sets with radium!
You know what would be fun? A fire park. Like a water park, except with fire. Kids are going to play with fire anyway, you may as well provide them an appropriate environment. I'm thinking like a big concrete reservoir, with fire extinguishers and water at the ready. The kids could wear asbestos suits. It would be a ten year old's dream come true.
My bad, TJ.
Your pal,
Waterunderthebridgeplate
96: hey, my friend made that! It's so hilariously dangerous.
Please, Tweety. From their FAQ:
As with an amusement park ride, DDI [Dance Dance Immolation] is made to look and feel dangerous, while actually being very safe.I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.
98: I don't think anybody's ever actually been hurt; those fireproof suits are pretty tough. However, I had one friend who played who was so hilariously bad at DDR that they had to wait a couple minutes before they could get her out of the suit, because it was too hot for them to take off of her, even wearing gloves.
My ideal house has a fireman's pole. I endorse 85. I also favor hidden stairways.
Huh. Friend of mine is a friend of NIMBY. Our circles might overlap in the real world.
101: it wouldn't be particularly surprising, but I only know one of the many, many people involved in DDI (it was her idea originally I think -- she fucking loves DDR -- but spiralled quite a bit wider than her rather quickly).
True. It wouldn't be particularly surprising. I suppose that if I had a Facebook, and knew your name, we could find that out quickly.
My parents put a chair next to the bunk bed to stop me from rolling out of the lower bunk. There was a railing on the upper bunk, but I don't think I started using the top bunk until I stopped rolling out of the lower one. Even then, I think when I started using the upper bunk I'd make sure to stay near the wall.
The most dangerous bunks I've slept on have been top level bunks on couchettes. Sometimes there's a strap that sort of blocks you from falling, but sometimes you pretty much have to hope you don't shift at all in your sleep.
I was so very sad that I missed my chance to go on DDI, the year I went to Burning Man.
My parents still think of me as a super heavy sleeper, because I rolled out of the top bunk once and woke up the next morning wondering how I had got on the floor.
We had the three kids split up into two rooms, in the most unfair way ever -- my desk was in a room with my older sister's bed and desk, and my bed was bunked with my little brother, who also had his desk in that room. This was horrible, especially because my sister dictated that all disputes pertaining to any individual room would be decided "democratically," with your voting power determined proportional to your property stake. This meant that I was effectively disenfranchised -- my sister had twice my votes in her room, while my brother had twice my votes in his room. I regularly got kicked out of both rooms at once.
I really blame my parents, for not intervening and ideally sending my sister to child prison.
all disputes pertaining to any individual room would be decided "democratically," with your voting power determined proportional to your property stake
I assume you could take solace in the thought that your sister wasn't going to do very well in her political theory classes.
99, 101: And I know people who are directly connected to both DDI and NIMBY. The circle is now complete.
108: I'm sure that if she had taken political theory, she would have herself a home in the specialty of tiered Prussian parliamentary politics.
At least you didn't grow up in the Filmer district.
"Parent" used to not be a verb? What did people say instead?
"Bring up" and "look after". But they described concepts that went out of fashion among the sort of people who write the magazines that originally verbed "parent".
On topic, 10x8 is the smallest size you can get away with for a self contained single room, but with a bit of care with the furniture, it's plenty big enough. Snug. Cozy. And no ownership disputes. I like 22, if you have enough space. Combining that layout with doing it in the attic would provide the "under the eves" effect.
The Heebster-Geebster idea of a long divided room at the back makes we wonder about access. As in, will you have to pass through a bunch of bedrooms to get to the last bedroom in the room?
I feel compelled to point out that none of this really matters. Plenty of dudes and dudettes sleep with N people in a room for their entire life. The only issue would be the perception of the kids peers.
That Colorado Springs story really is something.
As in, will you have to pass through a bunch of bedrooms to get to the last bedroom in the room?
Isn't this what they call a railroad set-up? As in "railroad apartment", which I've only seen on the NYC rooms/shares/sublet craigslist. I never looked at a place so described.
However, given this description,
We're thinking of a long skinny room running along the back of the house, so it would be easily dividible into equal sections, modulo details.
you could take the approach of 19th European rail coaches, and have the doors to each compartment room open to the outside, with no aisle hall connecting adjacent rooms.
22 describes one big room with the bedrooms off it to either side. Depending on where your access from the existing downstairs is, no need to go through bedrooms.
As in "railroad apartment"
I've always heard this called a shotgun house. A railroad apartment has a hallway down the side like a passenger train.
I did once narc him out for the drug paraphernalia he hid in the eight-track storage box
Well what did they expect him to have in there? Surely not eight-tracks.
119: I've definitely heard railroad apartment for a layout of all walk-through rooms. Maybe it's a regional thing?
121: I assume the probability of finding one or the other in any randomly chosen container (excluding, plausibly, drinking glasses) approached one. But I'd still give the edge to the bongs.
Apartments are railroaded and shacks are shotgunned.
Or so it seems to me.
I've always thought of railroad apartments as those NY tenement things with a hallway down the side, with the final room or two taking up the entire space. I lived in one, technically a two bedroom - this was the place with the seventy foot room. The one room leading into another is what I associate with old school European bourgeois apartments, or more specifically my grandfather's place in Krakow (you saw it if you saw Schnidler's List). I thought the English term for that was 'en suite.' Generally there would also be a hallway with the kitchen, pantry, and maid's room on the other side from the main quarters.
22 is nicely conceived, but is a pretty big chunk on your house.
AWB and others are right that eaves and dormers are great features for kids' rooms.
Don't skimp on storage space - for a playroom, plan on a closet and space for some big storage/shelving unit. Importantly, built-in storage makes small rooms more spacious by reducing objects both small and large that otherwise sit out on the floor. BUT, pricey. OTOH, better resale value* than other pricey items (like nicer finishes).
Let me be completely clear that we do not need to be this swipple about designing our perfect space. I feel somewhat bashful about it.
You're going to be spending the better part of $100k on this; it's not swipple to want to get it right. A 500+ SF addition that lets you stay in your house forever is not a stand mixer.
* I'm always opposed to viewing home improvements in terms of resale - you never get the money back anyway, and better to make yourself happy than some imaginary "typical" (read: conformist) buyer - but when you're looking at extra investment, beyond the basic design, it makes sense to at least consider
We went to a neighborhood meeting last night where the city outlined a gigantic 2-3 year construction plan that would redo all the water mains, sewage lines, streets, and add sidewalks to our neighborhood.
Since my two least favorite things about this neighborhood were flooding and the lack of sidewalks, I'm now super stoked. Which makes me feel even more like modifying our existing house is the way to go.
Don't skimp on storage space - for a playroom, plan on a closet and space for some big storage/shelving unit. Importantly, built-in storage makes small rooms more spacious by reducing objects both small and large that otherwise sit out on the floor.
This is my number one complaint about the rest of the house. Holy shit, dude, have you never heard of a closet? The previous owner built the house to suit his needs, lived in it ~5 years, and decided to build a new house elsewhere in town.
Is the current heebie-gabodie 1 story or 2? How many current baths? How many current common spaces?
AB wants me to note that our kids play in the living room as often as they play in our (third floor) playroom. But I think that the value of playroom as toy area (plus locale for friends-over play) makes it worthwhile even if the kids also end up playing elsewhere in the house.
If you really think that you might have 3 kids, and you're adding a bath, it would be totally worthwhile and awesome to put a sink in the playroom - less pressure on the bathroom, plus kids love to play with water (have you considered rubber flooring?).
Will your municipality allow non-standard stairs? Standard stairs chew up a lot of square footage; spirals are a bitch for furniture-moving; captain's ladders would probably get old.
Current Gaboodie is one story, on pier and beam, about 3 feet up in the air. 2 baths. Not planning on adding a bathroom in the new portion, though.
But possible the playroom would contain a little laundry station with a folding table, which I would love love love, and would free up some room in the kitchen to make a pantry. So maybe we'd run a pipe back for laundry and a sink.
What are non-standard stairs?
127: If that's the case, you might want to include a tiny bedroom that could also serve as storage, depending on other needs. IOW, while you just have the 1 kid, it's general storage; when #2 is of a sharing age with HP, it's kids' storage (a place to stash all the large toys that don't fit in trunks); if HP grows sick of #2, then she has the choice of a small bedroom or getting along better; depending on layout, it could become a genuine walk-in closet for either you and Jammies or the 2 kids. Et cetera.
Hey, do you have room for storage of baby things between babies? We have about 3 shelf units in our basement that hold baby clothes, car seats, etc. As Kai outgrows these things, they are passed along and we gain the shelves for other uses. I don't know what we would have done with it all otherwise - it's a lot of stuff, and it would be criminal to get rid of it and then have to buy it again.
If that's the case, you might want to include a tiny bedroom that could also serve as storage, depending on other needs. IOW, while you just have the 1 kid, it's general storage; when #2 is of a sharing age with HP, it's kids' storage (a place to stash all the large toys that don't fit in trunks);
Before HP was born, her smallish nursery served as this. It's right next to our bedroom (with zero storage), so I would love to reappropriate it as a giant, well-planned storage unit again. The description of storage for kids hand-me-downs sounds perfect. Right now we have stuff up in the attic, which does work, though, but not if you need to get it frequently, and not if it's an item that can't withstand being cooked at 150 degrees all summer long.
Oh yeah, if you have 2 baths, you don't need a third. But you will love the laundry station, the kids will love a toothbrushing/watercoloring sink, and a pantry will change your lives.
Non-standard stairs include the aforementioned spiral and captain's ladder; the latter is the sort of thing you see going up to sleeping lofts, at like 60° from horizontal. But if you're not doing a bathroom, I'm not sure you can justify adding a level - your program is pretty simple, and, as I said, proper stairs chew up so much space that it would needlessly add to the square footage.
You love doing pro bono consulting, right?
But if you're not doing a bathroom, I'm not sure you can justify adding a level - your program is pretty simple, and, as I said, proper stairs chew up so much space that it would needlessly add to the square footage.
As in, the stairs would use up enough that it wouldn't feel like we were saving as much of the back woods area as we thought we'd be?
not if it's an item that can't withstand being cooked at 150 degrees all summer long.
Which would probably preclude the infant car seat, frex.
But yeah, so adding the bedrm(s) on the back frees up a room to serve a much-needed purpose in a good location; excellent.
OK, meeting; later.
I really like the idea of a sleeping area that's just for sleeping. When I was ~11 my dad and I stayed in a place in Austria that had these awesome little bed spaces built into the wall, with storage underneath. There were little sliding doors so you could jump in bed, slide the door shut, and be snug as a bug in a little enclosed bed, the ceiling all of two feet above you. There was a little internal shelf and a light so you could hide and read. I wanted one of those thingamadoodles so badly. A shared kids room with Awesome Austrian Bed Closet Things would be just perfect.
137. Saw something like that at Rembrandt's house in Amsterdam - optimisation of space use in early modern cities. It's great they're still using the idea.
The trouble with being as resource rich as we've been for the last hundred years or so is it removes the incentive to use our imagination in practical areas.
1: Build several bedrooms, all brightly lit and with their glass doors facing on to a central hall (the heebienopticon).
2: build a lighthouse. Every child wants to live in a lighthouse. One floor per kid.
3: build only one bedroom and hot-bunk.
137: I think those are called shut-beds. No black house was complete without them.
34: Hold on, there's a difference between "only child" and "hasn't shared a bedroom". And I'd say the latter doesn't preclude being prepared for college.
I don't have a convenient measuring implement handy and I've never had to pay much attention to this stuff, but just assuming that my stride is a little less than a yard and pacing out distances, 80 square feet looks very tiny indeed. That's room for a bed, desk and chair, some kind of dresser, and that's it. Maybe I'm a bit off and I'm sure it would seem bigger to a kid under 10, but still.
My sister and I both had our rooms for personal space, though. We had bookshelves and kept most of our own stuff in our own rooms. So I guess if there were a large playroom or living room to which the kids had "equal rights", it would come to the same thing.
pro bono consulting
What, like, working on the U2 Tower?
141: I had roommates my junior year. It was fun. Now I share space with 3 rugrats, a husband, dog and dragon.
When Mr. Tonks and I have talked about building he always mentions that he wants to cantilever the kids' rooms. I'm not sure why- aesthetic or function. If I were to have the Tonklings share a space I would give each an alcove large enough for their bed and a nightstand with a shared space in the middle with bookshelves, a desk or two and a couple Fatboys. The big Tonklings have built-ins which I love and would insist on utilizing again if we ever get to build our dream house. Also, good closet space is a must and, if I had my druthers, the boys would share a bathroom and SG would have her own small 3/4 bath.
You're gonna give your kids a few $15,000 Harley-Davidsons, and let them keep the bikes in the playroom? Best Mom ever!!!
railroad apartments as those NY tenement things with a hallway down the side
As I said, I never went to see a place described as railroad, but pretty much every ad that specified what they meant by railroad said it meant you had to walk through a bedroom or two to get to the last bedroom. This pretty much explains why I never responded to one of those ads.
145: That is also my understanding of the term.
145: My college dorm was like that: walk in the front door, you're in what was intended as a living room; from there, a door leads to what was intended as a shared bedroom; and from there, a door leads into a bathroom, shared by up to four other suites.
Of course, no one actually did the shared-bedroom thing, so you ended up instead wtih a front and back bedroom. The front bedroom would have to be traversed by the back-bedroom person in order to leave; conversely, the front-bedroom person would need to traverse the back bedroom to get to the bathroom.
Many an amusing sexile situations resulted, included back-bedroom people having to exit via a suitemate's room via the bathroom.
Frank Lloyd Wright already created the ideal kids' playroom. Just make yours look like that.
I hate that half the comments I post here are blah blah foster/adoption but we're in what's basically a two-story shotgun style characteristic to our area, so our upstairs is a front (hypothetical child) bedroom 12x12 or something, hall/stairs/bath, back (our) bedroom of equalish size. The front bedroom currently has an ugly mural though also useful built-ins and yet I haven't painted over the mural because I can't figure out what to do instead. We're licensed for one child or two same-gender siblings ages 3-16 (or so) and I just can't figure out how to make a room that will accommodate all those possibilities and not be useless. I think I need to just pick neutral paint colors and get it done, but somehow I find the bedroom prep part an annoying sticking point. This is just a rant, but any advice would be helpful. Sadly, our state is one that frowns on keeping foster children in chicken coops, so I have to ignore that option.
OK, revised 22 based on later comments: 12X16 playroom and an 8X10 cell on each side. Shorter dimension of each room is against the existing back wall. Bed and closet along the outside of each cell. Ridge is centered over playroom and runs perpendicular to existing back wall. All three rooms have sloped ceilings coming down as low as workable over the bed/closet area and rising to a peak over the playroom that's high enough to put a play loft above part of the room. Windows in the back yard side of each cell and wrapping around the end of the playroom. About 350 square feet and should be pretty simple to build if it works with the orientation of the existing house.
This is way more fun that what I'm supposed to be doing. Turns out that large blocks of legalese aren't actually rendered more interesting by stirring in a bit of electrical engineering.
I hate that half the comments I post here are blah blah foster/adoption
We could always start a new Unfogged tradition.
Did you originate any Unfogged traditions, M/tch?
153: No, but I am aware of all internet Unfogged traditions.
God, it seems like all the Unfogged traditions these days were made in China.
152: Gawd, I hope not! I would be utterly embarrassed for all time. My goal is to fly well below radar, which is why it's embarrassing already to keep talking about myself and my situation.
157: Au contraire, Thorn, you should view it as an honor.
157: Well, the good news is that I have (I think!) avoided becoming linked to a tradition and it would be pretty boring if everyone here constantly wanted to know if we've found a child just like everyone outside the computer did until my responses got too annoying. I've never even been to China! Stick with M/tch for the traditional and typical!
Wait, you've never been to China?
You were a letter in the English alphabet, Thorn?
160: Of course I've been to China, LB. Try to keep up.
We're licensed for one child or two same-gender siblings ages 3-16 (or so) and I just can't figure out how to make a room that will accommodate all those possibilities and not be useless. I think I need to just pick neutral paint colors and get it done, but somehow I find the bedroom prep part an annoying sticking point. This is just a rant, but any advice would be helpful.
I think a nice friendly bedroom with plain walls (light blue, maybe?) and two twin beds would work for all possibilities. If you have one kid in there they have a bed for a friend to sleep over, which I would have liked a lot. Bookshelves, one big dresser but with two columns of drawers, and a central table that can act as desk or art table or whatever? You'd have to adjust the chair situation depending on the age of the kid(s) but that seems like something not too difficult or expensive to do on demand.
Thanks, rfts! I think you're right about those options. I didn't add that right now there's a table in there with my turtle's tank on it (this would change depending on whether the child was old enough/responsible enough to handle a pet in the room) and a closet. I was thinking a dresser and probably bunk beds of some sort or a bed with a trundle, which is what I had growing up. I think we may just stick with the futon that's there for now and buy beds when we need them.
We're having our hallway painted now and I'm learning how much good color helps. My partner's been in the house 6+ years and had only repainted two of the rooms by the time I moved in. We've since redone the one bathroom and now the other rooms will be painted soon and I will be much happier and calmer about life in that house in general. Plus ripping out hideous wallpaper borders makes me feel like I'm doing a good deed for the world at large!
OMG SALMONELLA!!!!!!!
164: One idea would be to get two turtles, one named Tor and the Tuga. Admittedly, I don't see how that would help anything.
Or name one Sal and the other Monella.
Or Sal and Tuga. Mix it up a little.
Huh. I didn't realize turtles were such a danger to children. We kept turtles the whole time I was 2-6 years old, and played with them all the time.
169: If you love turtles so much, why don't you marry one?
Thanks for reminding me of this.
I didn't realize turtles were such a danger to children.
Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and the other one would like to speak to you.
How could you forget Michelangelo. He was the most annoying one.
173 : Sistine Chapel, bitch!
Danger to children indeed. That crappy pizza they were always eating was loaded with trans fats.
177: Not to mention palling around with a disease-carrying monster-sized plague rodent.
The worry is more that he could only cohabit with a child who could be trusted not to kill or injure the turtle, whether intentionally or inadvertently. My turtle is big enough that he's not edible, so salmonella shouldn't be a worry. But I don't mind this detour because it's reminded me of the Tor and Tuga thread!
You love doing pro bono consulting, right?
Well, it's more fun and rewarding than the ~3 hours of pro bono modeling/rendering I'm doing for a paying client who is not paying for modeling or rendering.
NPH has obviously missed his calling, although I don't know why you'd put the closet on the outside wall - put it on the wall shared with the house and you don't lose any window space while you gain some sound insulation between the bedrooms and the rest of the house.
you gain some sound insulation between the bedrooms and the rest of the house.
...laydeez.
I don't know why you'd put the closet on the outside wall
My thought was that a 3' closet would fit neatly at the end of a bed on a 10' outside wall. Putting it on the inside wall looked like it would make arranging the other bits more complicated on the sketch I was playing with.
And yes, designing houses is more fun than practicing law. But looking at the quality of the built environment around here, it pretty obviously wouldn't pay the mortgage even if I had the professional training to do it.
