Third bedroom off the second

[Misty9]

Nearly every house in my budget is a terrace in this configuration. How does it work with two kids though?! Is it really workable to have one sleeping in a room off the other? And one is usually much smaller than the other too. Or do people only put nurseries and walk in wardrobes in these rooms? It seems so impractical.

I should clarify that dc are different sexes so will need separate rooms within 2-3 years.

Are there any floor plans we can look at?

Very impractical IMO. As a kid I'd have hated this. Keep looking

But that's what I'm wondering - who does buy these houses?! And how do they use them?

It’s a fairly common lay out here too. Most people use the 3rd bedroom as a study or dressing room.

Very impractical for a family.
People use them as a study (or hobby room or gaming room or something) rather than a bedroom.
I mean, if the alternative is sharing one room, then most dc would prefer it, but it's not ideal.

I lived in a student house where the only bathroom and toilet was off a bedroom. We had to turn that into the living room. No idea how a family would make that household work.

Can you create a corridor from the hall through the 2nd bedroom to the 3rd? So they are separated?

Sometimes it's possible to create a corridor, it leaves one bedroom smaller, but gives you a useable third room. The key is whether the stairs come out on the right side of the house.

It would work as a configuration for people with one child perfectly though. Child in the adjoining room when they are a toddler, when they get older you either have the third room as a study or a dressing room or something.

It's far from ideal though and will most definitely affect the price. I have seen enough episodes of "homes under the hammer" to know that people often deal with this by creating a corridor and a new door, but the downside is that you compromise the size of both of the bedrooms affected.

We have this. Has worked fine for 10years - initially as a couple when the 3rd bedroom was a dumping ground, then office, then more wardrobe. Baby 1 came and it was a nursery. Now baby 2 is coming and we are moving.

Downsides - our spare room is the one that leads to the nursery. Great for family - child jumps into bed with them rather than waking us 😂. We tend to move him into a blow up bed in our room if non family stay though.

Our rooms are big, and this is a common setup here. Making a corridor would need the stairs to be flipped (to run rightto left rather than left to right) so we ruled that out early on.

It’s a common terrace set up round our way. Our house sold over asking within a week. The one 2 down that has the only bathroom/toilet in that space has been on the market 5 months now....

So... don’t rule it out if the house is good in other ways. Don’t expect it to be worth the same as a “proper” 3 bed house though.

We reconfigured our flat recently to add a bedroom, and initially wanted one room off another. We were told that it doesn't pass current building regs for escape plans, and it wouldn't be classed as an extra bedroom if it doesn't have its own entrance from a hallway. We had to cut into the existing rooms to make a new corridor to really get the extra bedroom.

Yeah that’s never 3 useful bedrooms.

Study, wardrobes, ensuite

Kaniel that's interesting as I wondered about it actually being able to classed as a bedroom with no separate access.

SinkyMalinks I don't want to rule them out as it's 80% of the housing stock in the area and budget I want - but I can't work out how it could work with 2 dc of different sexes? Unless I slept downstairs? I did wonder about putting them together for a bit and converting the loft if doable. But that's extra money and work.

So most people with two dc look to move out of these houses, esp as dc get older? Lots of properties don't show pictures of the smallest room, and the ones which do show it as a nursery or office usually.

Can you show us a floor plan? It might be an easy job.

Is the other bedroom (the non-adjoining one) big enough to split into two single bedrooms? Then you could have the bedroom + ensuite / wardrobe / sewing room of my dreams?

Building regs only apply to new builds though. If your house was built with one bedroom leading off the other and it has been that way forever, building regs can't require you to change it. They can only say that any new builds or new alterations have to have a different configuration.

I grew up in a house like this and it was a fucking nightmare. I’m female, my brother was a few years younger and in the adjoining room. No privacy, my stuff got stolen, all his little friends traipsing through my bedroom, I got screamed at for “not letting him in his room” if I asked for 5 minutes to put clothes on etc etc.

We have this because we moved int pour very old cottage with one small child and ended up with three . So after a couple of yrs of the eldest two sharing a room, we divided the biggest room In two with a partition wall. Dd (14) now has to go through ds (16) room to get to hers. It’s been totally fine.

On programmes like Homes Under the Hammer these rooms are always turned into bathroom/study/wardrobe or the layout reconfigured to put a corridor in.

We have this arrangement in our old cottage, which we have recently sold (fingers crossed). When we met our lovely purchasers, I said you could always put a corridor in, but they said how much they loved the current arrangement (we have it set up as a study). We do have three other bedrooms though.

This is a fairly bog standard example www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/fullscreen/view-floorplan.html?propertyId=79527314

@Misty9 yup, same as I grew up in.

Sorry, the only way to sort that one would be to turn the stairs around, so they start in the dining room under stair cupboard, and end on the opposite side of the house. That would let you build a stud wall in the second bedroom. It can be done, but it isn't a cheap job.

That particular one isn't the house I would want but I'm trying to work out whether I need to discount those type of houses altogether and stay renting in one