This week we respond to an article arguing that open floor plans may be passé. Over the years we’ve opened up walls and widened doorways in all three of our homes to improve flow and create a more spacious feel, but there are clear reasons why an open concept isn’t always the best choice. In this post we walk through the pros and cons of open-plan living, highlight situations where you might want to resist the urge to remove walls, and offer practical ideas for making the floor plan you already have work better. We also share a quick curb appeal update we completed in a single afternoon, Sherry lists her favorite sources for extra-long curtains and explains why she loves them, and we vent a little about the recent proliferation of self-storage units.

You can download this episode from iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and TuneIn Radio — or listen to it below. Use this page as a reference for the links, photos, and notes we mentioned on the show. If you’re reading in a feed reader, you might need to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

• We recently installed a new metal mailbox post in a light finish and a coordinating black mailbox for our neighbor. Below you’ll find a short photo recap of the simple project and the pieces we bought.

• The adhesive metal house numbers we used are available in a dark bronze finish that coordinates well with the mailbox post and sits perfectly on the front face of the post.

What’s Not

• If you follow Joanna Gaines’ paint line you can view the full collection of Magnolia Home paints for inspiration on neutral palettes and accent colors.
• We also dug through an old reader submission of a farmhouse kitchen redesign from 2013 — a good reminder that strong ideas can look different at different stages of a creative journey.

Open Floor Plans

• We read the House Beautiful piece entitled “Why We Need To Just Stop With Open Floor Plans” and wanted to respond by sharing our hands-on experience with opening and reconfiguring spaces.
• Below are a few examples from our own houses where we altered openings and flow:
  • Widening doorways and in one case closing a doorway in our first home to improve sightlines and circulation.
  • Cutting a large opening in a solid wall in our second home to connect rooms while still keeping a sense of separation.
  • Removing a dividing wall between our living room and kitchen in our current home to create a brighter, more social space.
  • Designing a very open living room and kitchen layout in our showhouse, where scale and furniture placement help define zones.
• Open plans can feel airy and sociable, but they also reduce visual privacy, concentrate noise, and limit wall space for storage and display. For example, we chose to keep a substantial opening instead of removing the wall entirely in our current home so we could install built-in bookcases and gain valuable storage and visual separation.

• Leaving a wide doorway rather than a completely open plan allowed us to retain architectural definition and add built-in shelving on the other side—an important trade-off between openness and function.

• The storage we gained by leaving room for bookcases made a big difference in everyday organization and helped visually anchor the living room.

• We also recently shared a friend’s living room makeover where she considered taking down a wall. In many cases, thoughtful room planning and furniture placement can achieve the same openness without losing storage or defined zones.

We’re Digging

• Sherry rounded up several favorite 96-inch (or longer) curtain options that work beautifully even in homes with standard eight-foot ceilings. Using longer curtains is an easy way to make rooms feel taller and more polished.
• Her preferred stores for long curtains include West Elm, Pottery Barn, Wayfair (searchable by length), and Ikea. A helpful tip: wash Ikea’s cotton curtains once before hanging to avoid an awkward cropped look.
• John is reading So, You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, a provocative book about modern reputation, which he first heard about on a podcast that discusses the Lindsay Stone story we referenced on the episode.

Psst—Looking for something we mentioned in a past episode but don’t remember which show notes to open? Here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging across past episodes to help you quickly find old favorites.

Also worth checking out: the full line of Delta Faucet products, including finishes that mix metals in interesting ways.

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