AIBU to pick your brains for floor plan/renovation ideas

[MakingPlans21]

If you had this floor plan and needed to create two decent sized bedrooms (one is currently a box room) and a more workable layout for the kitchen and living room for a family with a young child what would you do? The flat is ground floor and so it’s fine to convert windows to doors etc to access front and back gardens. No extensions allowed. Walls can be knocked down. The living room and main bedroom face the shaded side while the kitchen and bathroom are very sunny. So:

1. if anything were possible what would you do? (Just to get the owners thinking out of the box)

2. if the budget were around 10k what would you do?

Excited to hear other people’s ideas...

Ok. So a couple of options. Red would be cheapest:

Red: move the wall in the sitting room to elongate the box room. Swap the sitting room and main bedroom, I think larger living space better than bedroom. Unsure of the scale but might be space to use part of the corridor as a built in closet?

Blue: this would be more expensive. Elongate the box room into the bathroom and reduce the bathroom size to a wet room.

@MahMahMahMahCorona the cupboard has lots of pipes in it (but not the boiler or gas meter or suchlike) in case that makes a difference to things

If this doesn't work....

Thanks for all of the suggestions. She will be over the moon to see things she hadn’t considered. The more the merrier so if you have any more suggestions?

1. Straightforward, cost-effective solution but some people might not like bathroom off of the living room. Wouldn’t bother me if it meant the rest of the space is optimal.

There may be some regs issues with removing the closed-off separate entrance hall but a small lobby by the front door could remedy that.

Some other, more disruptive/costly configuration options...

@ViviPru thank you. What about the box room turned living room not having a window and only being served by the kitchen windows. Any innovative lighting solutions?

@vivipru what kind of costs do you think for the second option on your second floor plan post?

Maybe something like this could work?

@Solina she had considered something along those lines, if I recall our conversations correctly, so I will put this to her along with the other ideas here. Mumsnet is great. I am new here and had a little trouble on another thread with someone just trying to wind me and others up but that must have just been a bad apple. People here are great. Thank you.

Knock the hall, kitchen and box room to open living, living room bed 2 but reduce length of both those rooms from 17 foot to 15 foot to add to the living space.

Yes the bathroom would open to the living space but for a small family flat that is fine Imo. It was not a prob in our 2 bed cottage with bathroom downstairs of living/kitchen.

[quote MakingPlans21]@ViviPru thank you. What about the box room turned living room not having a window and only being served by the kitchen windows. Any innovative lighting solutions?[/quote]
Yeah I didn’t notice the lack of windows in the box room - it’s a problem with the L-shape kitchen-dining-living space concept for sure. I assume a window on that side isn’t an option because it’s attached or similar?

@ViviPru yes window not at all an option. Still appreciate the suggestions, however. If you have any more ideas they are gratefully received.

Any further ideas from Mumsnet? Enjoying this process

Is there no window or possibility of adding a window to the box room? The simplest / cheapest way to get more evenly bedrooms is to switch the sitting room / bedroom 1 so the bedrooms are adjacent then move the dividing wall, but you can’t have a bedroom without a window.

Anything moving pipes/ waste pipes is going to be very costly.

Sorry, I somehow missed the post above about no window option!

I think @Solina ‘s plan is the easiest way to get around lack of window in the box room, but it’d mean running waste water pipes out through the bathroom so that’ll be an additional cost.

Is it cheaper to run waste pipes etc further into a flat that are already there? How much roughly would it cost to switch box room and bathroom round for example?

@Inertia thank you very much for the suggestions by the way. They are for my friend so I plan to show her tomorrow when we go for a walk and possibly a drink of something alcoholic!

Disclaimer: not a plumber, but we’ve had some renovation work done on our house so have had many conversations like this!

The soil pipe coming from the toilet is the tricky issue- it would make sense to swap bathroom and box room to get round the window issue, but you then need to figure out how to run the soil pipe out the bedroom at the right angle to meet the soil stack .

The suggestion from @MahMahMahMahCorona to leave the kitchen and bathroom in situ but knock out the middle of the house to create an open plan living/kitchen would probably be the simplest and most cost-effective solution, possibly moving the walls of the 2 front rooms back a bit.

When you say the cupboard has pipes in, does that mean the cupboard off the kitchen? Do the pipes service other flats above/below? Just wondering whether your friend has checked out any leasehold/ property management requirements if the flat is part of a larger building.

It’d be worth your friend getting a plumber in to look - it might be possible to switch the bathroom and box room positions and run plumbing along the left hand wall behind a false wall, depending on the structure there (chimney breasts?) and outside soil stack position.

If she does that, I would think about rearranging internal walls a little:

• Steal some space from current sitting room so new bathroom (current boxroom) shifts along. Bathroom doesn’t need a window, but does need an extractor so that would need to be taken into account.
• New back bedroom can be made bigger.
• Current sitting room becomes a bedroom.
• Current bedroom one becomes sitting room.
• No change to kitchen.

Thanks all. And no, not pipes to other flats (have just asked). Apparently they are copper pipes but she has no clue what they are for. Apparently the kitchen used to be the bathroom years ago before the family lived there so could be remnants from that? Her partner will explore further later.

New here and not sure what the rules for bumping are. Bump (hope that’s ok)