How can we improve the layout?

[squealingpiglets]

Hi. Our house is a Victorian semi which has the same layout as a typical victorian terrace - front sitting room, back sitting room and a narrow galley kitchen at the back. The original house was extended many years ago beyond the kitchen to make a reasonably large dining/living room across the back, and was extended again to add a small utility/rear entrance & a conservatory. Since we bought the house (10+ years ago) we have also added a loft conversion.

It is old & has character (which we love) and the downstairs actually has a decent amount of floor space overall, but the layout (lots of small rooms) is arkward and isn't working very well for us as a family:

The kitchen is too small. We compromised on this when we bought the house & now regret it. Its poorly designed - integrated under counter fridge is too small for family use, no freezer in there & very little worktop space due to display cupboards. It looks out onto our driveway/fence. Has no heating & no wall space for a radiator. Also its a passageway through the house & so safety wise isn't great with kids running about behind you while you are cooking.

The Dining room is a reasonable size & we've toyed with moving the kitchen in here but position of existing doors/windows makes it arkward to get a decent run of worktop. Plus the current kitchen wouldn't really make a big enough dining room if we swapped. Its also quite dark in here & gets cold in winter due to badly fitting doors to utility & conservatory plus open archway to kichen, none of which have heating.

Rear entrance
We use it as our main entrance. Also doubles as a utility. Not enough cupboard space so washing & ironing baskets on worktop. Coat pegs overflowing with coats, school bags etc. No clearance under door to fit a doormat so floor gets very dirty/slippery. This mess is the first thing I see when I get home every day & i hate it!!
No heating in here either so cold in winter & not very welcoming. Have sought to add heating but v costly due to pipework needed, plus no space to hang a radiator with current layout.

Conservatory
Its big, has a great view of the garden but as with all conservatories - its freezing in winter, roasting in summer. Currently being used as a playroom only the kids can't play in there most of the time due to the temperature extremes (which are also damaging a lot of the toys). Its glass all the way around so on one side looks at a fence. The exterior door doesnt seal properly & neither does the interior one so makes the rest of the house cold. Its 11 years old now & I dream of one day demolishing it but for now we need the space for toys!

We'd love to have:

A bigger living room instead of 2 smaller ones (this is easy to sort by knocking through - just putting it on the wishlist!)

Separation of the utility & entrance hall, or if not possible, a bigger utility so enough space to address current storage issues.

A bigger kitchen, preferably open plan to a dining/living area for entertaining/family time. Lots of daylight. Views of the garden if possible.

I've uploaded a plan diagram of the current layout & would appreciate any suggestions on how we could improve/change it for the better. If we can work the above into our existing house -great - am open to any ideas e.g. swapping rooms about, rearranging the layout of rooms, knocking through rooms. If not, we'd consider extending (single storey only) but should we go into the side return or demolish the conservatory & replacing with a bigger extension at the back instead.
Again any suggestions much appreciated.

[squealingpiglets]

forgot to add pic sorry

[SubtitlesOn]

What happens in front 2 rooms?

[Apileofballyhoo]

What's the big space at the side? Paving?

[SubtitlesOn]

What is your budget?

Could kitchen move into day room?

Then door comes into old kitchen as an entry point from car? Or make porch bigger by taking some room off dining room? So make much bigger porch but with storage that is very easy for everyone to use

Fit storage boxes that are colour coded so each child has their own coloured box for book bag and hat, gloves, scarf, football kit bag etc etc

That way everyone knows blue box means Annie, red box means George, yellow box means Henry etc etc

Same with coats on different coloured hooks for each person

More space for kitchen in day room cos I am guessing you don't use it very much as a day room. You could also fit a table in there

Knock down conservatory and build open plan room with sky lights but made of brick so much warmer in winter and cooler in summer

Make very front room a TV snug room cos I am guessing it faces north if your conservatory gets the sunshine so fill it with really comfy furniture and bean bags for children so really cosy room to snuggle together in to watch TV

Could you bring kitchen wall out a bit to make it wider so less like a corridor?

Do you have downstairs toilet? If not make old porch a toilet?

[Monty27]

You need to open up the kitchen with another room and somehow widen the hall to keep original staircase. I am on my phone and can't see the plan very well.
It depends how much money you have and who would be doing the work.
Im no architect but it's a lovely house but I think the layout has not been thought through.
If you get someone with the know on here it's probably not that hard.
I do know if you start moving staircases and kitchen you would be talking lots of money
sorry for stating the obvious

[SubtitlesOn]

Or put kitchen in day room and formal dining room in front room

Then knock dining room and conservatory into one room for during the day

Porch into a toilet

Old kitchen into a porch entrance area with door onto patio out to car and very clever storage so it is out of sight

Like a false wall all along the long wall floor to ceiling sliding doors which houses coats, book bags, football kits, shoes, wellie boots etc etc

So everything is there but not on show would create great entrance area in heart of house

[snowsun]

A door into sitting room from the hall.

Dayroom - open dayroom up to be an open space.
Or
turn half into a hall running past the stairs.
Make a study out of the room left over at the top of the sitting room

Swap kitchen and finning room over. Open it up to conservatory to make a family kitchen / sitting room.

[SunshinePaddles]

Could you extend the kitchen area out into the area with the pavers and remove the walls on either side of the of the two adjoining rooms to the kitchen? It would make that area open plan for the dining room and the day room.

[squealingpiglets]

Thanks for the replies. I'll try toanswer all of the questions!

Budget - difficult to say really. We'd like to keep the cost down as much as possible so if its possible to rearrange layout & get what we want thats the way we'll do it, but if the only real option is to extend we could probably stretch to £35-£40k (north of england).

I realised I didn't put the room dimensions in my op & this will obviously affect suggestions:

Utility 1.5m x 2.75m
Dining room 4.75m x 3m
Conservatory 3.4m x 4.7m
Kitchen 2.3m x 3.5m
Back Dayroom 3.7m x 3.9m
Front dayroom 3.7m x 3.4m
Hallway 0.9m x 4.4m

The front dayroom is used as a cosy living room with open fire & the back one used by the kids in the daytime for playing/watching tv etc. We are only ever in 1 though so seems silly having 2 rooms.

Not sure if kitchen would work in back dayroom due to the 4 doorways plus window is a large sash which is lower than worktop height. It would be difficult to get a continuous run of worktop? And not sure a table would fit in there too without it being cramped?

Making the existing kitchen into an entrance with floor to ceiling storage could work provided we can relocate the boiler which is where the door would go (& where the original back door once would have been!).

If we swapped the dining room & kitchen over how would you layout the new kitchen to get the best use of the space? I can't work it out! Would there be enough room in the current kitchen to fit a dining table given its only 2.35m wide. There'd need to be space to walk past chairs when occupied since its the only way through the house. I don't want to open up to the existing conservatory as the whole house would freeze in winter & boil in summer. Its useful for storage of the kids toys but beyond that a complete waste of space.

The big space at the side is just paving. It is unused space. We could potentially extend outwards into this space to within 1m of the boundary but I can't work out the layout so we keep a utility/rear entrance, get the kitchen to have a good view of the garden (the current utility & conservatory has best garden views) & not be too dark (the existing kitchen would be the darkest part if we extend like this. Plus we have the bathroom above the existing kitchen so would need to relocate the soil stack. & not sure how the roofline would work?

Alternative suggestion to demolish conservatory & build bigger brick extension good but again what layout to fit utility/dining area/kitchen? Would you go the full width of the property or similar shape to the conservatory? If doing this option would you then make the current kitchen into the rear entrance? Would this be more cost effective/less complicated than a side return extension?

Ah so many things to cosider - it boggles my brain every time I think about it!

[SubtitlesOn]

Oke doke I have done a sketch

Keep front rooms as they are then, as they grow then they will be useful as children grow and want friends round

Or to have the computer and desk homework areas

Can the door to old kitchen/new hallway go where window is on plan, if it opens outwards then more space indoors

In your dining room kitchen counter down right hand side and round corner. When you build brick extension you could have a raised wall bit to counter (don't know what to call it) on extension end or have a completely open plan to extension above counter

Put sky lights in extension to take advantage of the daylight that will then go thru to new kitchen

Light tunnels are amazing if you don't have room for window or it faces a wall, they let in loads of light especially if they can face southwards, get biggest ones you can fit in

Block up the outside door into utility (unless you take washing outside to washing line from that door) cos will give more space for storage but turn door around so it doesn't go into your new kitchen but into utility room

In old dining room/new kitchen the area by Windows have as storage or a settee if you want people to chat to while you or DH are cooking or a small table for kids to do drawing at

In new extension you could fit dining table and settees, have French doors, and huge Windows that are low down so you can see the garden

If you want get bi fold doors but I think they are going to go out of fashion really soon like decking

[OliviaBenson]

Make the existing kitchen into a hallway/entrance and small utility. Knock through to existing utility and have large kitchen there?

[Lucisky]

Olivia, that was my thought too. You could have a good run of utility goods along the old kitchen wall, with room for a freezer too. Knock the dining and utility together. The utility could also be enlarged sightly to square it off.

[Lucisky]

*slightly

[SubtitlesOn]

this is the hole in wall thingy I meant

I agree with knocking utility into lichen too

[TheBlueDot]

For that budget, you might struggle with a proper extension. With that in mind, I’d donfollowing to keep within current footprint:

Back door into current kitchen area (where the window is to minimise cost). Put a downstairs loo and sink against the right hand side wall. Remaining space along the right wall has a washing machine and dryer stacked up behind big doors (google laundry cupboards). The left wall has pegs, shallow shelves etc for coats and shoes. Move the door to the dining room over to left.

Current dining room and utility room knocked together, kitchen and dining table in there. If budget allows, build out a small extension where the conservatory is. If not, get some proper insulation and doors to the conservatory so it doesn’t freeze the rest of the house.

Block door between the two front rooms - properly plaster so you can’t see there was a door there. The middle room has too many doorways going off and this will help.