Opinions needed on possible changes

Dalek01

I would be really grateful for any suggestions on improvements to our house. This is our downstairs floor plan:

I hate walking through our lounge and would love a hallway straight to the kitchen. Moving the stairs is not an option; do you think we could convert our garage and walk through to the breakfast room from there? We're thinking of making an open-plan kitchen diner with a rear extension.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Thanks.

Jellynailer

What a 'pigs ear' of a design!  I had to rework the space in my 18th C cottage which had been 'remodelled' internally by a developer in the 1980s.  I can design in my head but cannot draw for toffee so hope these written explanations are sufficient.

You could put the lounge where the dining & kitchen rooms are +/- the breakfast room which could be used as a study or kiddies playroom. The lounge could then be a large kitchen diner.  Could be costly or very costly if the walls are load bearing rather than stud partition.

Option 2, if the 'dog leg' staircase is the same slope as mine is, could be to remove the cloaks cupboard; make the door between lounge and kitchen open the other way and make a doorway into the kitchen with a cloaks/utility cupboard one third larger than the shaded area in the bottom right hand corner of the kitchen. 

EssexHebridean

Answer on the garage is yes, probably, but do you currently use the garage? Have you considered what that change will do to both the balance of the house (you will effectively end up with a fourth reception room and you would need to be quite careful with the layout of the converted garage to prevent it just feeling like an oddly furnished corridor) and the property value if that is a concern?   If you were going to convert the garage then the most cohesive way of doing it might be to make that the kitchen (do you have full plumbing at that side of the house - presumably there is some there due to the downstairs loo, so that might make things easier if so) knocking through into the breakfast room to create the kitchen/diner space you were after. If you did still want the extension this could create an even larger space there, as well as potentially making room for a utility? (As you do already have the plumbing st the back too).
The garage could also potentially become a new front entrance, so walking into essentially a boot room area, then a utility, leading people to the kitchen from there and then on with your rear extension plan. I suspect. Lot depends on the type of house it is and the type of people you are though! 

teaselMay

Could you lose the cloaks cupboard and make a doorway under the higher bit of the stairs straight through?

Dalek01

There isn’t enough headroom to go through the cupboard into the kitchen (which is such a shame) so I think there will have to be a door through the garage after the WC. I would like to keep some of the garage as a store, but the way to the breakfast room could also be used as my office space (my husband and I both work from home - he’s currently in the 4th bedroom and I’m in the dining room).

It’d be too expensive for us to do a total layout change.

I really appreciate your responses, thanks.

ThisIsWeird

Dalek01 said:

I would be really grateful for any suggestions on improvements to our house. This is our downstairs floor plan:

I hate walking through our lounge and would love a hallway straight to the kitchen. Moving the stairs is not an option; do you think we could convert our garage and walk through to the breakfast room from there? We're thinking of making an open-plan kitchen diner with a rear extension.

You are considering building an extension? To do what? You already have a kitchen and a dining room and a breakfast room. You need more 'kitchen' like a reaping song needs more cowbell :-)

Which house side is nicest? Best to look out from? More sunny? Ie, which is the 'living' side?

Any mileage in turning the lounge into an awesome kitchen-diner? It's large enough for cooking and family meals as it is, which means the 'dining' room could be kept partitioned and dual-purpose; either an additional reception/'garden'/quiet/study room, or opening the partition to allow a beeeg table for special dining occasions.

If I assume the garden side is the 'nicest', then I'd seriously consider turning the house around and put your receptions on the garden side, and move the kitchen to the front - it'll still benefit from views into the garden via the 'dining', so hardly a compromise. 

Yes, walking through a lounge to get to the rest of the downstairs is not good, but going through a kitchen - especially a new fancy one - could be nice. You show-off, you.

The new lounge could either be kept as two separate reception rooms - the old kitchen and breakie rooms, both opened out to t'garden using bifolds - or possibly knocked-through to make one.

ThisIsWeird

Or, as a cheap and simple compromise, move the entrance to the lounge right down as far as it'll go, and arrange the furniture in that room to 'shield' what will still be the thoroughfare. Ie, the backs of sofas would be towards that door. Possibly even put down a contrasting flooring pathway - say laminate if the rest of the lounge is carpet - to demarc the way to the kitchen?

Bigphil1474

If you don't use the garage, could you take some off the back and put a side door to the house and corridor into the kitchen, (essentially draw a straight line from the top of the stairs to the right), and possibly combine the kitchen and breakfast room. The house we've just bought already had the garage converted to a living room, and they told us it wasn't that expensive, but that was 10 years ago. Just putting a door and corridor should be fairly straight forward and a lot cheaper than an extension.

Dalek01

Your post has made me think maybe we don’t need an extension after all. Just make better use of our space. The rear of the house is west-facing so our preferred side would be the back. We need to have a good think about our options.

EssexHebridean

So the rooms you want to spend most time in daylight hours probably need to be at the back? The people we bought our house from extended some years ago, creating a big kitchen diner at the back with doors on to the garden - in the summer, we spend almost all our time in there. The house also still has its original sitting room at the front - and that is just perfect for cosy winter evenings - it's got a fire, it's a smaller space and the outlook onto the street doesn't matter once the curtains are drawn anyway! 

Of course what we don't have here are the room sizes - or indeed the information about whether the garage is original or whether it is formed from an existing side extension? 

Jellynailer

ThisIsWeird said:

 I'd seriously consider turning the house around and put your receptions on the garden side, and move the kitchen to the front - it'll still benefit from views into the garden via the 'dining', so hardly a compromise. 

The new lounge could either be kept as two separate reception rooms - the old kitchen and breakie rooms, both opened out to t'garden using bifolds - or possibly knocked-through to make one.

Jellynailer said:

You could put the lounge where the dining & kitchen rooms are +/- the breakfast room which could be used as a study or kiddies playroom. The lounge could then be a large kitchen diner. 

T

Thank you for endorsing my suggestion .  Your idea to keep the dining room and link it to the kitchen is another possible variable, although according to my son RIBA, they tend to be wasted space while the larger the kitchen the better these days.  Turning the lounge + dining room into a single room would make it dual aspect and a wow factor.