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?

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

Put in table chairs dinner etc. Sit. Eat.

If it's a good price, good area and suitable houses don't come up that often then you could get it and gradually renovate it how you like, as funds allow..
we have an extension like that off the back, quite long and thin, we've used it as a playroom then the room right at the front is the kitchen (with table in for eating) and middle room is a lounge diner though we mostly eat in kitchen. The kitchen on your floor plan does look a bit narrow, but I'm sure you could make it work if you wanted? If not, don't buy it wait for another??

I don't really see the problem. Cant you just knock the wall out between the kitchen and dining room so that it is a bit more open?

Keep the lounge as a lounge with the only room downstairs with a TV? That way you don't end up watching TV when eating and you are almost forced to use the lounge when you want to watch TV, but at the same time maybe you are watching less TV because there is no TV in the kitchen/dining room.

We had an extension so it would create a kitchen with lounge/diner. We also have a separate lounge which has the only TV in. This new lounge/diner doesn't get an awful lot of use unless we have people round and every night we use the old lounge to watch TV. However, we do use it at mealtimes and its so nice not having the risk of DC's wanting to watch TV at mealtimes.

Also it is nice to have another room to 'escape' to when you want a bit of quiet. The lounge/diner does get used more in winter because we have a log burner in it, so its nice to sit by the fire without TV.

Sorry I am waffling a bit!

We're in a new build and the plans showed one room as being a separate dining room but as the kitchen was large enough for our table we put in some sofas and a TV and then the teenagers could use it for when they had friends around. That second room is so very useful when children get older!

As for the long extension, a lot of terraces around by me are built that way. I can remember going to the one where my friend lived in the Seventies and it was just like that, except that to reach the bit beyond the kitchen you had to go outside into the yard and that was where the outside and only toilet was and there was another door to the coal house.

I wouldn't knock the wall out between the living and dining rooms for two reasons.
1, the stairs go up inbetween those walls
2, if you have guests to stay, sleeping on a sofabed, they will have no privacy.

As others have said, put a table and chairs, couple of arm chairs or small sofa, book cases or sideboard or desk in the dining room and use the living room as a living room.

If you MUST have a kitchen diner, carry on househunting, this isn't the house for you.

I lived in an end terrace like this.I never thought of the room next to the kitchen as a dining room I had an extending table on the wall opposite the window.There was a fire in the room so bookcases on either side and some comfy chairs.I put the TV in the lounge and used it in the evening.If I'd had the money I would have put a glass door where the window in the dining room is.
It's nice to have a grown up space to relax,no toys,paint etc.

My grandma had a house this layout. She used the room marked as dining as a lounge and put the table up in the middle of it for food! The front room was a playroom.

When we lived in a house like this we used it as your floor plan suggests. It was worse for us though as the stairs also came
Off the dining room so 3 out of 4 walls had doors/stairs on them. We simply got a table that we could fold down so it was easier to walk around.

I can't see how you would "waste" a room?

I know what you mean OP, I would not buy that house as i feel a large kitchen/dining room is essential.

Look for another house

In my small Victorian terrace house the wall between the kitchen and dining room has been opened up (see pic) so I still have a galley kitchen but it feels so much more spacious. The "dining room" is big enough for table and chairs, 2 dressers and a sofa. The separate front room is the TV/reading room.

You don't have to but if you post a link to the house or post the pictures it might help some of us give you ideas etc

You need to be happy ultimately and if this house doesn't that's ok! You will find something eventually.

That's exactly the same layout as mine. It looks great fourquenelles and so much more spacious than my dining room/kitchen entrance. Our door is just to the left as you walk in the kitchen. Looks much better at the end.

If in your budget & the area you can only get terraces, and the usual terrace layout feels small and pony to you, but this one does not, them but this house.

Seriously- end terrace, next to open space, private yard, spacious inside.
This is the house for you.

You can't have a kitchen-diner in the area you want at a price you can afford. So you need the next best thing and this is it.

As others have said, you'll see that it's really not radically different from a kitchen diner anyway - take off the door, maybe widen the opening if it's practical/affordable. But otherwise you're worrying about nothing, really.

You can keep looking for a house with a kitchen diner in your area, but really two-up two-downs aren't going to offer you this generally speaking, so it may be a long wait!

Try to visualise it in use!
I too prefer kitchen/diners, but this is adjacent to your kitchen which really helps. You can eat in a nice peaceful room with the detritus out of sight in the kitchen. It is a perfect place for your daughter to do her homework and for you both to study/paint/draw/craft away from the distraction of the TV, with plenty of space, in a good position posturally, and without having to clear away every 5 minutes (assuming a bistro table or breakfast bar in the kitchen).
Fantastic for entertaining too!

Fourquenelles photo shows how beautifully it can work!

@fourquenelles that is just lovely!

The way you have used the same flooring, running lengthwise down the room and opened up the wall brings it together as one room. I really don't see this as significantly different o a modern 'kitchen diner'.

Some of th comments on here are really horrible.

The OP is young and hasn't done this before. She is asking a question.

OP - as others have said (some nicer than others) it is actually a very common layout. It seems as if your friend might be a bit unusual in not using her living room at all.

But in your OP you mentioned a bed and a computer. Lots of people, have a computer in the living room. You could get a sofa bed which gives you the option of using it as a living room too.

If you think you would live more in the kitchen and dining room you could have it as a playroom for your DD.

There are lots of options.

I just had to join to comment on this thread! I am in my twenties by myself in a property with that EXACT layout - I really like it (and I went looking for a separate dining room rather than open plan living space). The 'dining room' is pretty much my 'day room' as in I work from it and eat at an expandable table pushed against the east wall - which can come out as a proper dining table if I need it too, but there is also a small sofa against the south wall and a coffee table in front of it where I can slouch/ cats can sit on and where people can sit if they come over. Then the front room is my 'retiring room' of sorts, it's really nice and cosy and I go in there to read/watch TV and I have a big comfy sofa in there that can be slept on if I have a few overnight guests. It takes literally 4 seconds to get up from the table in the dining room to get to the kitchen so it effectively acts like a kitchen table. No problems whatsoever.

That looks terrific fourquenelles!

I'd get a door into the lounge from the hallway.

I've seen similar on a kirstie/phil program recently. They turned the middle room into a large kitchen diner. And the rear room they spilt into a playroom/utility.
I liked what they'd done.

Also I like having a door between the kitchen/dining area as I can shut the kitchen door if there's any particularly kitcheny smells or if I don't want to look at the washing up.

If you want a completely separate kitchen diner, you could do what fourquenelles has suggested and also remove the wall to the hallway in the front room and use the front room as a living room. It depends how much you want the front room to be used all the time or as a guest room for your parents. Rooms are often bigger than you imagine once you put the furniture inside. Dh and I have done floor plans on squared paper to see just how much space there is.

Thanks for the compliments, not my doing but the person I bought from who did the renovations. I saw 11 (eleven) 2/3 bedroom Victorian terrace houses in 1 day due to a chain collapse. They all had slightly different layouts from completely open plan with open stairs to 3 separate rooms but I loved this one even though I have to go through the 2nd bedroom to the bathroom. Nowhere is perfect and when I win the lottery I'll get the stairs turned around that'll be never then

OP your house sounds lovely and you have the flexibility to use the rooms in which ever way suits your family as it grows. Good luck!

665 even if it's not complicated in a specific set of circumstances, it's not necessarily economical, in the long term. Our house is a similar footprint to the one in the OP and the neighbours have done a simple extension (which we have to) like in the OP, but then built another bedroom on top. They've since tried twice, over the past decade, to sell, but can't get a price that would pay off the loan they needed to take out to do the work. They're needing £110K+ on a block where the 2 bed houses that theirs originally was sell for more like £50-75K.

So, even if OP could find the money down the back of the sofa to do that sort of work (in which case they could probably afford a house which ticked more of their boxes, in the first place) it might be a bad investment, particularly if they found themselves needing to move at any point in the next decade.

we have, too, not to - ours is just single storey.