bkshopr_IHB
New member
Everyone living in an apartment does not like his or her entry. What entry??? That stupid door swing scraping over the carpet so the landlord can ding your security deposit for the dirty area that is shaped like a ? circle when you move or that piece of a 4?x4? linoleum carved out from the carpet is an entry? The fundamental difference between the arrival experience between an apartment and a house is the foyer experience.
Always consider having a foyer when buying a home and no matter how small a home is. A good example is the 1,050 sf plan one Cortile in Woodbury having a foyer that lends drama and class to a small jewel box. Lacking a foyer in a home is like having sex without foreplay. Foyer should be at least 5? deep and 4-1/4? wide so a small table/cabinet could be placed on the side or straight ahead for mails, keys and especially shoes for all Asian visitors. Limiting fancy hard flooring only at the foyer is a good transition to soft flooring for the rest of the home.
Front door must be recessed in from the face of the building at least 3? or under a porch for sun and weather protection. Expensive homes have distressed wood door and cheap homes have steel doors and neither could last from the direct heat of sun ray. Steel door temperature reaches 120 degrees and wood door expands up to a quarter inch daily. Paint or stain will fade quickly losing the protection barrier against moisture that causes fungus and rust.
Chinese buyers prefer double door with tall transom windows above. In China wealthy people?s home has double doors flanked by a pair of wood panels displaying 2 poems and a transom overhead panel with carved or written calligraphy of the family?s motto. This iconic front door image transcend across all continents. In China the narrow proportion of the double 2?door is beautiful and well proportioned but yet structurally functional by reducing the sagging weight. In America double door entry is sinfully ugly because each leaf has to be 3? wide to meet code and the proportion is McMansion like.
<img src="http://www.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/images/exbig_images/eb36155aece0ba161df66c87ad24bae3.jpg" alt="" />
Double door in China
<img src="http://la.curbed.com/archives/2006-06-mcmansion21.jpg" alt="" />
Chinese love double door in America
Single front door in older houses found in Floral Park and the craftsman homes in Pasadena has the classic 4? wide proportion. These doors were made with well kilned and dry hardwood with mortise and tenon joinery so the door never sag from the hinge support. New doors rarely meet the 4? structural standard. This is the reason why front door is always 3 foot wide. Old arch top door rarely sag and most new arch top doors rub against the door jambs. The upper hinge of the arch top door must be set below the spring point of the arch and the position is way too low for counter balance. Beware when buying a house with arch top door.
What does the foyer to your home say about you? In recent years, homebuilders have played down and sometimes neglected the elegant foyer altogether focused on the livable part of the home. This has happened especially in smaller plans, with architects sacrificing the square footage of the entry foyer make way for larger living spaces. In the 1980's and early 90's OC builders became big on open concept floor plans, making true entry foyers an afterthought. After all, we don't sleep or live in our entries, so why make it such a focal point? These homes lack foreplay.
Many design critics agree that reducing the size of an entry foyer to a few tiles in the shape of a postage stamp, and incorporating it into a front room robs the buyer of more than meets the eye. In reality, the entry to your home may be the farthest point most visitors will ever get after being invited in. That means that those visitors' first impression of you and your home life may just be their last. And, by selecting a new home floor plan with or without an entry foyer, you may be choosing just what kind of statement you would like to make to those intermittent guests. But what else does a real entry area give to the homeowner besides the impression it may or not make on others?
Privacy is important. The idea of containing and shielding visitors from the rest of your homes interior means you needn't always be "ready" to show off your life inside. Valuable treasures and furniture pieces may be saved to show off at a later, more appropriate time of your choosing, not theirs. I, for one, do not need for well-meaning door-to-door types to see just how I live, even if I am somewhat pleased with how I have decorated my home.
Protection from the weather elements may just be another. Well-designed exterior as well as interior entries can be designed to shield your home's belongings and wall surfaces. Guest closets in entries are on the comeback trail, too, giving homeowners a practical and usable alternative to a pile of sometimes coats and purses piled on the bed in the spare room. Important pieces of furniture and delicate decorations displayed upon them may be safe from sudden entry "winds" with which we all may be familiar from my feng shui course not directly aligned with a back door in a defined entry foyer.
My favorite reason for a notable entry foyer, however, is what I can display there that just doesn't seem appropriate for other parts of the house. Pictures, wall decor, an elegant entry table, and a burst of decorating color can jolt those entering into a true sense of "home" and my personal style. The floor surface, which is usually a practical, weather resistant surface like tile, marble, or sealed hardwood, is, perhaps one of the richer surfaces of the home. The view from the entry in a two-story home may very well be of a sweeping staircase like the set in Gone with the Wind, revealing even more pride of decoration and signature, but not necessarily of furnished living areas.
In the John McMonigle arena the inclusion of formal or semi-formal entries may even be compared with why new custom homebuilders find that many homebuyers still want a formal dining room, even though the formal living room may have gone by the wayside in many home designs. Even with 'great room" designs, buyers still seem to want that seldom-used, uncluttered, manicured and permanently decorated place for special events, family gatherings, and prized heirlooms to be displayed. For the Asian buyers the music parlor is a must. Perhaps the elegant entry, the anachronism that builders may have, at one time, thought it would become, is a slice of courtly living that may not soon see its demise, as the formal dining room has not. With so many conventions of our parent's era forgotten, the idea of being a gracious homeowner, ushering an unexpected, but temporary guest into the home for a bit of conversation and a warm send-off in the entry foyer still sounds so civilized!
The idea here is to alert new homebuyers to take note of not just the basic floor plan and how it suits your immediate needs and those of your family. Rooms, along with their size, practicality, and proximity to other parts of the home are easily assessed. The entry foyers and its overall relationship to the "livability" of your new home can be easily neglected when deciding on a floor plan. Decide for yourself what that seemingly "wasted" bit of square footage can mean to you in the long run.
Always consider having a foyer when buying a home and no matter how small a home is. A good example is the 1,050 sf plan one Cortile in Woodbury having a foyer that lends drama and class to a small jewel box. Lacking a foyer in a home is like having sex without foreplay. Foyer should be at least 5? deep and 4-1/4? wide so a small table/cabinet could be placed on the side or straight ahead for mails, keys and especially shoes for all Asian visitors. Limiting fancy hard flooring only at the foyer is a good transition to soft flooring for the rest of the home.
Front door must be recessed in from the face of the building at least 3? or under a porch for sun and weather protection. Expensive homes have distressed wood door and cheap homes have steel doors and neither could last from the direct heat of sun ray. Steel door temperature reaches 120 degrees and wood door expands up to a quarter inch daily. Paint or stain will fade quickly losing the protection barrier against moisture that causes fungus and rust.
Chinese buyers prefer double door with tall transom windows above. In China wealthy people?s home has double doors flanked by a pair of wood panels displaying 2 poems and a transom overhead panel with carved or written calligraphy of the family?s motto. This iconic front door image transcend across all continents. In China the narrow proportion of the double 2?door is beautiful and well proportioned but yet structurally functional by reducing the sagging weight. In America double door entry is sinfully ugly because each leaf has to be 3? wide to meet code and the proportion is McMansion like.
<img src="http://www.cultural-china.com/chinaWH/images/exbig_images/eb36155aece0ba161df66c87ad24bae3.jpg" alt="" />
Double door in China
<img src="http://la.curbed.com/archives/2006-06-mcmansion21.jpg" alt="" />
Chinese love double door in America
Single front door in older houses found in Floral Park and the craftsman homes in Pasadena has the classic 4? wide proportion. These doors were made with well kilned and dry hardwood with mortise and tenon joinery so the door never sag from the hinge support. New doors rarely meet the 4? structural standard. This is the reason why front door is always 3 foot wide. Old arch top door rarely sag and most new arch top doors rub against the door jambs. The upper hinge of the arch top door must be set below the spring point of the arch and the position is way too low for counter balance. Beware when buying a house with arch top door.
What does the foyer to your home say about you? In recent years, homebuilders have played down and sometimes neglected the elegant foyer altogether focused on the livable part of the home. This has happened especially in smaller plans, with architects sacrificing the square footage of the entry foyer make way for larger living spaces. In the 1980's and early 90's OC builders became big on open concept floor plans, making true entry foyers an afterthought. After all, we don't sleep or live in our entries, so why make it such a focal point? These homes lack foreplay.
Many design critics agree that reducing the size of an entry foyer to a few tiles in the shape of a postage stamp, and incorporating it into a front room robs the buyer of more than meets the eye. In reality, the entry to your home may be the farthest point most visitors will ever get after being invited in. That means that those visitors' first impression of you and your home life may just be their last. And, by selecting a new home floor plan with or without an entry foyer, you may be choosing just what kind of statement you would like to make to those intermittent guests. But what else does a real entry area give to the homeowner besides the impression it may or not make on others?
Privacy is important. The idea of containing and shielding visitors from the rest of your homes interior means you needn't always be "ready" to show off your life inside. Valuable treasures and furniture pieces may be saved to show off at a later, more appropriate time of your choosing, not theirs. I, for one, do not need for well-meaning door-to-door types to see just how I live, even if I am somewhat pleased with how I have decorated my home.
Protection from the weather elements may just be another. Well-designed exterior as well as interior entries can be designed to shield your home's belongings and wall surfaces. Guest closets in entries are on the comeback trail, too, giving homeowners a practical and usable alternative to a pile of sometimes coats and purses piled on the bed in the spare room. Important pieces of furniture and delicate decorations displayed upon them may be safe from sudden entry "winds" with which we all may be familiar from my feng shui course not directly aligned with a back door in a defined entry foyer.
My favorite reason for a notable entry foyer, however, is what I can display there that just doesn't seem appropriate for other parts of the house. Pictures, wall decor, an elegant entry table, and a burst of decorating color can jolt those entering into a true sense of "home" and my personal style. The floor surface, which is usually a practical, weather resistant surface like tile, marble, or sealed hardwood, is, perhaps one of the richer surfaces of the home. The view from the entry in a two-story home may very well be of a sweeping staircase like the set in Gone with the Wind, revealing even more pride of decoration and signature, but not necessarily of furnished living areas.
In the John McMonigle arena the inclusion of formal or semi-formal entries may even be compared with why new custom homebuilders find that many homebuyers still want a formal dining room, even though the formal living room may have gone by the wayside in many home designs. Even with 'great room" designs, buyers still seem to want that seldom-used, uncluttered, manicured and permanently decorated place for special events, family gatherings, and prized heirlooms to be displayed. For the Asian buyers the music parlor is a must. Perhaps the elegant entry, the anachronism that builders may have, at one time, thought it would become, is a slice of courtly living that may not soon see its demise, as the formal dining room has not. With so many conventions of our parent's era forgotten, the idea of being a gracious homeowner, ushering an unexpected, but temporary guest into the home for a bit of conversation and a warm send-off in the entry foyer still sounds so civilized!
The idea here is to alert new homebuyers to take note of not just the basic floor plan and how it suits your immediate needs and those of your family. Rooms, along with their size, practicality, and proximity to other parts of the home are easily assessed. The entry foyers and its overall relationship to the "livability" of your new home can be easily neglected when deciding on a floor plan. Decide for yourself what that seemingly "wasted" bit of square footage can mean to you in the long run.
