Room reconfiguration help

[joy072]

We are in the process of trying to reconfigure the floor plan for the first floor of our house.
We have a possible plan but are not sure if it will work and we are not sure who we need to help us. It should not need the removal of an supporting walls but could involve removing and rebuilding stud walls.
My question is which profession/trade do we need to help us come up with a design that makes the most of our house.
Really appreciate any advice as going round in circles at the moment.

Architect usually for ideas, builder (or structural engineer) for advice about removing walls.

We've paid architects by the hour before for help in doing this. However, it's tricky because until you get a structural engineer in you don't really know how complicated moving walls is going to be. Architects can be very blaze about something that turns out to be expensive. If it's fairly obvious how the house is constructed then a builder will have good ideas of difficulty of work. I haven't done this, but heard of others who have paid a call-out charge to get informal advice from them.

One other thing about architects - they are not kitchen designers! In fact, they can be terrible at judging whether a space works for a kitchen. Before you commit to any idea, model an approximate kitchen layout on IKEA site or similar to check it'll be ok.

Thank you for the advice.

I just stand around and scratch my head for a bit and it all becomes clear 😀. No seriously Get family and friends round and ask them what they think would be the best layout, sometimes they see it from a fresh pair of eyes and might come up with something that you didn’t think of . 👍

Have a look at Houzz - there are plenty of people on there willing to talk through changes of layouts, including professional space planners.
Architects are one option, and they would draw up detailed plans if needed for planning or instructing builders etc. But there are space planners as well who can advise on improvements to layout.

A good builder will be able to do this, most work closely with a structural engineer, won't over design like a lot of architects do and will stick to the budget you set.