Building your own house fills you with excitement because of the endless possibilities that lie in front of you – you can build the home of your dreams on the empty canvas in front of you.
Don’t let yourself get carried away with the idea of designs;you must weigh up the practicality of your plans because plenty of ideas sound better in theory than they are in real life. One of these bad ideas is building an open-plan layout, here me out on this one – here are 5 reasons why this is a terrible idea.
Smell
If you’re considering building an open-plan house, my husband and I were where you are around 4 years ago – the difference is no one warned us about the downsides to open-plan living. My biggest pet peeve about it is the smell. Cooking smells, and honestly, any smells, drift everywhere. You will be smelling whatever you cooked for dinner the next day and pretty much until you cook something else and replace the old smell with a new one.
Cost
Open-plan homes don’t have interior walls for much-needed support which means the supporting beams you use need to be heavier and usually made of steel, which drastically increases the price of your build. Rather find the perfect house and land in Clyde North, you can then just do minor changes to it to suit your personality.
Noise
You won’t ever truly know the downside to an open-plan house until you’re trying to watch TV with the washing machine running a spin cycle in the kitchen – here’s a tip…it’s impossible. The same applies when you’re trying to read your book in peace in the lounge and your spouse is chopping chicken in the kitchen. I won’t even get started on the noise levels when you’re remodelling your kitchen. The noise element is something no one warns you about – until now.
Privacy
Much like the noise problem in point number 4 above, privacy is the next major issue with open-plan living – you can never be alone anywhere unless it’s in the loo. This is particularly irksome when you have guests staying over and you’re all awkwardly trying to share the same space without making yourself known. If you ever have a friend sleeping over on the sofa then you can forget about making yourself a cup of coffee in the early morning.
Dirt
Last, but not least, you will never have a clean house for long. Dirt and dust tend to collect en masse in an open-plan area. The high foot traffic propels the dirt everywhere, so unless you are prepared to clean your house every single day then you can safely say you won’t have a clean place to come home to. The only way we managed is by starting a rule whereby no one was allowed to wear shoes inside the house…yes, we became those people – the very people we detested mere months before.
Having an open-plan home is beautiful in theory but it is a bit like having an open shower – pretty yes, but not at all practical. I know this because our open-plan home had an open shower. We learned our lesson and I’m sincerely hoping that now you won’t have to.
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