Willa wrote:The only good reason to have an open concept floor plan is to configure it to gaze upon this beautiful pantry.
Do people forget that storage areas with doors and drawers is a really good and sensible thing ?
Yes. I was reminded of this just yesterday, in fact.
I happened to run into one of the granddaughters stuck waiting for her sister (who rents the house next door) of the family that built Beebe today, and she was asking me what we'd "done" to the place since we bought it. In the course of the conversation, she revealed that not only would she have torn down the wall between the pantry and the kitchen (apparently her grandparents did still call the dining room the kitchen even though all of the kitchen stuff was in the pantry), but she also said she would tear out all of the built ins in the parlor, including the French doors between the parlor and the library because "that living room is too small, and there's no place for a TV."
Of course, the expression on her face when I said, "But we don't have a TV,"
that face was priceless. She honestly had no idea what to say to that, and fortunately for her, her phone rang for what must have been the fourth or fifth time in the whole of the 20 minutes I spoke to her as I was weeding and she was waiting. So she quickly walked away talking on her phone.
That entire conversation with her was surreal. Although she does have fond memories of the house, in her mind, it needs a massive update from stem to stern.