Would you buy a house with a toilet in an open-plan room?

[lostinspace00]

Hope to find some sensible opinions here before I (possibly) waste loads of money (and so sorry i just posted this on an existing thread by mistake).

My house has a separate dining room and kitchen with a hallway between the two leading to a toilet. I want to knock the walls down to create one large room but keep the toilet as it’s very useful. To cover all bases:
1 no I can’t afford to put the toilet anywhere else it would make the job too expensive

1. I want to keep the toilet (it’s a shower too) rather than get rid of it as it’s useful.

would you buy a house with a toilet in the middle of a big open plan room?

I’ve created some excellent architectural designs to show you what I mean (by excellent I mean a bit shit)

Thank you to anyone who can be bothered to respond

[image removed by MNHQ at OP's request]

This is acceptable with walk in/out via the utility. You wouldn't need to move the toilet.
I saw few houses with toilets opening into kitchen/dining/living room and we did not even go view them

If you are going to make a laundry/utility/bigger fridge/freezer place for hoover etc. it will save on cupboard space in the main kitchen.
I would perhaps do an island for cooking and eating etc which would give you more work surface.

Or put in pocket doors that slide open to reveal the laundry utility space and have separate pocket doors for the toilet and washbasin

Yes, it's perfectly legal. The only rule is that the toilet must have a basin in it if connected to a kitchen.

No. I'd knock through and put a utlity room and shower with loo along one end of the room, leaving a rectangular open plan kitchen diner. Or, if it's much cheaper, extend the loo & shower to add on a utility/boot room along that wall, with the doors on the sides, not facing the overall room.

I wouldn’t like to be using loo when others in the room - like visitors etc
plus if I was a visitor I wouldn’t like to use it

Building Regs in England and Wales now consider good mechanical ventilation with an over run is adequate for toilets to open onto the kichen. But most people who have lived the situation, that I have met, wouldn't agree someone having a shit next to you preparing the salad works. Even separated by a nice flimsy stud partition. They always use the other toilet when someone is in the kitchen.

before the rules changed, the rule was (and this is the bit I remember from designing home adaptations some 20+ years ago) that if the house was already like it, you could keep it like it, but you couldn't change it to be like it. That only applied to kitchens, en suites were allowed.

Lots of homes don't have second toilets - we don't.

Our bathroom (and only toilet) is directly off our kitchen.

I don't think that's the case anymore. We've stayed in a new build with a toilet off the kitchen.

Crazy tbh!

It would put me off.

Also, if you have another loo upstairs (whether as part of the bathroom or a separate loo), I think I'd still want to keep the downstairs loo.

Our first house had only one loo and that was in the bathroom. Our current house has a loo in the bathroom (upstairs) and a loo downstairs off the hall and I would not want to be without it, especially for visitors, children and elderly or infirm relatives. Some of the houses in my road that were built around the same time as this one (nearly 50 years ago) were also built with a shower in their downstairs loo, which is even better.

We have a bathroom (toilet & shower) right at the end of our kitchen/diner/family room. It's probably about 18ft from the kitchen section and is next to a sofa and tv. It's really unobtrusive. It has a window etc and good ventilation.

If people don't want to go in there they can just go upstairs?

@lostinspace00 you're really not helping yourself by repeatedly putting up plans that aren't to scale!

Where in your floor plan is the shower that you say is currently in the downstairs loo at the moment? Is the side kitchen window shown to scale? Is the outside door off the kitchen shown to scale?

In theory you could do something to extend a utility along the back wall with a pocket door; get a washer & dryer stack in there; have a cupboard for mop/ironing board/hoover etc beside washer stack; plenty of coat hooks & shoe racks; and potentially even some pantry/food storage. Plus a new door sideways into the shower/loo from the utility.

In practice, I expect you'd have to completely replumb the shower & loo to have a side door instead of front door into the space. And it looks like your large kitchen window starts too close to the back wall to make a utility simple, as it would probably also end up with some weird diagonal wall/hard to use space in the corner because you can't get a straight wall without cutting off the existing window.

Which then makes sense of your comments that it would cost too much.

Why in the name of god didn't you talk this all through with your builder BEFORE booking the work in? Or take it to your local Howdons/Wren/Wickes for ideas on how to make the most of the total space, rather than ending up with the world's weirdest feature loo?!? Their design services are usually free & they could have come up with half a dozen better ideas before you committed to any cost 🤷🏼‍♀️

Knock down walls in haste, repent at leisure???

You assuming she is in England or Wales. In Scotland and Northern Ireland she does legally. So maybe clarify what jurisdiction you are talking about before critising others. And I didn't say she legally required it. I ssid she needs it. And you do. If you don't do it, it doesn't work. Nobody uses it. Odours are not good.

That's fair enough if you have no options, but OP has 2 other toilets.

I once viewed a house that had a very damp and neglected 2-room annexe. There was no kitchen area, just a large open space with a separate bathroom. One of the bathroom walls had a serving hatch installed right beside the toilet...

The mind boggles....was it for uninterrupted box set binge viewing? To keep the convo with guests flowing? To pass snacks/books/more toilet paper in? Just too funny, we cracked up and the poor estate agent (who was on his first day with that particular firm) had no words.

No. for the same reasons that you don't want to move it.
If I did buy it I'd want to do that work, and I'd add the cost of that into my reckoning.. and all the upheaval entailed.

One door is fine, but you need a hand wash basin in the loo room.

I have two friends who have done this and it’s awful. They have a dining room table sat outside the toilet door , so there’s no privacy .

Not sure if you can get rid of the only downstairs toilet (Building regs part M). Whatever you do check that the walls you want to remove are not structural and see if you need Building regulation approval before starting work.

Yeah, I was under the impression that you can't go from having a downstairs toilet to no downstairs toilet.

You can give an opinion without being so rude. Use some manners.

No. I would leave it as it is.

I’d keep the toilet and shower where it is but make a utility off to the right (currently where your door out from the kitchen is) and move the door to the side vs bottom of that toilet room). That would connect well to the outside, and keep a neat and intentional room as well as making the kitchen then seem like a more intentional space. I’d also be tempted to add a door from kitchen to family room and from under the stairs vs the centre of the room if space permitted.

There are planning laws about having a toilet off a kitchen I believe…