what to do with this downstairs layout?

[Peachi82]

I'm just leaving our current floor plan here (blue boxes are fireplaces), it's a normal 1930s semi-detached house.
I'm not sure if it works for us or not. I'm in two minds with regards to the kitchen. I kind of like that it isn't open plan (it doesn't smell in the other rooms, the door keeps the baby out) and I kind of don't (it's narrow, we're lacking of storage space). I'm just longing for one room to be a bit bigger where we can have family life.
Many houses in the area have the dining room and lounge knocked through, but I'm also not a fan of these long and narrow rooms with even more alcoves. Both dining room and lounge are also still carpeted. We want to have laminate/engineered wood down, but (that seems to the theme) haven't decided what to do with the (gas)fireplaces that we hardly ever use.

Hit me with your ideas :-D

PS The conservatory leaks...................
PPS Moving is not an option.

Friends of mine with that layout have knocked through kitchen and dining room and extended out the back to create an open plan family kitchen diner and kept the front room separate. They have also managed to put a loo in where the current entrance to your kitchen is. I will see if I can find their floor plan.

I'd knock the kitchen and back room into one, and leave the front room alone.
Cheaper option is to leave kitchen mostly in the same position with an island or peninsula dividing it from dining area . You will also have room for a small family TV area.
Better option but more expensive is to move kitchen to back of the new room (backing on to lounge) Then have dining area garden end right, Family tv area garden end left

When I looked at houses like this, my preferred configuration was to knock through kitchen and dining room. Leave lounge separate. Sometimes the kitchen was made a u shape, meaning you could see across to the dining room but keep kids out.

A variation was to extend , allowing a downs stairs wc and maybe utility to be created out of part of the existing kitchen space and a full open plan living eating cooking space.

Really, it depends what you want and what works for you and your family.

What a great size dining room. The obvious thing to me would be knocking through kitchen and diner, extending the kitchen into the dining room a little with a peninsula to separate the spaces and add work surface. You could block up one of the doors, maybe the kitchen one and run units along that wall.

I think feeding toddlers quickly gets very tiresome when you have separate kitchen and dining, especially when you have to go through 2 doorways every time you need another spoon, or more water, or a cloth.

What’s the conservatory like? Brick built? You could fit a light weight tiled/ insulated roof and make it more useable. Would make a great dinning area or snug.

Your floor plan is the same as ours - except that our conservatory was at the back of the kitchen.

We chose not to extend right across the back as I didn't want to lose light in the dining room (and our garden isn't huge). Instead, we built on the footprint of the conservatory and knocked through to the dining room, creating an L shaped space. I love it - it's so light!

The living room at the front and the dining were knocked into one many years ago. We're going to put in oak/glass bifold doors to make the space separate. The living room faces north so it should borrow light coming in from the back.

We'll be done and dusted in a couple of weeks - it makes such a difference!

Close off door from kitchen into hall. Knock wall between kitchen and dining room down. Reconfigure kitchen to make maximum use of the space (incl. over the doorway you closed off). Have a peninsula unit dividing the kitchen and dining area coming off the back wall of the house.
Consider putting in an understairs loo.
(Friend has this layout but without the conservatory, just a nice patio.) We've got the kitchen where your dining room is with the lounge where your conservatory is and the dining where your kitchen is. Open plan. But that was a big job and all plumbing and electrics needed redoing anyway.)

Assuming you can’t afford a rear extension would do as PPs suggest and do kitchen/diner with separate lounge. Tear down the conservatory.

Could you knock down the conservatory and extend right across the width of those, with skylights in roof and big doors out into garden?

I'd close off your kitchen door, make your current kitchen a utility/laundry, use the current dining room as kitchen and then have sofa and table/chairs in new bit.

Also, I wouldn't knock the two big rooms together. As kids get older, it's lovely to have different rooms to get away from each other.

Thanks very much for your suggestions! I need to play them through in my head and think about what's good for us.

Part of the kitchen and dining room is already an extension (the bit in the kitchen even double story, we have a big bathroom), we were actually thinking of putting 2 velux windows in the little roof at the end of the dining room to get more natural light in (it is quite dark), but haven't gone ahead with this yet as we don't know what to do with the conservatory (keep, re-roof, proper extension? Meaning for the little bit of roof make into a steepled roof or leave it as it is).

With regards to the conservatory: It has dwarf walls, windows with woode frames, a plastic roof. The wood however is quite old and is starting to rot in some places. In heavy rain and wind, it is leaking into it :-( We haven't done anything to it since we moved in 1.5 years ago as we didn't want to spend money on something we might have to get rid of at some point anyway.
It is actually connected to our central heating, but we never have it on as we would heat more of the outside than the actual room. Because the house is already extended, I am not sure if we can go for another extension under permitted development?

We have a 65ft back garden, so anything we do won't take away our outside space.

Having a second toilet and a laundry would be ace. It was things we were looking for when we were looking to buy but couldn't find a house in the area.
We have a quote in to convert the understairs into a small laundry cupboard, so put the washer and dryer underneath and have some space for coats and shoes. This will free up some space in the kitchen for a dishwasher and will move the tumble dryer out of the dining room.

Conservatories are crap anyway, and yours sounds in poor shape and best got rid of.

Extensions are very costly and disruptive, but nice when done!

Like others have suggested I'd knock through the kitchen and dining room, living the living room alone.

Personally, I'd get rid of the conservatory. IMHO they are rarely used, freezing in winter, too hot in summer, make the room behind dingy and always end up leaking.

I would use the understairs to put in a downstairs loo and keep the washing machine/dryer in the new, bigger kitchen made by knocking through to the dining room.

If changing the conservatory to an extension is in budget, moving the kitchen out there and changing the existing kitchen to a bigger utility plus downstairs loo could work really well. I have friends who did similar but put a full width extension on the back for a kitchen diner, and kept the old dining room as a playroom. It's fab. However both are obviously a much bigger spend than your understairs laundry cupboard and knocking a wall down.

We wanted to put in an understairs loo when the original kitchen pantry was. Turned out there wasn't the headroom because of a beam holding the half landing of the stairs in place. Not wanting a hobbit loo or a crick in the neck, we've turned it into a utility cupboard for laundry / hoover / ironing board etc. It works really well.

And yes, I agree keeping the lounge separate. In case we are having more children than we are planning on, we might want to use the lounge as a bedroom for us

The guy we got the quote from to do the laundry under the stairs hasn't come back to us with a date... first he said he can do it in April, now it's maybe May. So we might not even go with him.
The idea with the understairs laundry was more as we thought it's less disruptive than doing the whole downstairs..............

I've played with the floorplan. This would maybe work? I'm not sure though... I would have to carry all the shopping through the whole house (or come through the back door), but it would give us a laundry and a second toilet (it only bugs me that we did the bathroom upstairs last year, but our tiles are no longer available, so I would have to use different tiles, so they won't match. This is awful for my inner monk). It will probably be major expensive, but might add value to the house (especially as it's hard to find a house here with second toilet and laundry).

Anyone know if I can extend onto an extension?

anyone have a rough idea what figure we are looking at with the last idea? we live in the north west.
can I pay with money or is it more like a kidney and part of my liver?

Think the idea of a laundry room where kitchen is in good. Keep some units for storage. Keep living room as is , knock conservatory and build extension to dining room out on its site. Have a nice big kitchen / dining / living room with big doors to garden. Present living room either a grown up room or kids TV room depending on what suits stage of family.
Don't do anything bitty until ye can afford proper extension as it will just annoy you.

I wouldn't be too worried about applying for planning permission. Replacing the existing conservatory should be fairly uncontroversial.

Re the laundry, yes that could work, or use understairs cupboard for the loo and have the laundry opening out onto the hall. That would free up more kitchen wall space for a more efficient kitchen layout. You might even be able to take space for a shower from the bottom left hand corner of current kitchen, and have it open into an understairs cloakroom.

We deliberately chose different upstairs and downstairs bathroom tiles so as not to be too matchy.

I would knock through the kitchen into the dining room, however shorten the dining room to be in line with the wall of the kitchen. I would then separate the new bigger lounge and dining room with French or pocket doors.

Your plan seems to involve a lot of extending which will be very expensive and may lead the house to feel unbalanced. I also think that even with a velux the family space will be gloomy.

I think you could do a huge amount with the space you already have if it was better configured just by knocking through the kitchen and dining room.

Cloakroom understairs would be very tiny. Possible, but very very tiny.
We had planned, with putting the laundry underneath there, to already install all the drainage necessary for an understairs cloakroom, in case we urgently need it because we've become old and frail over night.

I'd take out the conservatory and have a full width extension at the back and then a big L shaped kitchen maybe add a downstairs loo by the stairs where the door to the kitchen is now? Have the entrance to the kitchen through the dining room with some nice doors.

I did what you've done with your 2nd plan, only I did an L shaped kitchen against the adjoining wall to front room (essential to have separate space as kids grow up imo)

So dining space next to kitchen & family space (TV, sofa on LHS, desk on RHS) looking onto garden.

Plumbing being there and close to water pipe from outside (comes in under hall floor & into understairs cupboard) means I can potentially add d/s walk in shower if needed without majorly changing layout.

We now spend all our ti.e as a family in here!

We did similar to you but opted for a galley kitchen in the narrowest part and had utility and downstairs shower room. We have widest part as the main family space with bifolds onto the patio. Works really well.