"Excessive" demo in TV shows

[cornutt]

That business with the "we'll show you three homes and you pick one" has been an open secret for a while. A few years ago, there was an episode of House Hunters shot here in town. The local paper interviewed the family, and they described the process: they had already purchased and moved in. The show found two vacant properties and staged them for the show. They talked about having to remove personal decorations, like photos, from the areas of their home that were to be shown, so that the house would look staged like the other two houses.

And yeah, if there's one thing I hate, it's people who go into a mid-century house, pronounce it "dated", and gut it to replace everything with the latest trendy-schmendy that really will be dated a few years from now. I'm noticing that the shows are starting to rip out the kind of stuff they were putting in 7-8 years ago; e.g., granite countertops are coming out because they aren't the right kind of granite for the current trend. I get a laugh out of the latest trend of having no upper cabinets in the kitchen to make it look more "country". Where the hell are you supposed to put everything?

A co-worker and her husband bought an open concept house circa 1990, when the first wave of that silliness happened. She grew to hate it. One thing she said was that, when they had people over for dinner, she had to rinse and put everything in the dishwasher right after dinner, because the kitchen was open to most of the rest of the house and she hated having dirty dishes piled up in plain views. She also said that it was impossible for more than one activity to be taking place in the house at the same time; if the kids were playing and she had work material she needed to study, she had to go outside to get away from the noise.

 

[tolivac]

Good points about the open plans being a fire hazard--I too like ROOMS-esp the kitchen being on its own-who wants the heat,smells,and sight of dirty dishes within eyeshot of guests?

 

[askolover]

Me too!  I want a separate kitchen complete with swinging door opening into a dining room.  Heck, I've considered having the kitchen separated from the house...at least by a breezeway or screened porch...that way when I turn the vent hood on high it won't suck out all the heat or AC from the rest of the house.  I want a library/music room I can stick my grand piano in and close the door when I want to play.  I want a laundry ROOM instead of a closet.  If we ever build a house it will have rooms, none of this open floorplan crap.

 

[tolivac]

For me--a separate home theater room and separate Hi-Fi music room would be nice.And the theater could provide an alternative place to sleep during the day when neighbors--they all rev up their mowers at the same time.I have a laundy room-this is better than a laundry "closet" that way I can collect a few favorite machines-don't have a basement to house that laundry equipment museum as some here have.I don't like open plans,either.Dream on--these things will have to come when I can win the lottery-at least have the laundry room for now.