What could you do with this layout?

[Roseybee10]

We have found a house we really like, in the area we want with a cracking garden and the four bedrooms we want.
We just don't love the downstairs as it lacks 'flow' and although it's a big house, it feels small because of the layout.

We're trying to figure out options before we put an offer in of what we could do to improve the layout in time.

We've thought about converting the garage to give us a family room as the living room is quite small but the door into the conversion would need to be in the living room as there's no way to access it from the hall.

We're also thinking of knocking the kitchen into the dining room to have a large kitchen diner and possibly extending the living room to the side.

We would prefer not to extend back if possible as it would eat into the amazing garden.

My other idea was to knock the hall into the dining room to make that our living room and then have a big kitchen diner at the back but then the door to the toilet would be in the living room which might not be very nice.

Just looking for some outside perspective on it.

I would have the current dining room as a cosy sitting room.Then keep the kitchen where it is and knock through to the current lounge, making the back of the house a large kitchen/diner opening into garden (poss with sofas too).
If you need the space you could make the garage into a playroom/den opening into the dining bit of the kitchen/diner.

The current dining room is really too small to have as a sitting room. Sorry I should have said that, it would be the ideal solution.
It's only 8ft wide.

What Katy said - knock through the lounge and kitchen to make one living kitchen across the back of the house. Keep dining room as formal sitting or snug room. I'd keep the garage as is. So hand for storage.

I don't think that's too small..what do you need in there apart from a comfy sofa and a coffee table, possibly a TV?

Ps use the plumbing from the toilet to plumb in your washing machine into the garage and have your utilities in there.. Put a personal door in the hallway for the garage.

It's really tiny. We've got two kids already and if we had another or had anyone in I don't know where we'd put them.

There isn't anywhere to put a door through from the hall unfortunately or that would be ideal. It's a shame about where the stairs are really as they limit options.

The other thing I thought of was adding a porch with a door to downstairs toilet which would allow us to open the hall into the dining room?

Could you really not lose the hall cupboard, make the downstairs loo a bit smaller and put a door to the garage there?

Just thinking about things logically - if the downstairs is not right and can't be successfully changed around then is it really the house for you? It's all very well having a fantastic garden, but how much use would you get of it in this country compared with the use the downstairs living space will get?

That's not too small- you just have to rethink what a sitting room is. Our house is huge, but our "sitting room" is only 10 x8. It has one big sofa, a rug on the floor, a fireplace and a TV/wii. We only really use it for TV watching and the kids sit in there on their laptops. All our "living" goes on in the big kitchen/diner/family room, which has an island unit, dining table and sofa. It actually wonderful to have the main focus of family life in a room which isn't dominated by a TV, and great to be able to shut kids and electronics away in a separate room where they aren't disturbing everyone as they get older. If you did make that room the TV room, you could knock through the kitchen/living room into a big space, and even turn the garage, or part of it if you wanted to keep some storage space, into a sitting area in there

I would square off the hall first of all so that it is an upside down U shape - with the top end of the U starting where the dividing line between the kitchen and the lounge is now.

I would then put a little loo in between the kitchen and the lounge. The door into the loo would be facing you as you came in the front door, and the door into the lounge would be to the left of the stairs as you face them. I'd then get rid of where the downstairs loo is now, and put a door into that space, into the newly converted garage.

I'd then knock through between the kitchen and the dining room and have a doorway from the hall where the dining room wall starts to bend in.

Obviously thats all without any regard to where the soil pipe is, how much structural work would be involved - just making use of the space!

New walls red, knocked down walls blue, new doorways black!! Apologies for the lack of computer drawing ability!!

Wowfudge - I get what you're saying but we've been looking for almost a year and the 'perfect House' hasn't come up so we're feeling that we really need to start compromising on something in order to move.

The garden is very important to us as we have two young kids who love being outside so as long as it's not gale force winds etx they'll be out playing.

Thanks for the suggestions guys, definitely giving us ideas about what we could do to make it more workable for us. I do like the idea of a big kitchen diner living area although hubby isn't as keen. I'll need to work on him I think.

Possibly could do the big kitchen diner living space at back and then in five years time have a porch added with access to the garage as a second sitting room/playroom and knock the wall down between hall and current dining area. X

I think you need to look at some open plan furniture, you could really zone the back end kitchen, breakfast bar, corner sofas etc .. look fab.

Yeh thinking of we had a dining table breadth wise instead of long ways it would give us more living space and then a corner couch. If we had more people over they could sit on the dining chairs and it could work well for entertaining.

Some cosy arm chairs in the small room at the front and a nice table could work or we could always just make that a toy room initially.

Hubby, as predicted, is not on board.
If something isn't his idea then he's a stubborn twat. Off to drink wine :-(
Never realised house buying could be so stressful as we can't agree on anything.

Knock kitchen and lounge in together as kitchen diner then convert garage and knock through into kitchen diner for an open plan kitchen/dining/family room area. You could always keep a small bit of garage for storage and a utility area. You could then move the doors in the hallway as you'd only need one entrance into the big room.

The dining room would make a great playroom or snug area.

I would move the toilet into the garage - not far from the existing toilet so shouldn't be too hard in terms of soil pipes etc. Then use some of the garage for a laundry room, some for storage and some to add to the existing lounge/ as a snug.

I would then open up the sitting room to the hallway as you said, and make a large kitchen/family room across the back.

We're not dissimilar other than garage isn't integral, we have another lounge there, but we've opened the kitchen and dining room up. Works.for us as you had to enter the.dining room via the lounge. Was just a hatch from kitchen so we never used the room.
I've actually moved the dining table into the lounge as its 25 by 21 foot square and can take it.
I'm right now.on a triple recliner sofa in the kitchen diner chilling