Stupid but true

[james_davis_nicoll]

I like to look at online real estate listings to see how people use interior spaces. I've come to the conclusions that:

A: Few people use more than 2000 square feet effectively. Above that, they seem to run out of ideas about how to use each room*.
B: Lots of houses have gratuitous features whose purpose seems to be to make them unusable to mobility impaired people.
C: (this is the stupid one) Townhouses are fine but I hate the idea of a duplex. For some reason, having to cooperate with 50 people bothers me more than having to get along with one specific person or family.

* More libraries is always the right answer.

There was a place for sale just up the road from me whose entire basement was given over to sturdy-looking bookcases.

Comments

[elusis]

Books are apparently anathema to real estate "staging."

[kraig]

Yeah, I looked at hundreds of listings here back when we were buying the place I'm in now (2017, same cities as James), and as a hobby since I look around. I've no interest in selling, just... curious. And I think the vast majority of places are staged, and realtors are taught somewhere "live laugh love sells." And absolutely, no books! A shelf just gets in the way of those LLL stickies on the wall!

That said, every once in a while you see a listing where it's clearly *not* been staged, and freeooo. Some are interesting and some are, um, interesting.

[fred_mouse]

When we sold our (far too small for the people, let alone the library) house 20 years ago, we moved So. Much. Stuff. to the shed to stage, and that included a not-insignificant number of books. The person who staged the lounge room for us brought in their own very carefully selected colour matched set of books to go on a shelf - five very random books.

It is entirely plausible that this contributed to us getting 20K more for the house than we had expected. And I only had three thousand books then.

Almost none of the houses that we saw had much in the way of shelving.

[patrick_morris_miller]

There was a place for sale just up the road from me whose entire basement was given over to sturdy-looking bookcases.

I would be absolutely terrified of the possibility of flooding.

(I have a great^3 grandfather who never told a single person why he left Ireland. His journals - written in Irish - were our only chance at ever knowing, but decades ago someone had them in their basement and it flooded.)

[james_davis_nicoll]

Yeah, that can be an issue. The city fucked up installing new under the road infrastructure a while back and that forced water up through the basement's concrete floor. Not the drains, which I expected. It just sort of seeped up.

[thewayne]

Came to say this. Libraries to upper stories to avoid water damage, plus you have gravity to help you when it comes time to excavate them. Basement libraries are just begging for water or mold problems: basements being notorious for poorer ventilation.

[james_davis_nicoll]

The catch is you have to keep close track of loading with bookcases on upper floors.

[thewayne]

Quite true.  In the late '80s I was working for a state gov't agency.  The records division was on the 3rd floor, and the fire marshal's office was in the next building.  One day they came over for an inspection and shut down the building.  In records, they'd placed all the file cabinets in the middle of the room, causing the floor to sag OVER TWELVE INCHES.  The building was evacuated until the file cabinets could be moved to the exterior walls where the load was more evenly supported.  No idea how long this took, it was before I worked there.

[conuly]

Oh wow.

[bibliofile]

I know someone who knows someone whose collection of books broke their home's foundation. Don't know where or how the books were stored, just that the homeowners included at least one lawyer (those books are not lightweight).

[thewayne]

OUCH!

[patrick_morris_miller]

A lawyer would probably be familiar with compact storage (where the shelves are on tracks so you can leave as little space as needed for a single aisle). A lawyer would conceivably want that at home.

A lawyer would very, very likely be completely unaware that those must be installed on thick, well-supported slabs.

[magedragonfire]

We had our second-story library specially engineered when we built the house to account for this.

[patrick_morris_miller]

The University of New Mexico's science and engineering library is (apart from the means of entrance) entirely underground. One night they had a pipe burst...

[thewayne]

YEESH!  I do some interlibrary loan transactions with them.  Sigh.  No, basement or lower libraries is not a good idea.  The worst that I knew about was Phoenix Public, their main branch.  They had a monsoon one yearn and a major thunderclap, and the rattling set off the fire suppression system.  It trashed the upper floors and did major damage, huge number of books lost.  Closed the building for a couple of years: they replaced the entire sprinkler system as it had rusted out - it was a dry system, no water in the pipes until use, and when it activated, turns out the moisture that had accumulated had eaten through the piping in a very uncontrolled way.

[telophase]

My 3-story former library had flood damage on floors 2 and 3 at different times. One of the fire suppression pipes burst both times. The basement never had water damage during the 18 years I was there, oddly enough. (The IT building, where so many of the big machines were in the basement, also had a pipe burst and flood the basement, but the library was fine.)

[james_davis_nicoll]

A local Bank of Nova Scotia had its computers in the basement, which became an issue when the Goudies at the other end of the block burned down. The fire department poured enough water on the burning building to flood the basements of the whole block.

[chrysostom]

Andrew Wheeler lost several thousand books in a flood some years back.

[redbird]

For some people, the right answer to how to use that additional space is to invite friends or family to move in. Just be sure to install an additional bathroom and at least a mini-kitchen, so the residents don't have to be in each other's hair.

Of course, people who take real estate "staging" photos might not like that either: it might imply that the owner, or potential buyer, can't afford to keep the space empty.

A music room is another traditional answer; pianos need space, and good soundproofing is useful for practicing an instrument.

[james_davis_nicoll]

At least with KW real estate, second income and granny flat potential are seen as pluses to be mentioned in the ads.

[redbird]

Also, the three of us have about 1700 square feet, and if we had more rooms, we'd have room for more bookshelves, as well as some other storage (the place is weirdly short of kitchen cabinets). In the Before Times, I'd have immediately said "guest room," but inviting someone to crash on the couch, or spend a night or two, is less practical while trying to reduce my risk of exposure to covid and other viruses.

[flemmings]

What constitutes a duplex? I only know the side by side version (or split up and down, if that's your thing), neither of which involve 50 other people.

[james_davis_nicoll]

Maybe I said it wrong.

I am OK with arrangements such as condo complexes and townhouses, where one's domicile is one of many in the complex, but I dislike arrangements where there is a pair of domiciles side by side (or one above the other).

Translation?

[(Anonymous)]

Braxis

So, do I have this right?

A duplex is a semi-detached house when side by side or a maisonnette when up and down?

A townhouse is a terraced house?

A condo is, I've no idea ...

Re: Translation?

[rwpikul]

A duplex is the next level of merging up from semi-detached:

Semi-detached: Each house shares a garage wall with one neighbour.
Duplex: Each house shares a full wall with one neighbour.
Townhouse: Each house shares a full wall with both neighbours, (except for the two at the ends).

Condo, (short for condominium): Actually an ownership model, each unit is owned individually and includes a share in the ownership of the common areas. If not otherwise specified it tends to refer to condominium apartments.

Re: Translation?

[melita66]

I assume this is for Canada?

Where I grew up in Ohio, a duplex is a building that contains 2 side-by-side apartments or maybe condos. In the last few years, I learned that a duplex in NYC means a two-floor apartment (or condo).

Re: Translation?

[magedragonfire]

Maybe? I've seen it two ways in Canada - mostly the above-mentioned detached house that is split into two side-by-side dwellings. They can be a single story or two/three/whatever. I've also seen units described as duplexes that are essentially a three-story house, with a two-story dwelling on top and a one-story ground level one below.

(This was probably to avoid calling the lower level a basement suite, as there was no basement involved.)

Re: Translation?

[james_davis_nicoll]

Long urls break recent comments. Please follow the instructions in this screen shot.

Re: Translation?

[rwpikul]

You're right, duplex does get used for other "two homes, one building" setups, (although your Ohio version could describe what I was thinking of¹). I was mostly answering in the context of it being something between semi-detached and townhouses.


1: Here's a streetview of what I mean: Random downtown Toronto duplex

Re: Translation?

[(Anonymous)]

Braxis

Making more sense now...

In the UK the it would be very unusual to see two houses with garages, where the garages share a wall. Our semi-detached houses always share a house wall. Garages, if they have them, would be on the opposite side of the house.

Townhouses sound more like the posh Georgian terraces that you'd find in places like Bath and Leamington Spa and less like the workers houses you'd see on Coronation Street.

Condo is like a block of flats where everyone is responsible for upkeep of the common infrastructure? I don't think we use that model for separate housing.

Re: Translation?

[autopope]

UK translation chart:

"Duplex" is unknown. The term for "shares a garage wall or a full wall" is "semi-detached". (Note that > 50% of the UK housing stock was built before garages were a Thing because car ownership really only caught on in the 1960s-1970s and our houses average 75 years old.)

"Townhouse": really posh shares-a-full-wall-with-both-neighbours. Normally called a "Terraced house".

"Back-to-back": cheap terraced house that shares a back wall with one neighbour and each side-wall with another neighbour. (Pretty sure this style doesn't exist in North America; it's Victorian-era factory worker accommodation.)

"Maisonette": a split-level apartment in a block of flats.

"Condominium": unknown term in the UK. Substitute would probably be "leasehold" plus the added context of "in a block, under common management".

"Tenement": where I live right now. (Not a slum: it's a grade 1 listed building in a posh-adjacent part of town. Individually owned apartment opening off a stairwell.)

[conuly]

* More libraries is always the right answer.

You can say that again.

[patrick_morris_miller]

More libraries is always the right answer.

[petrea_mitchell]

Have you discovered McMansion Hell yet?

[james_davis_nicoll]

I have!

[kgbooklog]

I thought a defining characteristic of McMansion was that it was built on a single-family suburban lot. If you have more than an acre, it's just a very tacky mansion.

[petrea_mitchell]

McMansion Hell has a primer on the line between mansion and McMansion.

[kgbooklog]

Huh, that is nothing like how I am used to hearing the term used. In my experience, it always referred to when a single family suburban home is replaced by something with 2-5 times the square footage, pushing the limits of what is legally allowed on the lot. If it doesn't literally overshadow its neighbors, it's because they are also McMansions.

[sturgeonslawyer]

From context, I assume that "more" in this case was intended to be "less"?

[dwight_benjamin_thieme]

One of the initial sparks between my partner of forty-some years and I was that we both wanted to live in a lighthouse ... with at least two adjacent floors plus the obligatory ladders being dedicated library space ... and a back yard for rescue animals as well as goats and chickens. The resident Cats went without saying. I think we talked about dogs once or twice.

[(Anonymous)]

Braxis

Would an ex-windmill do?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xVfHMHZWa8oahEk29