{"id":28689,"date":"2018-07-28T00:01:03","date_gmt":"2018-07-28T07:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=28689"},"modified":"2018-07-28T00:01:03","modified_gmt":"2018-07-28T07:01:03","slug":"too-many-walls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/too-many-walls\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Many Walls — and Not Enough Bathrooms — at Our House"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Too<\/a>
Too many walls: This dark hallway at the entry to our 1950s California ranch house obscures the canyon view available from the adjacent living and dining rooms. But if we remove the walls, we’ll have to find another place to hang our children’s art work. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

Jon and I live in a house that can only be described as a mid-century ranch stacked in three stories down the side of a hill. The ranch house style was popular when our house was built in the 1950s, and my best guess is that the builders who designed our house decided to adapt that style to fit our steep hillside lot.<\/p>\n

Our house on a hill has some 1950s amenities — hardwood floors and a biggish kitchen indoors and, outdoors, wide redwood siding. But, true to the ’50s ranch style, it has too many walls and too many rooms, hallways and doors.\u00a0It was built for the ’50s woman who wanted\u00a0to close the door to the kitchen when her family sat down to dinner in the dining room. It also fit\u00a0 the ’50s family that didn’t mind living in a house with three bedrooms and only one bathroom on the top floor.<\/p>\n

\"Too<\/a>
Are there too many walls, halls<\/a> and doors in our house — and what would it cost to take them down? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Old as it is — it was built around 1952 — ours turned out to be a really nice house. Jon and I bought it back in 1978 when housing prices were skyrocketing, and we thought we should grab a house, any house, get ourselves into the market, and trade it in for a better house later.<\/p>\n

We were newlyweds hoping to have kids, and we were pretty sure we’d never get through their teenage years in this house — with only one bathroom on the bedroom floor.\u00a0We grabbed it anyway.<\/p>\n

But we never got around to trading in our wannabe ranch for that pie-in-the-sky better house. And here we are, 40 years later.<\/p>\n

We’ve made improvements over time. We remodeled the kitchen. We finished off the basement rec room. And we remodeled that sole upstairs bathroom. But the house still has too many walls and too many halls. And we never found the time and resources to add a second bathroom up there. Somehow we got through the teenage years unscathed with the two kids who eventually found their way into our lives.<\/p>\n

Peter and Christina have left home for far-away cities, but they do visit. And, Christina says<\/p>\n

\"Too<\/a>
What would happen if we removed the wall between our kitchen and dining area<\/a>? Would we like it? Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

to me, Mom, it would be really nice if you and Dad had a master suite bathroom, so that Tim (her new husband) wouldn’t have to worry about running into you on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n

OK. Done. Whatever it takes to get those kids to come visit, and for their SOs to actually have a good time while they’re here, we’ll do it.<\/p>\n

With that, Jon and I engaged a designer, and as I write she’s figuring out a way to shoehorn a master bath in amongst those three upstairs bedrooms.<\/p>\n

While she’s at it, she’s looking at ways to banish the dark halls and multiple doorways on our main floor.<\/p>\n

Jon and I, meanwhile, are searching our mid-century souls — do we dare take down that wall between our kitchen and dining area? Do we open our minds to 21st-century open concept floor plan living? Or do we keep the door closed on that mess in the kitchen?<\/p>\n

Watch this space.<\/p>\n

2020 Update: <\/strong>We ultimately decided to break this project into stages. We went ahead with removing the wall<\/a> between the kitchen and dining room, but we decided against taking out all of the hallway walls on the main floor — better to have some wall space for an art and photo gallery. The hoped-for master bath addition will have to wait. But we went ahead with new sliding doors for the living room, a brand new deck, and a totally fun skylight at the top of the stairs.<\/p>\n

More stories about life at our house at “Time to Crack Open That Hope Chest and Live a Little.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also,\u00a0“Feng Shui for the Writing Room and the Bedroom: Your Mother’s Not Allowed and Neither Are the Kids.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Too<\/a>
Too many walls? If we took down this wall, we could see right into our (messy?) kitchen. And we’d have to find a new spot for my mother’s china cabinet. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Too<\/a><\/p>\n

Our house has too many walls. It was built in the 1950s when families wanted to close the door on the kitchen mess, and one upstairs bath was just fine. Read more.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2098,2099,2100,34,54,2101,2102,2103,2104,2105],"class_list":["post-28689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-a-case-of-the-human-condition","tag-1950s-ranch-house","tag-buying-a-house","tag-dark-halls","tag-dont-miss","tag-grown-up-kids","tag-master-suite-bath","tag-mid-century-houses","tag-open-concept-floor-plan","tag-remodeling","tag-too-many-walls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}