In a word, space.
In more words, not enough space, not enough storage space, and a funky layout that means the place seems practically not-child-
proofable. Looking at it, it seems that the only way to make this place safe for a crawling El Burrito would be to back a dumpster up below the deck and throw away 95% of what we have, including part of the furniture. Even then, I don't think it would really work. There's a computer desk full of dangling power cords, and a 20-gallon fish tank with more dangling cords, and neither of them can be anywhere
but the living room. Half the houseplants are probably poisonous. There just seems to be a lot of "stuff" that has no real out-of-the-way home. We're stuck with it living out in the open, where a crawler or toddler can trip over it, put an eye out on it, eat it, choke on it, or whatever. We won't even go into the stairs, the second-story porch, or the deck. Or the cabinet doors that don't have handles, just the little notch at the bottom to grab with your fingertips, that I'm not sure are compatible with those child locks.
It's also very dark, thanks to a lack of windows or built-in lights, and the air circulation is abysmal.
Space. We don't have enough of it, and what we do have is poorly designed and laid out. The fellow who designed these was obviously aiming them at single people, retired couples, and the like. He was also apparently freaking clueless about cooking, cleaning, and ventilation. And light. And had some sort of phobia about right angles, because the only square rooms are the two bedrooms.
We live in a 2-bedroom condo that's about 1000 square feet. It seems like a lot, until you look at it and realize how inefficient the layout is.
Other than a decent-sized closet in each bedroom, the only storage space is a tiny closet in the hallway. Ours holds the vacuums, coats, a broom, and a few tools. That's about all that will fit. There's technically a "utility closet" in the kitchen, but since it already has the furnace, water heater, washer and dryer, there's not a lot of
room left to work with. Especially since the fuse box is in there, and we shouldn't block access to that. We managed to squeeze in a set of plastic shelves for canned goods, a plastic trash can for the recycling, and a few cases of soda (bought on sale). It's very frustrating to not be able to put things "away" because there's nowhere to put them. No closet for linens, towels, bathroom
paraphernalia.
The bedrooms are a decent size, but thanks to the positioning of the doors (deck, closet, bathroom, and hallway), there's exactly
one place to put the bed. Even then, the door out onto the deck won't open all the way. After putting in a nightstand, a dresser, and a chest of drawers, we're left with a path around the bed about two feet wide. To get the bassinet in the bedroom, we had to block off access to
DH's nightstand, and if the bathroom door opened the other way, it wouldn't have worked.
We have no dining area. Actually, right now, we don't even have a table. To make room for El
Burrito's crib, we had to move the computer into the living room. The only place for it was the corner between the entrance and the living room, formerly inhabited by the table that we never used. So we sold the table. And since we don't have a high chair yet (it's on the list for this weekend), we're feeding El B on the couch, which works surprisingly well as far as it goes, but doesn't really allow us to let him play with his food or anything. When we do get a high chair, I'm not sure where we'll put it. If it folds, we can store it on top of the washer, but I'm not sure where we'll put it while we're actually using it. The only options seem to be the middle of the kitchen (linoleum), or in the weird space at the top of the stairs, between the computer and the glider. The drawback there is that it's carpeted. Granted, we're going to replace the carpet when we sell, but still.
And a tangent - who in their right mind puts carpet in a bathroom? Or in what is supposed to be a dining area? Or just inside the door, where you can track snow and mud in?
Gah.
Two things that I will not miss when we move? Light and air. Two big design problems here. There are three doors that don't really go anywhere - 2 for the screened porch, 1 for the deck, neither of which are connected to the ground. While those doors all have a big glass panel in them, the orientation of the building means that we get very little direct sunlight. The last owners painted the walls a pale shade of yellow, which added to the "I'm living in a cave" feeling. We repainted, which helped, but it's still dark. There are also practically no light fixtures in the place. Seriously. One over the stairs, one in the kitchen, one in the hall, plus track lighting over the kitchen/living room divider, vanity lights in the bathrooms and florescent tubes in the closets. Otherwise, zilch. The bedrooms are totally ignored as far as lighting. The living room has a ceiling fan, but they didn't bother to put a light on it.
We're thinking of putting a fan/light in the bedrooms, and adding a light to the living room fan before we sell. I wish we'd had this bright (pun!) idea a few years ago, so we could have gotten some use from them.
And the place has practically no air circulation. There's only one return-air vent, so the furnace air flow is sort of stagnant. I've got half the vents closed, trying to push some air into El B's room and the living room, but it's not working well. The temp drops
noticeably when you go down the hallway. Even in the summer, with both porch/deck doors open, we rarely get a breeze through here unless the wind is coming from the west. All our doors are on two sides of the building, so there's no good cross-circulation, and the building north of us blocks a lot of the breeze.
I need to make a floor plan of this place. Maybe it'll give me an idea on how to rearrange what furniture we have, while not blocking the traffic flow.
