Home trends that should go away | Star Tribune

Minneapolis Star Tribune ^ | January 13, 2010 | Kim Palmer

[KateUTWS]

Now that the first decade of the century is in the rear-view mirror, it's time to wave buh-bye to some ubiquitous design trends that have worn out their welcome. Here are my picks:

[Responsibility2nd]

The decade isn’t over yet.

_________________________

Do you even know what a decade is?

Yeah, yeah. I know what you mean - that there was no year one and all that crap.

But try and tell me that 1990 was not in the decade of the the 90’s. But was in the 80’s.

See how stupid that sounds?

[cynicalman]

Center island in Kitchen get rid of it. How about a nice kitchen table where the family sits down and eats dinner and maybe after it is cleaned up the kids begin their homework on the kitchen table.

[Hoffer Rand]

The shades of red and gold as a color scheme. It’s hung on for WAY too long. I don’t want a red and gold house, thank you very much. I’ve put off buying living room furniture for 6 years, because I can’t get the colors I want. It’s all that red and gold cr@p. My living room sits unfinished. I’ll finish it when they start doing fabric in a color scheme I’m willing to live with.

[SMARTY]

I used to work for a home builder. He had many model homes. Some of them were $500,000+ and had no dining room. I could not believe anyone in their right mind would want a home (much less a $5000,000 home) that had no dining room.

For example, where do you serve company or have Thanksgiving diner if you don’t have a dining room?

[Egon]

Maybe strapless wedding gowns that all look alike will be the next thing to go.

After the wedding, her gown was the first thing to go. Can't remember if it was strapless or not...

[old and tired]

I’d like to add formal dining rooms. We rarely use ours.

Every home I've ever lived in has had a formal dining room, and I've lived in some pretty modest row homes. Over the years, our dining rooms have been spare bedrooms, storage rooms, offices, play rooms, and only very rarely, dining rooms. Somebody must use them though because you never see houses being built without them.

[JenB]

I disagree. I like being able to converse with my husband who’s in the computer area while I’m in the kitchen, or let the baby sit in the living room while I pull in laundry from the washer. Open floor plans work great for a lot of people, especially young families.

[ReneeLynn]

Yes, I do know what a decade is. It’s ten years. I can’t change that. Sorry.

[BikerJoe]

To be honest, I couldn’t care less what the inside of someone else’s house looks like. I like granite and two-story family rooms ... and I don’t have a fundamental problem with the “McMansion”.

Every two-story family room I've ever been in sounded like a barn. I couldn't whisper without an echo.

[wbill]

I still like high ceilings

Me too. Nothing, to me, is more claustrophobic than a ceiling that I can rest my hand on when I stand up and stretch.

I'm not all that tall. But there are plenty of 8' (or 7+') ceilings out there. :-)

[old and tired]

For example, where do you serve company or have Thanksgiving diner if you don’t have a dining room?

We use our very large formal living room, which we intentionally keep sparsely furnished. We long ago gave away our formal dining set to one of our grown kids. Since we'll often have 30 plus people for a sit down holiday meal, our old formal set was useless anyway to us as it could only comfortably sit 10 to 12.

Here's what we do every Christmas and Thanksgiving. I run 2 sets of 2 cafeteria tables lengthwise (4 tables total) and I put some MDF that I fashioned with rounded corners and can be hinged together on top of them. We stick some table cloths on and just like that we've got two 18 foot long tables side by side. Works like a charm.

My wife is happy not to have the dining tables up all year as she swears they're just good for collecting clutter.

[OpusatFR]

The butler’s pantry off the main bedroom suite.

Aw come on. How pretentious is that?

The McMansions in our area have this feature and not one of the homes has a butler working there.

[KateUTWS]

Yes, add hardwood floors and spike heels and it sounds like a marching band!

[KateUTWS]

Sounds to me like you missed the most current trend of chocolate brown and light blue. Sort of mud brown with water accents.
Awful!

[heartwood]

I have a generous space for the kitchen table, and a small dining room - neither allows for more than 8 to sit comfortably, and you have to put the table on the diagonal in the dining room. Both spaces redundant and too small.

If I could redesign my house, there would be only one eating room. Formal enough for holidays and tough enough for every day. A pass-through window with generous counter to act as a buffet, stools for snacks on the kitchen side. Serving would be easy, and the kitchen screened from the dining/living area. Maybe shutters to close it off.

And the living room should be open to the dining room so you could extend into there for a large number of guests AND ON THE SAME LEVEL!!!! Whose dumb idea was it to design a split level where the living room is three steps up?

Flexible space is the ticket and I do not have it.

[Ignatz]

...maybe after it is cleaned up the kids begin their homework on the kitchen table.

I'm a single father raising two daughters, one 7 the other 17. The concept of a "cleaned up" kitchen table is completely foreign to me.

[heartwood]

I like your idea.

[pogo101]

1. Reading the Star Tribune

[envisio]

I now have granite.

But they can have my Billy Bigmouth talking bass when they pry it from my cold dead hands.

[poobear]

You’ve got that right. I grew up in home my father built from a one room cabin. He’s a short fella and I never noticed it until a friend came over and thought we lived in a doll house!

We really thought we’d “moved on up” when Dad moved us to a conventional home. Ah, memories.