An extra room/bedroom or larger living areas?

[dinosaursroar1]

DH and I are having a bit of a debate about what to do with our house and I would really welcome any advice or opinions about what would be most important if you were looking at a house.

We currently live in a townhouse style house, it’s not our forever home but we do think we’ll probably stay for the next 3-5 years. We’re generally in favour of doing what works best for us however I’m conscious we’ll be looking to sell in the near future and don’t want to make it harder to sell.

The ground floor has a small living room (which we use as a playroom) and an open plan kitchen / dining, small utility room and downstairs loo.
The middle floor has a bedroom with en-suite - which we use as a guest bedroom and also has a desk in it as a makeshift home office and a fairly large, L shaped living room. The L shape does mean that quite a bit of the room isn’t really used as it feels like it’s around a corner (if that makes sense!) so feels like quite a bit of wasted space.

The top floor has two large bedrooms, a bathroom and a smaller single bedroom (which is currently used as a dressing room so our bedroom is more roomy without wardrobes / dressing table)

We’re considering putting up a stud wall in the middle floor living room and adding a door from the hall to section off the smaller L part to create a room that would be the same size as the single bedroom on the floor above to use as a home office. Whilst this would definitely work best for us (I’m self employed so work from home and it’s nice to be able to close the door on work when you’re finished for the day) I’m just a bit concerned about potentially putting off future buyers when we move.

Adding the stud wall and creating a new room would mean the house would be marketed as a 5 bed when we come to sell but the living areas would both then be on the smaller side - approximately 3.5x3m downstairs and 4.5x3m on the middle floor.

Would smaller living areas put you off buying a house even if there were two living spaces? Or would extra bedroom/rooms be a good selling point?

Sounds like the perfect solution and I was actually thinking it as you were describing each floor. What you could do is ensure there are no electrics on the stud wall which would make it really easy for the next owners to remove if they chose.

Ask an estate agent when the time comes and you could always take the stud wall down. If there's no bathroom accessible to the new bedroom on that floor it could be marketed as what you use it for: a study - home offices are very popular right now!

Yes if that leaves a decent sized living room which wont miss the space (round the corner), it seems a very good move.

L shaped rooms were intended to be living/dining rooms I think but who wants a dining room on a separate floor to the kitchen?

Couid you partition with sliding doors do the room can be closed off or opened back up?. That way it is more versatile.

Home office/ extra room is a must for us so I'd say it would add value.

Would it have a window?

Thank you all for your replies! Makes me more confident that it’s not a totally ridiculous idea 😂

@Rollercoaster1920 yes, a pretty large window and an overhead light fitting are already in that part of the living room (and a double plug socket) as is, so probably would be able to get away with no electrical work. Would need to have an existing radiator moved over about a metre to have heating in there though.

Is there a window in the new study area? Also, if you’re using one of the bedrooms upstairs as a closet, it won’t count greatly towards the bedroom count when you have viewings, as buyers then just see that there isn’t adequate storage in the main bedroom

Sorry cross post on window question!

@HforHotel - the two larger upstairs bedrooms do have storage in (DH has his clothes in our bedroom, DD’s room has all her stuff) and are still pretty spacious, lots of room to add in more wardrobes if we chose - the dressing room is mainly personal preference. I prefer a separate space for getting ready in and, to be honest, I just have way to many clothes, bags, shoes, make up to put into our bedroom without feeling like we’re in a clothes shop (in my defence - my job is based around PR / marketing / brand design so I do get given quite a bit of stuff for companies I work with). When it comes to selling we can stick a bunch of my clothes / shoes etc away in storage and pop a spare bedframe we’ve kept in the loft so it’s shown as a single bedroom.

It sounds like a nice house, good room sizes for a townhouse. Would buyers have the option of knocking through the playroom into the kitchen? I think that is what many would focus on, and they won't be that interested in the size of the living room.

If your market is young families, possibly they could see the L shaped room as a play area plus grown up lounge but I don't think it's worth doing anything fancy like a big bifold to keep it flexible. Separate them with a view to being able to undo it if need be. Carpet tends to be more forgiving than hard flooring if you want to join them back up.

I don't think a 5th bedroom adds value really, it would if anything point to an imbalance between living and sleeping space. However after lockdown, I think a 4 bed plus study plus playroom sounds very marketable.

You have nothing to lose by ringing a couple of estate agents locally and asking them.

I was thinking the same as Murmurur if you take out the dividing wall on the ground floor, would that give you a lovely large kitchen/dining/family room?