To not want a house with this floor plan (pic included)

[Raymond1989]

In the area I want and with my budget I'm only going to get a terraced house. All the terraced houses I've seen a tiny and I feel like I'm in a prison cell.

I've found a house that's within budget and I love it! Feels spacious and is end terrace with a big park next to it. I love the area.

It feels cosy and there's still a yard for own use eventhough it's small. It's big enough to have a washing line and an outdoor table and chairs. I'm moving from a semi detached house with front and back garden but it's worth it to live in a better location.

My issue is the floor plan (see pic)

An extension has been added but to preserve some yard space it's been added in a long rectangle. This then leaves a large dining room but another lounge with no use to it!

My friend has th exact same floor plan and her living room is redundant!

I only have my daughter and I but family stay a lot so I could make the 'lounge' into a multi use room with a guest bed,computer desk etc.

Would this floor plan put you off? Is it a disaster?

Any ideas on how to make it work?

Almost every terraced house I've ever seen has this layout (some have the bathroom offshot over the kitchen upstairs ). Why would the lounge be redundant? Put the TV in it!

Cosy lounge at the front for evenings etc. Dining/computer/sofa in the middle room.

We have a kitchen/diner, a separate dining room and a lounge. The dining room is used as a playroom. It's great.

Oh and it's similar in that you walk through the dining room to get to the kitchen from the lounge. It's not a problem.

Just a dining room on its own, I'd just not know how to make that work.

You walk through with the plates from the kitchen to the room with the table ...

Oh man, I needed a laugh. Thanks OP!

Terraced houses don't come with kitchen diners.

A kitchen with an open doorway (no door) into a dining room is the nearest you are going to get. This looks like a pretty good example of that. You furnish it the same way you would furnish a kitchen diner: with a table and chairs. You can probably also fit a playspace for your kid.

Then, just as you would if you had a kitchen diner, you furnish the lounge as a lounge. This is not rocket science.

Have you been to see the house? Go and look at it in person and see how it works, rather than just looking at the floor plan and panicking.

It's worth scouting on rightmove for houses with similar downstairs layouts (ie 2 reception rooms and a separate modest sized kitchen, with no room for anything more than a very small table or breakfast bar) to see how they've arranged the space. Yours is complicated by the smaller front room, but it's still workable. The first one of these is a similar size to yours, but with a smaller kitchen. Personally I wouldn't have the massive sofa in that back room, but it shows how much flexible space you'd have in that room.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-47292162.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65048825.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-60824651.html

What's wrong with this layout - surely you not need strangers to tell you what to do with that room??? Crikey - what is AIBU coming to!!!!

See, I can understand not liking a house or it not working for you, but I can't understand immediately thinking of knocking bits down to make it right. That costs money! Just find a house you do like

Very similar layout to mine. We likely won't be able to afford to move any time soon so we'll be looking at squaring off that kitchen so it's the same width as the rest of the house, and going up into the loft.

All that aside though, if you want a kitchen diner then there's no point you looking at this house!

Genuinely don't get the problem.

We have children and originally had a house with a tiny kitchen and a lounge/diner so we were always together when downstairs. It was too noisy and claustrophobic. We have agreed we will never willingly go somewhere again without two separate useable spaces downstairs - like the one in your floor plan.

Our current house has kitchen/diner and separate lounge. We have a no food or drink rule for lounge so we have cuppas with friends in kitchen when they're over for playdate with kids then in eve we settle down in lounge. The kids like chilling in the lounge first thing in morn watching their shows.

Also the separate room makes it perfect for the occasional guest staying over. Again before when we just had the one space a guest had to accept the children would intrude early morning onwards. Now we can make the lounge out of bounds until guest surfaces

I find this all a bit bizarre.
You say you love the house but then you question how to use the floor space. If you really loved the house you would have lots of ideas.

The front room is a lounge with sofa, TV, whatever else you want.
Knock down the wall between kitchen and dining room and you have an L-shaped kitchen diner.
Look on the internet for more ideas as to how to furnish.

If you can't see a way to make it work continue looking at other houses until you find something which suits.

How is a kitchen plus dining room where there is a doorway but no door between them so different from a kitchen diner??

I'm moving into a 2 bed terrace with a kitchen big enough for a dining table and a sitting room tomorrow. Do you want to swap, OP, as I'd love a separate dining room! At the moment, my spare room is a study-cum-laundry room with just enough space for a double airbed. I'll really miss the extra room, but needs must.

Look, if you can only get a terrace in this area then you are going to get a set up like this. All terraces are like this because they are long and narrow, you are not going to get a kitchen/diner in a terrace because they are not big enough.

So either get used to the idea or stay where you are!

Then you narrow down to what's negotiable and what isn't. So if a kitchen diner isn't negotiable keep looking. There is nothing wrong with realising that's what you want out of life. It's a helpful process. We wanted parking enough to buy a 2 bed over a 3 bed for instance. But it took a while to understand just how important parking was too us.

Completely agree. This is where I actually think renting and having to move basically every year (annoying as it was at the time) helped us when we bought. We had each learned things from those various homes (I hate an isolated kitchen, DH really loathed living in a flat, no one cared about parking, life is much nicer when I have a study rather than having to work at the dining room table) that I think really helped us buy a property that we'd actually like living in.

You often see houses like this where they move the kitchen into the dining room to have a large kitchen/diner. Old kitchen becomes utility room/office/playroom or similar. Use the lounge as a lounge!

This is similar to the layout in our house, we have the middle room with a table in one corner, a sofa on the opposite wall, and bookshelves everywhere else that there is space so it's not a formal dining room but can be made into one as the table extends and can be moved to the centre when we have dinner parties, it has space for two to sit when not extended because of bookshelves up against it. The front room is our lounge where the tv is, and in the cellar which is a playroom/music room for dd.

I don't see the problem really? If you don't want a formal dining room don't make it one. If you want open plan living then you need to buy a new build which is set up for it don't rip walls out and ruin a perfectly normal house. I personally hate open plan and like the ability to close doors and have separate spaces. You could always add an orangery type extension to the side of the kitchen to enable you to have a kitchen diner and not have it in the long thin shape it is now.

Easy!
Change kitchen into utility/cloakroom
Change dining room into kitchen/diner
Leave lounge as sitting room

Et voila!

Or leave it as it is and enjoy an extra room as craft room/study/spare bedroom...

*Easy!
Change kitchen into utility/cloakroom
Change dining room into kitchen/diner
Leave lounge as sitting room

Et voila!*

I really don't think it would be easy. I think it would be expensive and result in quite a crap, too small kitchen/diner (those rooms aren't massive!) and a house that would eventually be hard to sell.

The kitchen extension is that shape to maintain a window to the dining room. It seems to me what you want is a smaller house with only two rooms downstairs.

Unless over time you can afford/get permissions to add a kitchen/diner extension, then the layout is quite fixed.

Family who have a terrace use the back room as a dining room/homework/hobby room. And the front room for curling up on comfy sofas to watch TV.

One has knocked out the wall between the living room & dining room because the back was so dark, and it's looks so much brighter. But it's lost its coziness but also there's no separation from each other.

bridge and others, where does the idea that terraces don't have kitchen diners and are all long and narrow come from? That's not true!