Rant: PSA to builders, housewives, and general complaint


In our search for a new house, I’m seeing some disturbing and annoying trends, mainly, living rooms where the ONLY place to put a TV is way high above a fireplace. This leaves zero flexibility for tv placement, additional audio components etc. Most don’t even have plugs. I'm also in Texas and there's ZERO need for a fireplace.

Not to mention all the "open concepts" we’re seeing where the living room is strangely shaped and the kitchen is basically in the room where you hear all the kitchen noise and you’re 100% accessible to your spouse and their conversation (ramblings).

This isn’t a problem if you have $2m to spend but for most of us, we’re limited in where we can set up our toys and this does not help.

Thank you for listening.

dtximages

Showing 1 response by shooter41

We had the exact same issue the last time we bought 22 years ago. A big factor in the house we bought was that it did not have this "forced" TV location.

A few years ago we decided we were ready to go and looked for a new house for a full year and never found anything we both liked, so I talked my wife into buying a nice, big, 5-acre lot and I got to work designing the house to go on it. Great room has the fireplace right in the middle of one of the long walls, flanked by double french doors on both sides that lead to a screened porch. I also don't like the TV being in a prominent location, i.e., it's the first thing you see when you enter a room, so I left one of the short walls (but only 4' shorter than the long ones) as a "blank canvas", meaning no doors or other interruptions and you have to be pretty much in the room to even see the TV. Pretty unique for an open concept (which we do still like after living in one all these years). I also have a dedicated media room (16'6" x 22'), designed just to my liking.

Covid, of course, made building nigh impossible for a while but we're within a couple weeks of getting started now, just in time to pay sky-high interest (comparatively)! We're just gonna have to suck it up and get this place built.

Another advantage of building is that you have control over how your house is built. The builder doesn't dictate to me, it's the other way around. I'm the customer. I'm doing lots of non-standard things including 2x6 exterior walls (virtually unheard of in the south) and geothermal HVAC. Yes, building can be quite an undertaking but it's the best way of getting what you want.