Forget about sunken living rooms and luxury baths in the master bedroom-the 12-and-under crowd is more concerned with the size of the back yard and how well the house lends itself to a game of hide-and-go-seek.
Smart home builders, aiming at the family market, have begun to pay more attention to what children like. They know that although Mom and Dad ultimately make the decision to buy a particular house, their little loved ones have to be happy about the choice.
”Moving to a new house is an emotional event for the kids,” explained custom builder Joe DePaulo, himself the father of three. ”While adults usually see a move as progress, children may feel less favorable about it.
”I like to give the kids something to be excited about in the new house,” DePaulo said. Bedrooms are his prime target because ”for the first few weeks after a move, before the child makes new friends in the
neighborhood, he is going to spend a lot of time in his room. That`s his or her space.”
Many local suburban builders are highlighting children`s bedrooms as part of the separate-but-equal trend in family homes. They are designing bigger rooms, some with private baths. And they`re decorating the model rooms to appeal to a child`s fantasy, just as a jazzy master bedroom suite is designed to capture their parents`.
The New American Home, a 2,450-square-foot idea house built for the National Association of Home Builders convention in Dallas this year, features a separate children`s wing angled off the main living area. The parents`
master suite also is a separate wing angled off another side of the home.
The children`s area has two bedrooms divided by a three-quarter-length wall, giving each bedroom privacy, but allowing the children to talk and play in a common area to the front of both rooms. The children are given their own full bath, complete with electronically controlled skylight.
The New American Home also features a brick courtyard play area for the children, which can be reached through sliding glass doors off the children`s wing, but which also can be overseen from a large window over the kitchen sink.
The sponsors of the home said it was designed specifically for a young family with two children seeking a move-up home that offered both more space and more glamor than their last house. The separate private areas for children and adults is a theme that many builders across the country began picking up from a similar floor plan in the New American Home built three years ago.
In Naperville, DePaulo Builders Inc. is headquartered in the Torrington model, where the upstairs children`s bedrooms are separated from the master bedroom by a catwalk-style hallway. One side of the railed hall looks down into the foyer; the other looks into the two-story family room.
Each of the three children`s bedrooms in the Torrington contains something unique. One room has a corner window unit with a wraparound window seat; another has an interesting tray ceiling, while the third features a big bay window with a good view of the back yard.
DePaulo`s wife, Debbie, suggested making each bedroom special to avoid fights about who gets to live in the ”best” bedroom. DePaulo Builders caters to the luxury market in the southwest suburbs, building homes of at least 3,000 square feet with price tags starting around $300,000.
At Town & Country`s Braemar development in north suburban Lake Zurich, the somewhat more moderately-priced models have been decorated by Carol Eichen Interiors in ways that are sure to be alluring to the wee folk.
At the Chesterfield model, a child`s birthday cake is prominently displayed on the kitchen counter alongside some party invitations, while upstairs, two large stuffed rabbits appear to be enjoying a tea party at a small table-and-chairs set in a girl`s blue-and-white bedroom.
In the Suffield, a Walt Disney theme and a black-white-and-red color scheme appear throughout the house: A Pinocchio book is left open on the family room coffee table; posters of Dumbo and Mickey Mouse adorn one of the second-floor bedrooms, which has panda bear wall paper and red accents. A boy`s roomy bedroom is decorated around a train theme, with decorater wall paper, engineers` bandannas tying back the curtains, and a crossing sign for a clothes tree.
Both the Chesterfield and the Suffield offer move-up products with four bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths priced from $159,000 and $165,000, respectively.
Richard Brown, president of Cambridge Homes, said that while his family homes have been emphasizing master bedroom suites recently, they`re also featuring bigger bedrooms for the children.
”In the Regency model at Cambridge Country in Mundelein, all four bedrooms are good size, and two of them are master-bedroom size,” Brown explained. ”That way, you`ve got the flexibility to put twin beds in one room without crowding the kids.” The master bedroom measures 17 by 12 feet, while the second-largest bedroom is 16 by 12 feet.
The smallest bedroom of the Regency, measuring 10 by 11 feet, is located closest to the master bedroom and in the model is decorated as a nursery, with four-poster crib, wicker rocking chair and antique toddler-sized rocking horse. The Regency is priced from $180,000.
For first-time buyers with young children (or childless couples who are planning to start a family), the Meadows in northwest suburban Streamwood offers reasonably priced family homes that can grow as the family does. Many of the homes are priced under $100,000 and have flexible floor plans that allow extra bedrooms or family rooms to be added at a later date.
The Cottage, for example, is a two-bedroom, one-bath Cape Cod with an unfinished upstairs. At 1,000 square feet, the house starts at $96,000. The Prairie, priced from $99,000, is a somewhat larger home featuring three bedrooms and a finished family room. One of the model`s bedrooms is decorated as a cozy nursery designed to appeal to someone whose eye-level is only 12 inches off the ground.
”Separate-but-equal” can apply to other areas of the house as well-and can please parents as much as the kids. The standard family home continues to require a family room-kitchen-dining area in order to keep the toys out of the living room and spilled milk off the dining room carpet.
Full basements or playrooms located elsewhere in the house are favored by parents who think children sometimes should be neither seen nor heard at full volume. A rear entryway and mudroom can keep little feet from tracking dirt onto the Oriental rug in the formal entryway.
”Parents usually are hoping to keep the functional and social areas clearly defined-letting the kids play without upsetting the whole house,”
explained Richard Faltz, president of Oswego-based Primus Corp.
Extra space in the right places is something else that pleases both parent and child-enough closet space, enough room in the breakfast area so Mom can walk past the table when the kids have their chairs pulled out, and hallways wide enough so that two people can pass each other without turning sideways.
DePaulo said he recently designed a family home with an upstairs hallway that was six feet wide. ”The mother did some interesting decorating with sconces on the wall, and she said that the hall walls didn`t get scuffed up nearly as much as they did in the traditional three-foot halls,” DePaulo explained.
