THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505250375
SECTION: REAL ESTATE WEEKLY PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: By John Cunniff
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
Kitchens and baths will always be No. 1 and No. 2 in home remodeling, but the ``great room,'' a combination of kitching-dining-famly rooms, is moving higher.
This latest news from the home remodeling front, always a source of insight into changing goals, lifestyles and attitudes, is especially significant this year, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
This is not just because those three important rooms seem to be merging. While that trend is significant, and though it remains the hottest trend, some other entries are perhaps even more reflective of changing styles.
Home offices, for example, are accounting for more and more of the $123 billion expected to be spent this year on remodeling. Right behind are projects such as home security systems and exercise rooms.
To Bob Hanbury, who heads the homebuilders' remodelers council ``it means ``that people are changing their homes to fit their lifestyles, not the other way around.''
It isn't likely that the latest shifts will ever overtake the American propensity to upgrade kitchens and baths, habits so ingrained that they over-ride any categorization as trends. Nothing will displace them. They are it.
But the home office is further evidence of a developing change in lifestyles. The home office, for example, reflects the growing importance of computers and other electronic devices that allow people to work at home.
Every year more companies allow workers to remain at home. Companies that operated regional offices to which sales people traditionally reported once a day have experimented with closing them. Home entrepreneurship is growing.
Less significant but equally visible and indicative of modern concerns, home security systems are appealing to more people each year and, in fact, are required by insurers in some neighborhoods.
The exercise room, a byproduct of growing health-care concerns, may be seen as little more than a modern development of the basement space where the man of the house lifted weights. But, in view of the intricacy of modern exercise equipment, not to mention the price, a more formal arrangement was overdue.
Other growing trends emerge in a review of new single-family homes, where buyers continue looking for houses with air conditioning, garages for two (or three) cars, 2 1/2 baths, and four or more bedrooms.
Families aren't getting larger, but they want those bedrooms to use as home offices, guest rooms, exercise rooms and media rooms. The latter is bound to become more popular and, in fact, is already specified by some builders.
Jim Irvine, NAHB president and a Portland, Ore. builder, confirms that the trend to great rooms is demanded by new home buyers as well as existing owners. The kitchen-family room, he says, is one of the biggest trends of the decade.
Meanwhile, Irvine suggests, the formal living room is going the way of the dining room, which in some homes is reduced to a mere area. Why not, with so many families ``ordering in'' or grabbing a fast-food bite when they can?
Most of these trends were spotted in an analysis of Census Bureau data, but Irvine contributes one of his own observation and that of fellow builders: Nine-foot ceilings rather than eight feet. People are taller these days.
One Hampton Roads builder says the trend has been in effect locally for years. ``I think people are really into family and informal entertaining,'' says Brenda Caruana, who owns Caruana Homes with her husband, Gary, ``so this open room-kichen concept fits this pattern. People like the flexibility.
`It's what we called in the past the family room. We've been doing it for years. It's our best seller. We did it at the '83 Homerama.''
In fact, Brenda and Gary Caruana have a kitchen-den-dining room combo in their new home in the Ocean Park area of Virginia Beach. In addition, they have a detached office on the grounds. ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
OPEN SPACES
OUR LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE "GREAT ROOM"
JIM WALKER/Staff [color photo]
Gary and Brenda Caruana relax in the den-kitchen-dining room combo
of their new Virginia Beach home.
Staff photo by JIM WALKER
Brenda and Gary Caruana are involved in another trend - the home
office. Theirs is a separate structure, however, on their Virginia
Beach property.
HOUSING TRENDS
(From the National Association of Home Builders.)
1. Great room.
2. Home office.
3. Home security system.
4. Energy management system.
5. Exercise room.
6. Lighting control system.
TOP REMODELING JOBS
(From the National Association of Home Builders)
1. Kitchen remodels.
2. Bath remodels.
3. Decks and patios.
4. Bathroom additions.
5. Family and living room additions.
by CNB