Making downstairs completely open plan

[pinkyshirt]

We are considering changing our ground floor from a small front room (14x11), small utility room and separate kitchen (13x11) to a ground floor with sq footage of 456 (a lot of room is taken up with the hallway and stairs. Is this a terrible idea?

Was wondering if anyone has done this. The living accommodation now is ok but so much space is wasted in the hallway. We are in south east and also wondering how much we might be looking at having to spend for it.

I’d knock the kitchen into the hall as a dining/living kitchen and keep the front room separate as a cosy quiet snug.

We have two spaces downstairs with glass doors between and that works for us. No way would I want only one for noise reasons.

I've just moved house, mainly to get away from open plan. I hated it. Smells from the kitchen, noise from everywhere, heating it all nightmare, no wall space, everyone in the same room regardless of what you're doing, hearing the dishwasher of an evening, no curling up in a cosy lounge, noisy teenagers playing a game at the table while I'm trying to watch TV, I could go on. My advice, dont spend your money on a house that ultimately will never be the exact way you want it. Put that money/equity towards buying something that already ticks the boxes. We spent about 30k on ours over a few years and ultimately moved house, probably recouping a very small percentage of that in our sale price.

Have no tape measure I think someone’s eaten it or something! I can work out from a sq footage Calc from years ago that it is about 96 sq ft that doesn’t really mean much to me though.

Our porch is right next to next doors fence. Not sure if we can extend that much. The ideas are good though and interesting to hear so many negative experiences of open plan

If your first measurements of each are across the width of the house it'll be about 13 - 8 feet minus a few more inches for the depth of the internal wall, so a little under 5 feet. Does that sound about right?

Yup, others will disagree but I think combining utility, kitchen and odd bit of corridor could improve the flow enormously and really make the house feel nice and modern. The WM and DW noise would still be separated from the main living area but the kitchen would feel more connected to the living room.

Could you get a downstairs loo in under the stairs, maybe borrowing some of the utility of you need to? And make up for lost storage with lots of tall cupboards in the kitchen.