Two-story Family Room

[missypie]

Our formal living room is two full stories...great for having 14' Christmas tree. Lighting has always been an issue...never feels lit enough with lamps, and the overhead light is too cold. Pay attention to the type of heating and air conditioning you have...it if comes from the ceiling it may always feel inadequate. On the plus side, the room is small and the height makes it feel a lot bigger.

 

[tkd lisa]

We had one in the first house we built. All the same answers others have given. It echoed, the kids threw things over the balcony, etc. I didn't notice a huge temperature difference but we had a really good natural gas furnace, and a gas fireplace in that room. We didn't live in the house long enough for the cobwebs/window cleaning problem, but it would have been an issue. I wouldn't do it again.

 

[diznygirl]

We had the option of getting one with our house. But there were more negatives - noise traveling, kids throwing things, decorating, cleaning - and only one positive - it looked nice. I just couldn't see myself putting up with all the negatives just for the looks. So we had a fourth bedroom added. It's been great. We use it as a guest room/playroom and we are soooo glad we did it. Neighbors who have the same design love what we did with ours.

I have noticed too that all the decorating shows seem to be doing the large two story family rooms - everybody wants them, but nobody knows what to do with them once they have them!

Good luck with your decision.

 

[puffkin]

We are building a home, settlement next week

I went to a lot of model homes and two story family rooms are pretty common, but I also would agree about all the drawbacks. A lot of the builders around here are moving more to the vaulted 12-14 ceilings in the great rooms/living rooms. There seem to be a lot less issues with these.

 

[Galahad]

We do and we like it. Noise is not a problem. Heat can be a problem as you are heating a lot of dead air, but we like the open plan. Painting is a problem also. We hung a painting up high a couple of weeks ago and I'm lucky I didn't get hurt. We have one of those long light bulb changer telescoping poles that we use of a lot of things as well (like dusting the corners of the 35 foot ceiling.

 

[LMC]

We have a 3-story family room (40' high) and we have a heating problem. We live in Alabama and have been using our fireplace at night for a couple of weeks now to help with the temps (30-40 degrees outside). I don't have a problem keeping it cool in the summer due to where the sun shifts and the light comes in (or rather doesn't shine in).

Ours was going to be a partial 2nd story floor but I did not want to think of climbing a ladder to clean 3rd story windows so I re-worked the floor plan so that it would wrap around the entire floor all the way back to where the stair case is.

This is easy to do. You just have to have an I-beam on the main floor to support the walk way (cat walk, floor, what ever you want to call it) on the second level. The I-beam eliminates the need for posts on the main floor to support the 2nd floor.