Our house needs a complete redesign (pic)

[GeraniumSwimwear]

This is the current layout of the kitchen area. It is so not functioning well. We want to completely redesign it, but finding it hard to envisage it any other way than it is now. We have had two architects come and look, but they haven’t really given many ideas.

The front door is at the bottom of the stairs, and the living room is the same size as the kitchen to the right of the stairs (accessed by a door at bottom of stairs)

There is room to extend out the back, front or side, but we would prefer to keep the same/similar footprint if possible, rather than just adding on and not really ending up with a more workable space.

The back of the house is south facing, so opening up that way seems to make sense. Currently driveway is far away from house, but plan is to bring it up to the side of the house. We must have two entrances - this is a working farmhouse with dogs so there must be a ‘messy’ entrance and a nicer entrance for clean people! There also must be a dog area which makes sense to be in the same zone as messy entrance. There must also be a downstairs loo somewhere. I would like to have doors opening up into the back garden, or at least lots of windows. Space for a decent sized kitchen table plus the odd comfy seat would be great. The building off the back is currently a shower room that we no longer use (shower and basin aren’t drawn in).

Would love to hear any ideas for potential designs.

Could you reconfigure the shower room into a downstairs WC and separate boot room / messy area / somewhere to clean the dogs? Possibly use that as an entrance to maintain a clean area into the kitchen?

I would turn the back room into a utility room/downstairs toilet/mudroom. External door somewhere along the wall where the toilet is.

Knock down the wall that currently separates the top of the kitchen with the room with the dishwasher and sink to make it one big room.
Have a long run of cupboards and counter space along the wall on the left - a mixture of tall floor to ceiling cupboards, integrated fridge freezer, oven, sink, hob, etc. Put more storage (possibly a larder cupboard) where the hob currently is on the right wall. Remove the counter space beside the current hob to free up some floor space.

Put sliding doors/patio doors along back wall where external door currently is and a couple of comfy armchairs to have a view over the garden.

Large kitchen table up the middle of the room (similar to where it currently is).

So ideally it would work well to have doors opening up into the garden where the current shower room is, then you would get a view of the garden from everywhere in the kitchen, and lots of light. Currently the back door is round the corner a bit so doesn’t really let in any light from that side, and you can’t see out without poking your head round. There used to be a door to the lounge on the wall between the stairs and the back door, which we did think of reinstating and then moving the front door to maybe the side of the house or where the front kitchen window is, and having that (darker, north facing) end as the messy zone and then having the kitchen/diner/seating more towards the back, with access to the lounge too. So in theory, guests wouldn’t need to see the stairs or go up there. Currently they arrive at the bottom of the stairs which I’m not too keen on.
The windows in the kitchen are currently too low to have units underneath them, so they would either need to be changed, changed to doors instead, or not have units underneath them.

is that a chimney across the corner?

Is there really an "alcove" bit where the stairs meet the exterior wall? Can you fill that in or extend it out to make a small boot room?

Yes it’s a chimney, but it can go (we don’t light the fire anymore)

Photo shows the area by back door/under stairs. The red door I’ve drawn in is where there used to be a door into the lounge. The wall with the coats on is the dividing wall between lounge and kitchen. Then there is an alcove under the stairs (where pram is currently). This is currently our messy/dog area (evidently )