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PaperclipPerfector
9hr ago
(text post)
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Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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Notes -
9 residents in 1198 sq ft seems bonkers to me. That's about 133 sq ft per person. The average male takes up 8.625 sq ft laying down.
When I was young we lived in a 700sq ft rental as a family of five, and it was not a good time, despite being more square footage per person than the example dwelling above.
Is there an assumption that people are sleeping in shifts, or something?
Bedrooms: The IPMC (International Property Maintenance Code) requires 50 ft2 per occupant, but not less than 70 ft2 for one occupant. IMO, this is a bit small but not totally unreasonable. A 10′ × 10′ bedroom (even when the two doorways are taken into account) has room for a twin XL bunk bed (80″ × 40″, which we can round up to 7′ × 3′6″ for simplicity), a 4′ × 2′ desk, a 3′ × 2′ desk, and two 3′ × 2′ wardrobes or shelving units.
Living room and dining room: The IPMC's requirements are complicated, but can be approximated as 37 ft2 per occupant for seven or more occupants (15 in the dining room and 22 in the living room). Under the IBC, 37 ft2 is enough to accommodate one person sitting at a table in the dining room, plus one person sitting at a table and one person sitting without a table in the living room.
Kitchen: NKBA (the National Kitchen and Bath Association) has guidelines that essentially boiled down to a minimum of around 8′3″ × 10′ the last time that I looked at them (many months ago). I use 10′ × 10′ for simplicity.
Utility room: Width of 5 feet accommodates a washer and a dryer (though I hear they make stacking residential washers and dryers). Length of 10 feet leaves ample room for water heater and circuit-breaker box.
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The building code is meant as a strict minimum to protect health and safety. OP is an engineer whose idea of efficiency is that the ideal dwelling adheres as close to these minimums as possible. Comfort and aesthetics are of no concern here, only that the occupants aren't put at any physical risk. He's currently building a house with a living room the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work, and he thinks that he'll be able to rent out the second bedroom to two people because the square footage is within ICC guidelines for four adults.
I have put significant thought into my comfort and aesthetics. If I have no concern, it's for other people's comfort and aesthetics, since they will not be living there.
Whenever I take walks in my city, I literally think to myself: "Why were these houses built so ugly? What was the point of building a steep roof enclosing a useless attic? What was the point of putting the edge of the second floor on a useless cantilever, or installing a wacky bow window, instead of just building a straight wall?"
Confusing typo
That's just a failsafe for after my mother dies, 30 years in the future. I don't really expect to need to rent that bedroom out to anyone but her.
A house the size of a small apartment, with a living room about the size of my office at work.
Anyway, I know I've been critical of your house, and I apologize if I've been a little hard on you, but about a decade ago I went through a crash course on all of this where I thought I knew what I was doing and ended up having my eyes opened after I decided to hire professionals. I lived in my last house from the beginning of 2014 to the end of 2023, so almost ten years. When I bought it it was 20 years old and was at just about the point where it needed remodeled, though it was technically in move-in condition. When I got to the kitchen (it was finished in May of 2015, though I can't remember when I started looking into the process), I went to a locally-owned cabinet place and took photos and sketches I had made and looked at samples with a guy who gave me some options, told me they could do what I wanted, quoted prices, and tried to sell me on all the current trends. I felt like the guy knew what he was talking about, and he gave me some printouts with the designs that we had looked at.
A few weeks later my parents told me about an Amish guy who had made furniture for them a couple years prior for a ridiculously low price and had just done a kitchen for friends of theirs for a ridiculously low price, and I should write him. It was a complicated process but I had to write him and give him my phone number, then he'd call me. I had to drive 90 minutes one way to pick him up, take him to my house to measure, then drive him back, because obviously he doesn't have a car. When I got back to his shop he quoted me a price we looked at samples and the hand-built, maple cabinets I ended up choosing cost the same as the cheapest particle board option at the cabinet place, and if I wanted them installed it would be $400 extra. Obviously this deal was too good to pass up, but the guy was no kitchen designer. He could build anything you showed him a picture of, and he kept catalogs in his shop if you needed ideas, but he didn't speak the lingo of the cabinet shop guy, and had no idea about workflow or anything. He said to just tell him what I wanted and he's build it. Not wanting to wing it, I could now afford to hire an architect to design the kitchen.
He basically told me to ignore everything the cabinet guy told me (which was a lot of things, but never a "no"). For example, I had an eat-in area that I never used since I always ate in the dining room. The only time it ever got used was when I was entertaining, and as a junk collector. I wanted to replace it with something else, so I thought I'd put cabinets on the wall for storage of seldom-used items and below that I'd have a bench that could be used as a buffet if I was entertaining, or maybe more cabinets and a counter, or maybe a desk (it was kind of a muddled idea). He told me that based on how much stuff I had I could keep the overhead cabinets but anything else was too far away from the work area to be used and bound to become a junk collector without the advantage of having people be able to sit at it during parties. That saved a couple thousand right there. This was also the time open shelving was starting to become a thing, and the cabinet guy had mentioned that. He told me that if I wanted a display shelf that was fine, but that if I wasn't already a perfectly organized person, being forced to put all my crap on public display wouldn't make me one. This guy told me tons of shit like that that I never would have thought of. He went through my stuff and asked how often I used each item, so that he could design the cabinets in such a way that the more frequently used items would be easiest to access.
So when I and someone else pointed out all the door conflicts and you said you'd just keep the doors closed all the time I reflexively thought "Does everyone in your household reflexively close doors immediately after use?" Because if the answer is no, then neither you nor anyone else is going to start doing it just because of conflicts. Habit is going to take over and will only change after dealing with the endless frustration of banging doors into each other. I love architecture, but I am not an architect, and I wouldn't try to design my own house. There are some things that you can DIY, but for some things you want to call in the pros, and with how much money is on the line and how often you use it, I wouldn't want to risk a bad house design. Nonetheless, I wish you the best of luck and hope everything works out for you.
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