Opinion on lofts

[RIjake]

I need some help from forum members.........
It has been my intention to build a 1.5 story cabin on our land, some thing in the range of 20x30 or so.  The thought was to have a bedroom downstairs and a loft up.  Well, a couple weeks ago we were up north and stopped into a local building supply store that also has a real nice line of log cabin home packages.  They had a model out by the road that had a very similar layout to what we were thinking of building so we went in to get a "feel" for it.  I loved it but my wife brought up a point I hadn't thought of.

She thinks that where the loft is open to the downstairs, sound will travel up and if her ans I are downstairs at night talking or playing cards in the living space our voices will travel upstairs and keep the kids up.  Or if we have another couple over and they're staying up there they won't have much privacy.

So what's the concensus? Does the sound travel much up to the loft?  Is it a big problem? 

[rocking23nf]

It will travel up, but thats the loft/cabin way.

I dont even notice it. And to be honest, its so quiet at the cabin, that you can hear stuff even with sold doors and floors.

[MaineRhino]

We don't find it to be a problem in our camp. You can always use short walls upstairs instead of standard railings.

We also did alot of looking around at different layouts when we built the camp, and found that a downstairs bedroom took up too much space. So we built a bunkhouse too, detached 12x16.

Our layout is 20x26, the link is below....

[RIjake]

I like the bunkhouse idea Mainerhino.  I checked out your link, you could be right around the corner from us!  We're in Franklin county near Farmington

[Erin]

Yes the sound will definitely carry upstairs.  Like others have mentioned, I don't mind it either. 
I was the kid in the loft and frankly, I always liked hearing the murmur of conversation downstairs, or the radio or what have you. 

More importantly, if you're planning on a wood stove downstairs, you'll want to be able to cut off the loft somehow.  Curtains, shutters, doors... something. 
Otherwise it'll cook the upstairs occupants. 

[MaineRhino]

We have a 3x4 sliding window upstairs which is usually left wide open. The head of the bed is right under the window. No lack of heat in the loft!

The bunkhouse is almost done, I should start a new post with that info.