do you have a guest room?

[pixielou]

we're just starting looking for houses. and debating the 3 vs 4 bedroom. we trying to ttc #2 - not sure if we will be sucessful or not. so if we buy a 3 bedroom, and end up with 2 opposite sex kids - no more guest room.

i know it is all a matter of tradeoffs and figuring out what is important to us.

if you don't have a guest room - what do you do about overnight guests?

[quest]

I voted 'other' because right now we have a dedicated guest room (we have a 3 BR) but if we are blessed with another baby that will probably become DC #2's room.

[Asha]

well, right now we have a guest room, but i am sure as our family grows larger, we may not have a dedicated guest room. i used to have a studio apt and had guests all the time. either they would crash on the futon or on the floor. i guess it helps that most of my guests were fairly young, so they could put up with being slightly uncomfortable. sometimes for older guests, i would give them my bed and i would crash on the futon.

[amew]

We live in a three-bedroom house and it's just the two of us, so right now we have a guest room and a separate office. When we have our first child, we plan to combine the guest room and office to make room for a dedicated nursery. We hope to move to a four bedroom house before baby #2 arrives so that the kids can each have their own rooms, and we can still have a guest room/office. Our family all lives out of town and visits fairly regularly, so I would really hate not to have some sort of guest room, though I am fine with combining it with an office.

[scubasam]

I'm really big into dedicated guest rooms for some reason. We have a 3 bd house and while it was just the 2 of us, we had 2 dedicated guest rooms. Now that DS is here, we are down to one which is ok but if we have another child & need that other bedroom, I've told DH that we need to buy a bigger house! ;) We have overnight guests often and I'm not excited about having them sleep on our couch or setting up an air mattress in our study.

[Hello Kitty]

We have a 2 BR house with a den/office. The den is set away from the rest of the house and we have a very comfy futon for guests. The 2nd BR is pretty small and someday will be a nursery, so I didn't want to buy furniture only to move it and store it later.

We rarely have guests, and when we have, they haven't complained about sleeping in our den or our BR. It's also always been family, so there's been no need for a formal, dedicated space, if that makes sense.

[laura]

We have a 2BR apt + office - no kids at the moment. If we have a child in this apartment, we will probably leave the double bed in the guest room turned "baby's room" and have the baby sleep with us if we have guests. Of course that is a fictional scenario b/c we don't have a child and thus don't know how adjustable our child is yet. We also have a pull-out sofa, but we have guests frequently and it's a pain when someone is on the couch b/c the LR/kitchen/DR are all open to each other.

In our eventual home, I would like 3 BRs + 1 guest room/office (for us plus 1-2 children, theoretically). I'm fine w/ combining the guest room & office at that point (if 2 children), but we will need to have a separate space from our BRs where guests can stay - that will be a priority for us.

[amorey]

We don't have a guest room. We have a 2 bedroom house and it's just us, but the second bedroom is an office. There isn't room for both desks and a futon.

The only people who stay overnight here are DH's teenage brothers and our sofa surfing 20-something friends. The sleep in the living room on the couch or floor with no complaints. ;) Both of our families live in town, so a guest room wasn't a priority for us.

We didn't have a guest room when I was growing up, either. My grandparents lived out of town, and when they visited they stayed in my brother's room. When he was little he slept on the floor in my room, and when he got older he slept on the hide-a-bed in the basement. It was never a big deal.

[tenofcups]

Right now, we have a sofabed in our third floor den that we use when we (rarely) have overnight company. We also have an usused third bedroom that is unused only because it hasn't been renovated yet. That room will hopefully become a child's room but if that doesn't happen, we will use it as a guestroom. In an ideal world, I'd like a guest room, but it's unlikely that we'll have one if we have a child since I work from home and need an office and DH should really have his own office as well (right now, he uses part of the living room but that is NOT ideal). So, I'd still like a 4-bedroom house, but that wouldn't give us a dedicated guest room.

Growing up, my parents had a room that was a combined office for my dad and guest room. Now he has his own office and my mom has a combined office/guest room. That seems to be the norm among the people I knew growing up since most of them had 4-bedroom houses and 2 children.

[Layla]

Go for the 4-bedroom! :D

[Winter Biscuit]

We have a dedicated guest room with attached full bathroom. We have a 4-bedroom house and 1 child. We play to TTC one more child (unless I get pregnant with twins or something :eek: ) so we only need 3 bedrooms for our family. Our parents live out of town, so a guest room is practically a necessity for us.

I agree with Layla and say go for the 4-bedroom too! :)

[Kellijo14]

We have a three bedroom house, but no guest room. I keep a comfy blow-up bed in the closet (queen) in case anyone wants to use it. So far, everyone who has visited us has stayed at a hotel. But I imagine that my sister will use it in the office when she comes to visit. We don't want kids besides our cats so the other bedroom is used for them. I'm always a fan of smaller houses because then you can't collect as much junk and you have to utilize the space better. It wasn't worth the additional heating/cooling costs to have a guest room for us.

[boilermaker]

We have a guest room, but only because we don't have kids. While I like having it, to me it is not a big priority in buying a house. Really, if guests are going to be too uncomfortable in my home (either sleeping on a pull out couch or air mattress or in a future child's room) then we can put them up in a hotel. That being said, we don't get that many out of town guests and when we do, they're happy with whatever space we can offer them.

[Sophia]

Our 4th BR currently doubles as the computer room, but with baby #3 on the way that will be changing.

[Jane&Andy]

We have a small 4 bedroom house so right now that gives us:
1 master bedroom
1 guest room
1 baby's room
and we use the 4th as a den

If we're still in this house for #2 we'll keep the den and baby #1 will be scooted into the guest room. My most frequent overnight guest is my Mom. So at that point she'll sleep in #1's room and baby #1 will have to be moved elsewhere temporarily. I'm hoping to have #1 set up with a twin bed and a trundle bed underneath for extra space for guests.

[andrew&shannah]

We currently have a 3 bedroom with no kids. We have a master, a guest room with its own bathroom, and a office with a bathroom. We added a daybed into the office for extra sleeping space in case it was needed.
When we decide to have children, the current office will become the nursery and the guest room will be shared with the office.
Once we get to more than one child, we'll move to a bigger house because I think it is important to have a guest room (even if it is shared with an office).

I'd go for the 4 bedroom if you can.

[elladee]

No guest room for us, either. We have 2 bedrooms, ours and a nursery/office. We have large couch in the living room with removable back pillows (it becomes the size of a single bed) that my brother stayed on a couple times. I think he's the only overnight guest we've had in a long time. DH's brother and wife visit a couple times per year, but they prefer to get a hotel room.

Growing up, I had a double bed in my room. If my parents ever had overnight guests, they would get to sleep there and I'd get an air mattress in the livingroom. In my opinion, not having a guest room isn't a big deal as long as you don't often have overnight guests for extended periods of time.

[greenbunny]

Our house was listed as a four-bedroom, but technically the fourth was one of the rooms in the finished basement. We turned that into our band room. There's a half bath down there, but no shower. The three "real" bedrooms are on the second floor, and we use the other two as a guest room and an office.

So I would suggest that if you do want that extra room, decide whether it has to be a "true bedroom" upstairs, or if you'd be satisfied with something like what we had. You could use a den or rec room. If that would be okay, you'll have more options and might not have to pay so much.

[Chimichanga]

We have a room we use as a guest room, but it is also my craft room. We have a 3 BR house and no kids (but one on the way!!) The one room is my craft/guest room and the other room was a workout room that will become the nursery.

[LeslieR]

Crap-I didn't read all of the options. I voted 'no guest room', but we do have a futon in the room that is supposed to be a dining room.

[kam]

We currently have a guest room. Before this, though, we had an office and a bedroom - no guest bedroom. We slept on the pullout couch when we had guests over. After having both a guest room and no guest room, it was considerably less stress having the guest bedroom. Without it, there was zero privacy. You could do an office/guest bedroom as long as you don't plan on using the office while your guests are there, but I definitely recommend having a seperate space of some sort for guests.

[maplekitty]

We have a dedicated guest room, but right now I call it the "Storage room". It's the room we throw things into when we're cleaning up, or put things in there if they can't go anywhere else. Right now We have all our christmas boxes in there that need to go back into the crawl space. We have a few rubermaid boxes of books that we can't find room for anywhere. The laundry rack is in there drying clothes that can't go in the dryer. However when we have guests over, I can clean it up pretty well that it serves it's purpose well as a guestroom. :)

[ee_chick]

We have a dedicated guest room, and chose a house with enough room to let us continue that even after we have kid(s). We live a good distance from our families and friends, and I find we get to see them a lot more when they know they've got a dedicated place to stay. :)

[eponymous]

We have a dedicated guest room, but we also have a 3 bedroom house with no kids; the other one is an "office" but we tend to use it only to store books and papers and work downstairs together. In the long run, I don't care about having a guest room. There's no one in my family who would come visit, and my DH's family all lives in the same area, so they refuse to come and expect him to go to them. There's a motel about ten minutes down the road and I would expect guests to stay there.

BTW, when we were looking at houses in our area, houses with four bedrooms seemed to have significantly smaller rooms than ones with three bedrooms - so small, it would be hard to stuff a teenager in there. Something else to keep in mind when you're looking...

[ellybelle]

We just bought a 2 bedroom house and have a 2 y.o. daughter, so no guest bedroom. Our plan is to add 2 additional bedrooms in the next couple of years (the lot is large enough that a rear addition would be easy). One of the rooms will be a guest bedroom/office ( I work at home, and NEED a workspace I can close off!) and hopefully, one will be for another child.

[ManteoChik]

We have a three bedroom house and right now there is only two of us (however, our dog considers every room to be hers... :rolleyes: ) Our rooms are as follows:
-Master bedroom
-Dedicated Guest Room
-Office (office has a daybed w/ trundell that will pull into king in case we have a lot of guests)

This isn't our forever house and we'll only be here for one more year (at the most) and right now we are renting. When we start looking to buy..or build...I will most likely look for a 4 bedroom. I have gotten very accustomed to having an office at home but I too want to have dedicated guest room and room for kids too.

[artist]

We have a 3 bedroom house. So, theoretically, sure. We could have a "guest room" since now we have no kids.

Right now though, we have a roommate/renter in the bedroom downstairs. Once he is gone, we may set up another bed in there. Reason being, DH recently welded a new bed for a room. (The other one didn't fit up our stairs or in the room.) However, he'd need to make some slats (too hard to explain) for the other bed and we'd need to get another mattress. For now, it's just a futon in there.

The thing is, then we can't have something like the "music room" in there, which was kind of one of our ideas. So, who knows. Our couch doesn't pull out though. I don't really think anyone needs to have a guest room though unless you truely have guests overnight all the time or in-laws that live far away and have to visit for long enough that a hotel stay is too expensive. That's my opinion though. I almost fear having a real guestroom because then people might actually decide to stay at our house overnight! I don't really know if I actually want that to happen.

[TMat13]

We have a 4 bedroom and there is only 2 of us. We have a master bedroom, 2 guest bedrooms and the 4th bedroom is a workout room. We also have a game room and a separate office downstairs. Eventually one of the guest rooms will be turned into a nursery, if we are still in this house when we have kiddos. :D

[BooeyJ2]

Definitely go for the extra room. My sister has a 3 bedroom (2 kids) with a loft and now regrets not getting a bigger house. If you can afford the extra room, go for it.


We have a 4 bedroom (1 baby) so we have an office and a guestroom...believe it or not, we would still like something bigger (with a loft or something and an extra garage (we have 2, but need more storage space).

I've learned that people usually move to find bigger houses. It's rare (unless you're old and your kids have moved out already LOL) that people want to downsize ;)

[LILRTL]

This is a big reason DH and I want to move. We have 3 bedrooms, one child, and hope for another in the next 2 years. Then we will have nowhere for guests to sleep. We tend to have a lot of overnight guests, so this is extremely important to us.

[vjel]

I say go for 4BR if you can afford it as well. If you do have a 2nd child, you'll still have a guest room. If you don't, you have an extra room for an office, playroom or whatever. We have 4BRs also and bought it when it was just the 2 of us. Now we have DD, hope to TTC again this year so the 3rd room (currently my craft room) will become occupied at some point. Our guest room is sort of separate from the other 3 BRs and we paid to have an extra bathroom built in so when we have guests (usually my parents), they won't have to share a bathroom w/ the kids.

Even though you may not *need* the extra room, you can always find a use for it!.