To knock down or not knock down -

Looblee

We live in a lovely Georgian style cottage (not listed) it's only problem which we are slowly resolving is it has too many small
Ish rooms. We now have a decent sized kitchen /dining area with separate utility. But still have 3 'more rooms downstairs - 1 an office/piano room, then a sitting room and a playroom at end of house(that never gets used as children bring their toys to where we are ) my question would be should be knock down between the sitting room 13ftx13ft into the playroom 12ft by 13ft? Another problem there is a staircase between them I was thinking of opening it all up and having open plan stairs so there are still defined spaces but it's not two small rooms my theory is it will bring everyone together a bit more but still maintain zones so to speak ... thoughts ?

Apodemus

You would need to be certain that the walls you want to remove are not supporting anything upstairs. Also need to check what the building regs say in your area about open stairs, not often allowable where I am.

Looblee

Yes they most definitely are load bearing so we'd need to have supporting beams added. Open stairs I probably mean open trade. It with a hand rail to comply with building regulations. I just wonder if I'm off my rocker thinking it could work

Ectophile

One thing to consider with an open-plan staircase is that when you try to heat the downstairs, all the heat will go straight up the stairs.

This could lead to a cold living area and hot bedrooms if you're not careful.

Apodemus

Looblee wrote: »

Yes they most definitely are load bearing so we'd need to have supporting beams added. Open stairs I probably mean open trade. It with a hand rail to comply with building regulations. I just wonder if I'm off my rocker thinking it could work

I wasn't meaning just a hand rail, I believe that fire regulations in some places require stairways to have some means of stopping fire going from rooms on one floor to the next, so either completely enclosed or a door at the top, if not part of a separate stair-well.

Looblee

Ahh I get you know. Yes a good point meaning we'd probably have to have some sort of door. Also the heating point had been on my mind too. the room won't be enormous by any stretch but it's a very good one to consider.