Apologies if this is a bit of a long and ramble - I have multiple issues which are all crossing over each other...
DH and I moved into our bungalow last year. The house had two bathrooms, the original one and one that had been converted from the smallest bedroom. Neither bathroom was safe for DH, who is disabled, so we needed to convert one to a wet room asap. We converted the larger one (the former bedroom).
I’ve been having trouble feeling settled in the new house/area and I think this is, in part, down to the fact that the layout just doesn’t feel right so it doesn’t feel like the house works properly. It’s a really lovely house - very pretty detached 1930s - with a very nice overall feel. The remaining two bedrooms are doubles but not especially big ones, there’s a lot of living space - a 1970s living room extension running along the back of the house, which is open plan to a lovely dining room and semi-open plan to the kitchen - and then another sitting room/snug which we love. The kitchen is quite small and very awkward with barely any work surface, only wall cupboards (the floor units are just sink unit, built under freezer, built under fridge and dishwasher) not a single drawer anywhere but there is a proper pantry.
So, we have a weird imbalance between lots of living space and two bathrooms but only two bedrooms and a small, awkward kitchen.
DH has a couple of hobbies that require space. In our last house he had a dedicated room for this. The plan had been to convert an outside workshop here into a proper room as a man-cave for him but his condition has worsened rapidly over the last few months and it’s now impractical and unsafe to expect him to go outside to use it. His hobby stuff is now squished into a corner of the spare bedroom which isn’t ideal for him or when we have friends and family staying.
It occurred to me last week that the one major thing we’ve done here is the exact wrong thing. Rather than renovating the larger bathroom we should have converted it back to a normal room. This would have given DH a lovely study overlooking the garden where he could have really enjoyed his hobbies.
We could have then kept the original bathroom, split the existing kitchen in two - half wet room, half utility, moved the kitchen into the rear sitting room creating a kitchen with seating area open to the dining room and retained the separate snug.
I wouldn’t feel so bad about the mistake if the wet room was perfect for DH but it’s actually a bit too big and he can’t reach safely from one handle to the next. It’s fine for the shower but tricky to get to the loo and then to the sink so he tends to use the original bathroom when he uses the loo and the new one for the shower.
I can’t get the ‘this is what we should have done’ plan out of my head
On the one hand I know it would be utter madness to rip out a virtually new bathroom and move it - a shameful waste of money and the whole moving the kitchen etc might well be too costly anyway (moving services, making some windows smaller to fit units etc etc)
On the other hand I think if we did it the house would then work for us so much better. Due to DH’s disability we both spend more time at home than most. We might feel more settled - and if we didn’t I suspect the new layout would appeal to more potential buyers.
It’s stopping me getting on with any other improvements - for example trying to make the kitchen a bit better as I don’t want to spend more money going down the wrong route.
I feel embarrassed even contemplating doing it - would anyone out there even entertain this idea?
Thanks to anyone who made it to the end of that 