Floorplan - I need help!

[B1rdinthebush]

We've just had an offer accepted on a house which has bags of potential but for some reason, I'm struggling to get my head around the best layout for downstairs.

I've (hopefully) attached the floor plan of the ground floor as it stands. The long thin utility was once the garage. We plan to add an extension and would like to fit in a dining/kitchen at the back. I also want to squeeze in a playroom, utility and downstairs loo. We obviously need a lounge too...

The house is detached and there's plenty of space to extend at the back as well as at least another half a house worth of space to the left of the property (if not more). I'm currently thinking that we add a hallway from the from door so the current kitchen becomes a living room. The utility is chopped so the front bit is playroom and the back part is a small downstairs loo. We'd then do a wraparound extension so the utility comes off the left hand side of the house (accessed through the new kitchen) and the kitchen diner is also extended out. But it somehow feels a bit odd...

If this was you, what would you do?

Do you have doors going out to a garden and where are they?

Is the current plan attached what you have at the moment?

Sorry yes. It is.

Where is the front door?

The door out to the garden is the sliding doors at the back of current living room. The front door goes straight into the kitchen at the moment.

How old are your kids? If they are little then a playroom at the front of the house, away from the kitchen and garden is unlikely to get used.

This is our floor plan if it helps. I've included previous to help. We went double out the back and out onto the drive

I would look to put a hallway in so the front door isn't straight in the first room but depends on light etc

I would say don’t worry too much about a playroom. Larger living areas with loads of storage will always look more spacious. In reality people don’t shut DC away. Keep and eye on them and talk! When they are older, get a garden room for them!

If you take out the need for a playroom, you can have the lounge pretty large, build in a hall and make sure the garage is properly integrated into the house. I think a study has more value these days than a playroom!

We have a separate laundry room, good storage in the hall for coats, and lots of storage for shoes, school kit, welly boots etc. We have a downstairs cloakroom but I value all of this above a playroom.

Lastly, get an Architect to give you ideas. They should work something out for your lifestyle whilst adding value - home offices are very sought after!

@minipie They're nearly five (twins). I did think that about it being at the back of the house but their current playroom is what used to be our spare room and they happily play in it.

@Guymere A playroom actually works really well for our family and my kids love the one they currently have. Slightly put out by your suggestion that I'm wishing to shut my kids away and don't talk to them!

@minipie Sorry, I should say, I did wonder about it being at the front and away from the proposed kitchen/diner.

@Autumnchill This is really helpful, thank you.

How about wraparound extension and move the entrance to the left of the current utility? Would make sense to move the stairs (bottom half reversed if you see what i mean) so they start there too if you go with that idea.

Like this

We have a playroom at the front of our house away from the main family area and I find it works well. My LO has a hanging chair in it where he can sit and read in peace and it is great to be able to hide away all the toys. He does play in the rest of the house but will only take one toy out at a time which helps with tidying up. When you resell it can always be advertised as a playroom/ study to give it broader appeal.

If it were my house, I would make the front half of the garage into a study with a utility / loo in the back half. And a big storage cupboard for coats & boots etc.

I'd keep the lounge as a snug / TV room, and have a big kitchen / dining / playroom at the back with big doors to the garden.

@continuousmonotonousbeep I did think of that too but my husband seems to think moving the stairs will be tricky as the walls surrounding them are structural. I'd be up for it to get a better layout but it's the trade off with that and budget I guess.

@weepingwillow22 The plan would always be for it to become a study once the kids are a bit older but we just find having a separate room for their stuff works so well.

@parietal That was my first idea in terms of the utility. It's so important we have enough space for coats, shoes, bags etc. We really lack that in our current house and it drives me bonkers!

I think lots of parents put DCs computers in playrooms and don’t have a clue what DC are doing. Dc reading quietly is fairly rare from what I’ve seen. Squabbling, arguing, failing to play nicely or arguing over computer time seems to be the norm. I had a playroom but it didn’t work so we had it as a family room fairly quickly. Settees, games, etc and the computer was in my sight.

I'd keep your plan to cut the utility in half, playroom to front, WC / utility to rear, then put in a corridor from front door to lounge door to give some privacy and sink some cupboards into the utility room for cloaks and storage accessed off the new hall. The smaller kitchen becomes a snug then push out the rear wall of the lounge and turn that space into a big kitchen / dining / family room with access to the garden.

Just to say we've recently created a downstairs WC and the laying of the pipes to connect to the sewer was £££ - would not have been viable if we weren't doing back-to-bricks renovation of the whole house! It's sadly not as simple as working out where it would "fit" on a floor plan.

So my advice would be that before you do anything else, you identify where the soil waste pipe is in the house from your existing upstairs bathroom, and where the pipes are that connect it to the main sewer.
THAT info dictates where your new WC needs to be - as close as possible to those to make connection easy! You'll likely find the options are fairly limited.

Because of the amount of work we were doing we actually removed the entire existing upstairs bathroom and changed the layout to re-site the soil-waste, so that it's now boxed in through the house and goes under the concrete sub-floor - but as I said, £££.

Good luck!

I agree with @WoolyMammoth55 - you need a downstairs loo and this is dictated by where the present upstairs loo is. Can you put your upstairs layout and we can see where it is?

Extend the utility to create a kitchen dinner. You could add roof windows to make it brighter.

Extension at the back becomes utility and toilet. Door into back garden.

Old kitchen becomes playroom, wall is added to make a hallway.

You could always add a porch at the front for shoes etc.

You could also lose the back bit of the new kitchen for a bigger utility/loo and a hallway leading to them if you didn't want it off your kitchen.