Your opinions on what we can do with our house please

[Extracurricularfatigue]

We live in a Victorian terrace with a typical layout in most ways. The big front room was divided into a smallish double and a small single, and the bathroom was extended to take a chunk out of the back bedroom, so it’s really two doubles, a large single and small single. We bought it as we wanted those separate rooms and weren’t too fussed about the size when our kids were tiny. The downstairs still has two separate receptions; we used the back one as a ground floor bedroom for a disabled relative but that is no longer required. It’s become a dumping ground and has almost no natural light so not the nicest space. The kitchen at the back is extended so we have room for a table and sofa in there, plus our front living room. We have two bathrooms - one upstairs, one downstairs.

Thank you for anyone still with me! So our problem is that the kids are getting bigger and we feel we’re in a slightly unusual position of having more living space than sleeping. We can’t do a loft conversion for various structural reasons - a surveyor has already confirmed.

Do we:

• try to address the tricky bedroom space by turning the downstairs room into a proper double bedroom, getting a clever lighting person in to make it the best it can be? (And then either turn the tiny single into a study or even get rid of the stud wall and reinstate the big front bedroom.)
• suck up the bedroom situation and knock through downstairs to give us a much bigger living space with more light.

-we also have the option, depending on what we’re spending elsewhere, to get a garden room that could be a playroom or study.

I’d prefer to minimise structural work but am also keen to make the house feel more livable. We’re not planning an imminent move but this won’t be our house forever so obviously we don’t want to do anything a buyer might hate down the road.

So four bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs for how many people and what ages? Are the children likely to live with you for a long time or a short time?

Depends if you need more bedrooms, how you live and the age of your kids. The downstairs room with poor light could be a bedroom as it doesn't need great light - it's there to sleep in. But do you want one of your kids sleeping downstairs? Poor light isn't ideal for a playroom either. When my kids were under 8 they needed a big play area for toys and I liked to keep an eye on them - so I'd plumb for the large knocked through living space, with eg a sofa bed for guests, and keep the 4 bedrooms upstairs. When your kids are older you'll need more rooms and separate spaces to study etc. HTH x

We need more info

How many children/ages

Teens would love a room to have mates round
Older kids don’t need much bedroom space
Clever storage would help or a serious declutter
Garden rooms should be for adults to smoke off too!

Slope - not smoke - but each to their own.

Could you open up the back room downstairs with a wide door, and put a barn door slider over that door? Then use it as a mixed use media/office/toy room.

We have something like that in a darkish, kitchen-adjoining room and it works very well.

Sorry, I was light on details!

Four kids, one sixth form so likely to leave home soon, and has ASD and doesn't socialise very much, the others are all under ten, and mostly coming out of the 'epic levels of plastic shite' stage. Currently the biggest has their own room (the large single), two share one of the double rooms, and one has the tiny single which only has a bed in it. The toys are either in the biggest kid bedroom, or in a corner of the kitchen and/or living room.

We're not massively cluttered, and storage isn't a big problem.

The back room is between the living room and kitchen so can't be opened up. What used to be the back window is now a door into the kitchen (and was a window into a side return when we moved in, so hasn't delivered any real light for a long time).

A garden room would be likely to be used as a study than playroom I think realistically.

As it stands, we have no real space for guests, and if we had a bigger bedroom somewhere it could be used for that (with a temporarily displaced child of course).

I think the fundamental issue is that it feels like we have not brilliant bedrooms and a space that makes no sense, and how might we be able to use one to make the other better!

Can you sketch a plan of the upstairs?

From what you’ve said, I’d turn the downstairs room into a knock-through to living room but with proper doors that can close it off when needed. Make this a study/guest bedroom with the view that when eldest leaves home they give up their bedroom and have this space in holidays.

Then see what can be done to equalise bedroom space upstairs- knocking big room back through but dividing it for 2 DC, you as parents take the smaller double?

This is my inexpert, and not particularly to scale, plan of the house.

And to answer some of the ideas.

A fold back door might be our answer. I’m worried about turfing our eldest out of their room as they are already very under confident and I don’t want them to feel rejected as many people I know have said they did when their parents took over their rooms when they went to uni. On the other hand of course it doesn’t make enormous sense not to use their room more efficiently.

Redividing the big front room might be tricky because of where the doors are: there’s currently a little extra bit of landing taking up what would be part of the little room to allow for doors so we’d have to work out how that might be done.

So eldest is in largest single at the moment? Totally appreciate what you’re saying about not making them feel unwanted, but you have a real need for extra space and other DC have to share, so it’s only fair really that they give up their own room to allow the others the chance of more space. Even if you kept the status quo upstairs I’d be moving them into the smallest bedroom once they weren’t there full time.

When I said re-divide the big front room, I wasn’t really thinking about proper walls, more taking it back to one big space as it would have been originally, and then ‘dividing’ it with something like an IKEA floor-to-ceiling bookcase or wardrobes so that you have 2 individual areas for DC sharing that feel like their own rooms. Then you only need one door. Is it a cupboard in your landing outside the current smallest bedroom? You’d probably need to take that out so you could extend the front bedroom across properly?

It’s a shame your bathroom borrows from the back bedroom (the large single?) rather than the room the other side. Because if you could fit a double in the back bedroom you could have that for you & DH, then redivide all the rooms to equalise them up a bit. Hard to say without scale/dimensions.

I do think using your downstairs room as a guest/eldest bedroom and older kids hangout is probably best bet.

Thanks. Yes, it’s a built in original cupboard which is really helpful for storage. My bad drawing makes it look more intrusive than it is as the original bedroom door of course was next to it.

The reason I wouldn’t move our eldest into the tiny room is that there is no room at all for a desk or computer, which is really everything they want in life. Also because if the stud walls and little hallway, the two divided rooms don’t feel 100% separate as it is so I think it would all be too much close quarters to have them in there with either us or siblings (sensory issues mean we try to separate them from noisy kids as much as possible).

If we went for the downstairs option I think it would be them in there, so we had the full room available when they weren’t there. I think that makes most sense. On the other hand, a windowless room for someone who likes to be entirely in their room wouldn’t be enormously pleasant for either them or us. The fug can get pretty bad...

I would continue to prioritise the needs of your ASD child. Are they likely to go to a nearby uni and be back at weekends? Most young adults that I know come back home for a few years after uni (but that might just be because we live near jobs in London?).

We have 2 at uni and 2 at home. The uni ones are rarely come home between terms - so we could if we wanted use their rooms when they were away and revert back when they come back. Could this work for you?

Would it help with transition if your child with ASD was part of decisions around any renovations etc?

I would also say that all of my 4 as teenagers and pre teens hung out only with their own mates in their own rooms - their was v little mixing of friends - so we set up all of their bedrooms to have space for sofa. We then opened up our kitchen, living and dining to one large communal circulating space (12m x 6) so that they “are forced” for us all to be together when they they are not in their rooms - and it is also nice to say hello to their friends passing through / stopping for drinks & snacks - This is working really well for us at these ages - but we needed separate playroom spaces when they were younger.

I don't think turfing the eldest out of a bedroom will work. Even when they go to uni they tend to leave a lot of their stuff behind, and both of ours came back on a regular basis for weekends.

They don’t struggle with transition very much. The big challenges are social communication and some sensory issues with sound. So change doesn’t present such enormous problems as it might do. To complicate things a bit more, one of the others also has ASD and has a harder time of it with pretty much everything so their needs also need to be met!

We are guiding our eldest towards universities near their grandparents. They love spending time there, it’s quieter and calmer with the potential to spend every weekend there if they’re keen, and they are near lots of unis. We’re in London and they would be better off out of such a huge city. So we’re not expecting to see a huge amount of them during term time. They are keen to do post-grad so we’re working on the assumption that we’ll probably have moved house before they might be likely to want to re-land with us full time!

I'd make your front (lounge) room into the Master bedroom, turn the room you've marked with a (?) into a snug-type lounge and give everyone else a room each upstairs. Youngest in the tiny room.

Have you seen the divider bunk beds that you place in the middle of the room so they get a side each without losing light?

Could you knock trough the kitchen into the middle room and leave the front room as an adults living space/guest room - with some clever furniture?

Downstairs make the front room a bedroom.

Open up the middle room into the hall and kitchen and have large open plan living space. Alternatively make it into an adult sitting room for the dark evenings with toasty fire so the lack of window doesn't matter...

randommess, great minds....

Move the downstairs bathroom and open up the ? room along with the hall up to the living room. You gain a trmendous amount of space that way. Re the guest bedroom/kids extra space issue, have you considered an outdoor office chalet type room?

Hi

Yes, we’ve definitely considered an outdoor room for more space but you can’t use them as bedrooms, it’s illegal. Unfortunate as if they were warm enough and had Wifi, our teen would jump at living at the end of the garden!

I like the way you all have the same idea! But it’s not doable I’m afraid. The new bathroom is part of the new work we’ve had done and everything is held up by many RSJs. It would cost a fortune we don’t have to open everything up. We probably should have done it originally but we can’t revisit that now.