What would you do with this awful layout?

[HopelessLayout]

Help! This is the ground floor of my apartment. Bedrooms are upstairs. The hallway is huge (relatively) and the sitting room is awkwardly narrow. Any thoughts on how this could be reconfigured to use the overall space better? I'm thinking about taking down the internal walls and starting all over again—possibly even reconfiguring the staircase.

Some considerations are that the stairs going up to the bedrooms have have a wall separating them from the kitchen (fire regs), and there are only three windows on this floor, as shown.

It's doing my head in. Grateful for any suggestions!

Could you look at putting sliding doors on both the staircase & living rooms? The space in the hall could be used as a dining room if that then gives enough room for a small table & chairs, with the narrower portion housing a sideboard, lamps etc. It's a fairly minimum spend that you could easily scrap if you find it doesn't work.

WhereDoesThisToiletGo Why have I never thought of that?!? Thank you!

EileenAlanna Interesting idea, thank you.

Nofilter The bathroom has no window so that space is quite limited in scope.

notatwork Unfortunately that wouldn't be feasible for me as the airing cupboard is full (boiler, hot water storage tank, water softener and loads of pipework).

Thanks again everyone, really appreciate the suggestions.

Are any of the walls structural or just stud?

@Hellbentwellwent I'm not sure. How do I tell? The dividing wall between sitting room and kitchen hallway sounds very solid when I tap on it. The others sound hollow.

hopeless if you’re in a flat and you take out load baring walls you’ll be in a world of pain if your upstairs neighbours start getting cracks. You need to get a builder or structural engineer out to tell you what’s possible. You may be able to take out load bearing walls but you’ll be into big bucks putting in steel beams to redistribute the load and that’s only if it’s passed by building control.

General rule of thumb...

If you tap on a wall and it sounds "hollow" it's a stud wall.

However that's not to say that at some point along it is a supporting steel. That wouldn't mean you couldn't remove the wall, but you'd have to retain a "pillar" with the steel inside.

If your property is a new build it's far more likely that the internal walls are stud.

They are usually configured, not necessarily to maximise layout but to maximise profit to the builder with standard dimensions of materials/kitchen units/doors etc. That's why so many new builds have poor layouts relative to the square footage.

If your appartement is part of a period property then the layout will have been (most likely) designed around load bearing walls.

Tap them and they sound solid.

Gut feel is if the wall between the kitchen and living/dining room sounds solid then it's a supporting wall.

Simply because the layout of your flat is a bit odd. Most developers would have created a kitchen/dinner.

The fact they haven't suggests it was "too expensive" to do so.

It doesn't mean the wall can't be removed. However you'll need a structural engineer and likely bespoke steel/labour to fit it.

Is it hard to say if it's worth it - depends on the value of the property as stands.

Last time I had a bespoke "steel" total costs came in at around £4K. However it's very variable depending on the job.

Great info—thanks.

There is no-one above me, but the flat below has roughly the same layout.

It was a period property (church) converted into flats and definitely poor layout relative, to the square footage with no attempt made to maximize use the spaces. For example I'm certain there is a 2ft void behind the west walls of the kitchen and sitting room.

Quite a few of the flats here have kitchen/diners so that may well be a correct assumption about the supporting wall.

Lots to think about!