What would you do to the living space in this house?

R&C

We are in the very slow process of buying a house that requires quite a lot of modernisation at the moment. This is the current floor plan...




Our plan is to halve the 2nd bedroom to fit the bathroom upstairs, then knock through to the bathroom and extend at the side downstairs to make one massive kitchen/diner. By doing this, the current dining room will lose it's only window. We are debating on knocking down the wall between the living room and dining room (perhaps putting doors inbetween) so this could solve the light in the dining room issue. I'm worried about losing this wall though as it is the only one of two walls in the living room that is completely usable for furniture. The other 2 walls have a large bay window and a chimney breast with alcoves so aren't really suitable for sofas, although I guess we could probably fit a low sofa into the bay window if needed. What would you do?

My other question involves the hallway. I LOVE hallways. At the moment you walk in the front door and about 2 meters away you approach the stairs. Would it be too drastic to knock down the stud wall between the dining room and the staircase and build a new stud wall 80cm or so into the dining room? Therefore losing some of that living space for the sake of a hallway? The hallway is currently quite dark and I'd hope creating a front to back hallway would add some light and make it more welcoming. Plus, the current layout makes the dining room a bit of a hallway as you need to go through it to get to the kitchen. What would you do?

I have doctored the original floor plan to give an idea re the hallway...



Any ideas very much appreciated! We have never done anything like this before and don't want to make any wrong/unnecessary moves!

R&C

Thank you for your reply andy, a lot to think about there! The left wall is an outside wall, sorry I should've mentioned that. We have had plumbers out already and although the drainage is tricky it can be done from that location.

The bedroom sizes do trouble me, however, we have discussed your suggestion of building above the proposed new kitchen. We would probably do that to make the back bedroom bigger, adding an ensuite and making that the master bedroom. If we decide to do this we'll scrap the ensuite plans for the current master bedroom. To make things more complicated I would then probably look into taking roughly 1.6m off the current master bedroom (leaving it 3.1x3.3 so still a double) and making another single bedroom/study next to it. This would make the house a 4 bed, with 2 good size doubles, one small double/large single, and one small single/nursery/study.

I don't think planning permission would apply if we only extended out the the end of the current kitchen as it's less than 3m, so that would be nice, but I would really like a larger kitchen/diner with bi-fold doors your way of thinking would make things so much cheaper too!

There are so many things to think about, I guess the planning permission will dictate a lot of it. If we are unable to extend that far out for the kitchen, we will no doubt go with your smaller extension suggestion and incorporate the current dining room in the plan. If they let us extened that far out I'd quite like to go up aswell because the house will hopefully become sizeable enough downstairs to warrant the 4 bedrooms upstairs.

Thanks again

dander

Your plans look so expensive, especially with taking out two external walls at the back - can't help thinking it would be easier to just buy a bigger house in the first place!:D

Just wanted to add another perspective on the various bedroom options - I don't know if you want to do all this as a development and to add value, or because it's just what you want in your house - but all the bedroom sizes you talk about seem very small to me. In the plans you put up, I would rate those bedroom sizes as one decent sized double and two singles - and a 2.1x2.9 bedroom to me is a small single.

In your second suggestion you mention reducing the size of the front bedroom to 3.1x3.3 - personally I would consider that to be a small double and if by taking 1.6 off the width you mean creating a room only 1.6 wide to me, I would consider that to be simply too small to be a bedroom - I'd consider that a boxroom only. And also - these measurements you give aren't including the actual width of the wall - you need to take a good few inches off to take the wall into consideration.

I think you'd be in danger of creating a very unbalanced house with a spacious downstairs and a cramped and pokey upstairs.

dander

Oh, and I just wanted to add that to me a bathroom with no windows is something you put up with in a modern flat, but I'd find it very off-putting to find one in a three-bedroomed house.

R&C

Thanks dander. Luckily we have a couple of builders in the family that have agreed to help when the time comes, so it shouldn't cost as much as it would getting in an unknown builder, although it will more than likely take longer!

We're in sunny surrey and a 4 bed semi round here is way out of our price range. Even a nice 3 bed semi in a nice area, already done up is quite out of our price range. Buying something run down in a nice area was the only way we could get potentially what we wanted for a good price. Buying a 'bad/run down' house on a nice road, rather than settling for a ready made nice house on a bad road.

Would 3.1x3.3 really be classed as a small double? I thought that sounded fine size wise. The bedroom we would be proposing to do at the back would be 3.3x4.7 which i also thought was fine. I take your point about the other 2 rooms though. You can fit a double bed in the 2.1x2.9 room, but that's about all I admit. We plan to put in a 4ft double to save some room.

I couldn't agree more re a bathroom without a window. The bathroom is on an outside wall and will have a window.

Re the reasons for doing this... it's going to be our family home, we'll be in a nice area with a very good school so on that basis probably won't be moving for atleast 5-10 years. We do want to add value to the house at the same time though.

rustybucket

Loft big enough?

R&C

rustybucket wrote: »

Loft big enough?

Not sure, we haven't been able to get up there yet. My initial thinking however is that if we're doing a ground floor extension at the back, it'll be cheaper for us to go upwards aswell at the same time rather than spend the money converting the loft which will be more expensive. In an ideal world maybe instead of taking 1.6m off the current master bedroom, it would be best to put stairs there and convert the loft instead.

Can anyone else let me know their thoughts on the downstairs? The upstairs won't be happening for a little while and it's more the knocking through of the living spaces I was wondering about and the hallway

Thanks

dander

Hiya, I don't know what it would be officially classed as, I'm just speaking from my own personal perception. But a double bedroom that is just a little more than 10 foot by 101/2 feet is small to my mind. You'll get a bed with bedside tables in along one wall, then be left with a strip of about 1m deep to get any other furniture in and circulation space - space to open the door, that kind of thing - it's doable, but tight.
If it's what you need to make it a comfortable family home for you - then go ahead, that is the most important thing, but do just bear in mind that squeezing lots of smaller bedrooms in could actually make the house harder to sell.

Downstairs, if that l/h side is an outside wall, can you not put some windows in the side to get light into the diningroom? I think personally I agree with Andrew that using the dining room as part of the kitchen somehow 'feels' better to me. I have to admit I can't look at your plans without imagining the expense which probably clouds my view and I do feel that to justify that kind of money spent on the downstairs, you really need to balance it with having something more saleable upstairs. I think the money would be more wisely spent with a smaller extension, but which is double storey or converting the loft as people before have said. Like the others, I also think moving the dining room wall seems like a waste of money to me - but that could just be me only seeing the money again!

R&C

Thanks Andy.

So do you also think a 3.1x3.3 bedroom is too small? It's funny isn't it how we all think differently. My bedroom now is roughly 4x4 and is quite a bit bigger than any double room I've ever had, so I thought 3.1x3.3 would be a 'decent' sized second double room. My OH grew up in a room that was 6ftx6ft and had to have his bed frame cut to size, lol. All he ever had in his room was the bed, a chest of drawers and 2 shelves above. I guess if we made a room roughly 1.6mx3.3 we'd be doing the same.

My way of thinking after this thread is to keep the upstairs like on the bottom floor plan, so the bathroom stays where it is (sorry andy;):D), halving the 2nd bedroom which will be a single room. We could extend upwards to make the back bedroom bigger, then instead of creating a smaller room by cutting up the current master bedroom, we could put stairs there up to the loft, when we have the funds to do so. So fourth bedroom squeezed in is scrapped in favour of a larger fourth bedroom going upstairs. Obviously we'd still need to take off some width from the room to create the stairs though.

Our builders are my father in law, and his 2 brothers. All are semi retired and have joked they're happy enough to be paid in beer , treating the build as a 'gift'. Obviously when the time comes they will want money, there's no way we wouldn't pay them but we do believe that it will be at 'mates rates'. We do expect though that unlike hiring a regular builder, there will be days when the family will deide they're not coming in, or take half days etc, so we are preparing ourselves for everything to take longer!

R&C

dander wrote: »

Downstairs, if that l/h side is an outside wall, can you not put some windows in the side to get light into the diningroom?

There's currently a chimney breast there, so we could put a window into one of the alcoves, but in my head that looks odd? Maybe that's just me though!

dander wrote: »

I think personally I agree with Andrew that using the dining room as part of the kitchen somehow 'feels' better to me.

It's something we've thought about, but it would mean losing that 2nd reception room wouldn't it? I can't help but feel by us extending out just that extra 2.5 meters or so would give us a large kitchen diner plus 2 reception rooms rather than only extending as far as the current kitchen and leaving us with one reception room with a large kitchen diner at the back.


Thanks for all your help everyone, much appreciated. I know it probably seems like whatever you suggest i'm coming back with an excuse to back up my plans but really it is making me rethink everything and I will show this thread to my OH later and see what he thinks too.

R&C

andrew-b wrote: »

But then you have a small family bathroom servicing 4 bedrooms (or 3 if later loft conversion has ensuite) - for that number of rooms i think you'd expect a bigger bathroom especially when you'll have the big space of kitchen/diner downstairs making the property seem unbalanced. I suppose you could make the entire left rear bedroom into the new bathroom instead leaving you with front double room, smaller room rear right and then go up into the loft for a master and ensuite ..though again this leaves you with 3 bedrooms at the end of it but a much bigger bathroom with window and maybe even part given over to a shower room off the front bedroom.

If you do intend to go up into the loft space then think about stairs..my initial thoughts were to sacrifice the cupboard in the front bedroom to become the foot of the loft conversion stairs with stairs going back up above existing stairs (thats sort of how my sister's loft conversion is laid out) so at the foot of the loft stairs your facing the right hand wall of the property then turn at the foot of the stairs to run parallel with right side of house and turn again at the top.

Andy

We would hope to put an ensuite in the newly extended back bedroom to make this the master suite. It would make sense to do this as the drainage is the back of the house on this side so would be relatively easy to do. So the small family bathroom would only be servicing the other 2 bedrooms, one being the front double and the other being the single next door. I assume that if we do end up going into the loft then an ensuite would be put up there too. Plus we hope to put a downstairs loo in, maybe not under the cupboard stairs like on the floorplan, it might be best placed in the extension somewhere.

I think I get what you're saying about the stairs, thanks for your advice. So much to think about! We probably wouldn't go into the loft for about 3 years or so, when the kitchen and 1st floor extension has been built and we can save a bit more. This is ofcourse all planning permission depending, making the dining room become part of the kitchen may end up being our only option!