To want all 3 bedrooms on the same floor?

[McFrostyNuts]

Ok, so my partner and I and wanting to buy a 2 bed bungalow, do it up and sell on. It needs complete re-decoration, new kitchen, bathroom, carpets (you get the idea). It does have a partial loft conversion, but its not 'official' so can't be called a bedroom, and quite frankly, its been done crudely and will need ripping our and starting again anyway. We would put an extension on the back to make a bigger kitchen/day space.

Heres the problem. My partner wants to keep the bedroom upstairs and the 2 downstairs, but I think its really important to keep the bedrooms together in order to maximise our market when selling.

With the extension, it would be easy to turn the lounge into the third bedroom, the dinning room would turn into the lounge and lead onto the extension where the kitchen and new dinning space would be.

Is it unreasonable to think that families, especially with young children, wouldn't want a child on there own upstairs, or both children on their own downstairs? Or am I just being precious?

We've got a bungalow with an upstairs bedroom/ensuite in the attic. We love it. We call it the control room. It's our sanctuary when there's family kicking off downstairs. And yes, if we had dc, a baby monitor would be fine.

With 2 young dc, and one who's a bad sleeper, there's no way I wouldn't want to be on the same floor as them.

Not only for the general nighttime and listening out, but if they're ill, if there's a fire and also in the mornings when everyone is getting ready, all the toing and froing and for me getting ready while they play in their rooms... definitely a deal breaker for me.

I wouldn’t personally buy it if I wasn’t to be sleeping on the same floor as my DD.
My BIL and SIL have 1 room downstairs and 2 upstairs and they don’t seem to mind being away from the kids (one of them is 2 so still very young).
My reason being is that I couldn’t get to DD quick enough if needed to and she also wouldn’t be able to get to us if she has a bad dream (you really wouldn’t want to leave the stair gate open for sleepy children).
If your planning on selling it anyway can’t you get someone in to value it with the 2 different layouts (homes under the hammer style) to see which would bring you the biggest return?

Our kids have always been on a different floor from us. When babies I took the view that a cry that didn’t wake us up only upstairs would not be a cry that needed tending to. I agree with pp too that from teenage years it’s a massive advantage rather than any kind d of disadvantage.

It's fine to have children on a different floor from around the age of 8, and with teenagers it's a positive bonus.

Why is 8 the holy grail? I don’t understand this need to get to children within 10 seconds of waking. No wonder so many people have kids who don’t sleep through when they can’t even murmur without someone rushing in and getting amongst it.

Why not have an open plan kitchen/diner/living area and the 3 bedrooms on the ground floor, then have the top floor as a separate grown up sitting room/sanctuary/home office? I’d snap up something like that.

We have our 2 year old on a different floor to us, we use a baby monitor and it doesn't bother us at all. In an ideal world I'd have all the bedrooms on the same floor, but it wouldn't put me off a house

What LellyMcKelly says makes sense. In a 3 bed family house, people do expect more than 1 living area. So the upstairs would lend itself well to being that extra room.

I think an upstairs room is a bonus too. I’d let the next people “ see the potential” and do it themselves though.
I’d extend as you plan and market it as three bedroom with an extra study. It’s easier to do a nice eternal extension ( especially if downstairs needs work anyway) than more planning regs, having to put in a decent staircase in and rip stuff out internally for what by the sounds of it is only a small room.
However if you are selling on it purely comes down to costs for the work versus potential profit so get quotes for both and see what leaves you better off.

If you're hoping to attract a range of buyers, I would have all three bedrooms on the same floor (though there are people who don't like the idea of ground floor bedrooms, so you've lost them, regardless) Turn the loft room into a really good family room. If you have the budget to put a shower room in the loft, do that, then you can market it as a flexible space which can be used as a guest room.

You might not attract young families into a bungalow (though there is a niche where families have disabled children, whether physical or neurological and wanting to minimise usage of stairs) but they can be attractive to families of teens.

Like a PP, we have a dormer bungalow. In our case, we have a ig kitchen diner and 2 good sized reception rooms plus a bathroom downstairs. Upstairs we have 3 double bedrooms (none massive, but all big enough) plus a shower room. We comfortably lived completely downstairs for the first 4-5 months in the house because the roof leaked like a sieve and the upstairs rooms were uninhabitable. Our long term plan is that, when I can't manage the dodgy curvy staircase any more, to live out our old age all downstairs (just like many of our elderly neighbours, it turns out!) More of a forever home than a more top heavy house would be.

With very young children I wouldn’t even consider sleeping on a separate floor. We looked at a couple of houses that were 3 storeys with a huge master at the top. Beautiful houses but for a young family just not practical. A family with teenagers though would probably love having that distance and privacy.

My in laws bought a huge bungalow when my husband was quite young they converted the upstairs into 3 bedrooms and a bathroom when he was 8 or so. His parents had a big bedroom downstairs and my husband and his siblings had the upstairs. It worked great for them.

It might limit your market a little but there’s plenty of people who wouldn’t mind this sort of setup with bedrooms on different floors.

We're house hunting right now with a two primary age DC. I'm happy for my bedroom to be downstairs and the DC upstairs, but not for the DC to be downstairs unless the layout means they're far from the living room and kitchen, as I don't want to be waking them up.

I guess families with younger DC are more likely to be your target market though as they're more likely to move when the DC are young / expected.

A family with teens would like it OP....or smaller family would like it for an office or den. Our DC are 11 and 14 and we'd love the privacy.

If I was looking at a chalet bungalow I wouldn't expect all the bedrooms to be on one floor tbh.

We are looking atm and immediately disregard any with bedrooms not on the same floor.

You sound inexperienced. Does the current upstairs room have any building regs compliance? I’m guessing not. In which case all of the floor coverings and boarding will need to come up and be inspected. A structural engineer should look at the joists / beams underneath and also fire safety measures on any beams. Compliance of any electrics up there also needed. If you don’t do this, not only do you compromise safety of anyone up there but you will not be able to sell on without the building sign off certificates. Sort that first before you worry about the layout.

It all depends. When we moved into our bungalow it was 3 bedrooms all downstairs (bedrooms at the front, reception rooms at the back). We converted it to a dormer bungalow and it's huge now. Upstairs is two bedrooms (doubles) with a large hallway area and a bathroom. The kids are 12 and 14 so they are up there. Downstairs we have added a porch, changed one of the old bedrooms into a big hall (we just had a corridor before), extended to the back and side so we have a huge lounge and a massive kitchen diner and our old downstairs bathroom is a utility room. A door leads off the hall into another small hallway and our bedroom and our bathroom are off of that. I'm sure it wouldn't appeal to families with little kids but they aren't the only people on the market! I love that the kids are a bit away from us. We can't hear their music and they can't hear us having sex! (very important with teens - I'm still mentally scarred from hearing my parents when I was 14). Also I like the fact that if we stay here longterm and we get old and doddery we don't have to climb stairs at all!

When I had small children I'd have wanted all bedrooms on the same floor. By the time I had teens, bedrooms on a different floor would've been a bonus. So consider your target market for the house.

Our master bedroom is on a different floor to the dcs rooms. They are young - 3year old DS1 (a great sleeper who never stirs) and an 8 month old (nightmare sleeper) and it hasn't been much of a problem for us - DS2 needs to co-sleep anyway so doesn't use his own room much. I can see the separate floor being an issue if we ever decide to sleep train DS2 though.

When my parents downsized they bought a house with exactly the living arrangement you described - their living space and bedroom plus a guest room downstairs, all on one level, then a third bedroom upstairs (ie the other guest room) and some guests liked having that extra space.

I didn’t look at houses with bedrooms on different floors when we moved.

Not many young families would be looking for a bungalow. A bedroom on the top would be beneficial. Your demographic will be an older buyer perhaps who has their uni aged children still come to stay or their grandchildren.

We built our chalet bungalow with a master bedroom on the ground floor and 3 bedrooms up stairs. We moved in when youngest was 20mths. Her room is directly above ours so could hear her if she was crying or calling out no problem. Now they are teens it's great to have the separation. We are also looking forward to our old age as we have everything we need on the ground floor without the need to move in the future. So completely future proofed and sorted.

We’re in different floors - we can hear everything!! Just told DS off as I can hear his iPad still playing!!

No where near as difficult as some are making out!!