What do you think of this house layout?

[watchingwaiting87]

My husband and I are hoping to buy a Victorian house... This one has come on today, but am trying to get my head around the layout. Link below and floorplan attached.

www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-71653100.html

We are planning to start a family - do you think it's important to have kids and parents bedrooms on the same floor? If so looks like we may have to sleep on lower ground, in current configuration.

Would a dining room/kitchen and lounge on different floors be a pain, do you think?

Was wondering about making basement level a kitchen/diner, then one big lounge on ground floor but then we'd lose a whole bedroom

Any thoughts or ideas on how we could potentially reconfigure the space would be really appreciated.

Though think I might have just talked myself out of viewing it... my head hurts!

I think for small children/babies, not being on the same floor would be a pain. DH grew up in a house with this kind of configuration but they were older when they moved there. I also found they didn't use the living room on the first floor that much - even though it was beautiful - tended to live in the kitchen. For small children, you'd have to turn the dining room into a family room to be able to cook dinner/have kids playing.

I would say that was 2 flats. The lower ground floor has a separate entrance, which wouldn't be safe for sleeping small children in.

Various living rooms on different floors would be great with older kids.

I'd use the lower ground as living room and playroom and make the first floor sitting room a huge master bedroom.

Thanks guys, really useful points!

I’d turn the top two floors into the bedrooms. Live on the first floor and have an extra lounge and guest room on the lower ground. You wouldn’t want the children that far away.

Yes Laineymc7 that’s what I was thinking, lower ground as dining room/second living room and the two upper floors as the bedrooms

Just because the current owners use the rooms one way doesn’t mean you have to :)

I grew up in a house like this and I loved the space I had all to myself. But I was about 8.

I would think you’d want to be on the same floor with young children/babies but you could do that with the first floor or put a stud wall in the top bedroom to get additional bedrooms.

Beautiful house by the way.

Well I'd add a kitchen/living room area in the bottom floor and rent it out

The top floor bedroom would be fine for you to share with a baby for the first year -

But that's lots of stairs to vacuum

Upper ground, kitchen & diner/family room, lower ground Play room & sitting room
First floor bedrooms
Second floor guest room

Reconfigure use of rooms as family grows/ages

Thanks so much, all, loads of great ideas. I've become a little overexcited and been working out potential new floorplans on Photoshop like a completely normal person

GreenTulips - hadn't thought about the vacuuming... yikes!

Whatdoiladymcbeth - Thank you for kind words... hope it's as nice in person and they haven't used one of those crazy lenses that makes everything look thrice the size

I agree with others' thoughts on how you could make the lay out work

What's behind the garden, though? Photo 14 suggests it's a school or an office

This house would be really hard work if you had young children. All those steps just to get in and out - exhausting and risky - cant imagine hoiking a couple of toddlers, car seats, scooters, pushchairs up and down and not having garden with a bit of grass for play equipment. A safe out door play area directly off the kitchen works best. Fine house for teenagers.

We used to live in a period house and running up and down the stairs drove me bananas. No matter how charming the house, I'd still go for sth over 2 levels.

I have a three storey house with a living room, kitchen and garden on the first floor (it’s built into the mountain). It’s hard work.

I have two young children and it usually involves helping a three year old up stairs with the baby under my arm and then leaving them on the landing while I run downstairs to cart up all our stuff/shopping.

I like the space but we have said that our next house will be a more conventional layout. We don’t use an entire floor of our house in the night because our children would be sleeping two floors away and it doesn’t feel comfortable, we don’t use it in the day because it’s just too hard to get us all up and down stairs so much.

We live in a bungalow - plug the vacuum in the hall and I can do the whole house - I hate stairs if you haven't worked that one out