Two rooms or one big room

[Skittlebug]

Recently purchased an relatively untouched Victorian house, do I keep the two rooms as small separate rooms so I can have a playroom and a living room or knock through to have one large room? Can't decide

Separate rooms.

1 big room affects the sale value negatively, potentially increases heating costs.

2 rooms also gives you more options in the future if you need another room for something different.

If you had 3 downstairs rooms, then yes. Then join 2 of them and go for 1 big room and another smaller room.

Thinking about it with the lockdown and working from home I think the fashion for open plan could be over.

I live in a Victorian house which has been knocked through by a previous owner and wish it was still two rooms - it’s so much colder with open plan!

I know it's a bigger job, but it's make more sense to have a larger kitchen diner, ideally incorporating the lean-to as well

This is what I was thinking - put new wall, with door, into hall and knock out all the bits in between (with RSJs in supporting walls obv )

I’m assuming door into middle room is currently in that corner, but if it’s actually at the other end you can brick it up and gain a corner!

I love our kitchen dining lounge area BUT we have a small snug room also for the very reason people have said above, so there's space when it's all crazy in the other room to sit down and enjoy some quiet time or your own telly choices

If I isn't have that then I'd be either keeping as two rooms, or looking st alternatives like a garden room or extension etc

We knocked through and put double doors in so that we could have a cosier lounge when needed. As it happens we have the doors open pretty much all the time, unless it's particularly cold.

I like open plan kitchen dining space but smaller rooms for playroom/living space personally.

We've had both. Open plan living was amazing until DS was a teenager. However, we are moving back into open plan living because I want a garden flat

@SilenceOfThePrams

2 rooms with pocket doors so it can be one one large room when needed.

Agree

I would keep the 2 rooms. If you want one big space fair enough but I absolutely wouldn't knock through and put double doors in. We had this layout for a while and it's the worst of both worlds - no proper privacy between the 2 rooms as you could still hear conversations / tv (and also see through as ours were glazed which was even worse) and doors everywhere was a pain for furniture and flow of the rooms.

I would definitely go for the back room to be incorporated into a much larger kitchen. Keep the front room separate.

For decades now Victorian terraces have been knocked through. Our neighbours did it in the 1970s. It really isn’t new. It was often done to get light into the darker room which often looked out on the outhouses.

What really concerns me that everyone lives in cold houses? Why? Get heating sorted whatever the age and layout of the house.

For anyone ego cannot think how to fill up a bigger room I suggest built in cupboards for toys, reading chairs at one end or an extra casual dining area. Houzz has loads of ideas.

There isn’t always a clear cut answer and it depends on the house itself. Even die-hard open-planners often recognise it wouldn’t be best for some properties and those who appear into open plan, it turns out, they only like if IF there is still one extra separate room.

So, Victorian houses with smallish kitchens and 2 living rooms can have the difficulties of a step down into the kitchen, which makes creating the big open kitchen-diner tricky and also can create the need forSkylights or lanterns if doing a side return as the back living room window is often lost. This all turns it into a very big job. Possible and often wanted, but not a quick and cheap fix.

Separate kitchen still with the 2 living rooms knocked through often seems the worst of both worlds to me. You haven’t got kitchen-dining and you haven’t got 2 separate living spaces but eating and sitting in one room, even if it’s big. Yes to the sliding doors to give flexibility or yes to just keeping the rooms separate. It’s loved by those with teens. And of course, that’s how those houses were designed to have their living rooms.

So I’d say, go the whole hog with a big kitchen extension and side return filled and incorporate the dining room into the kitchen, but keep the separate front living room (which can also the allow a downstairs loo or possibility utility as well) OR leave it as it is.

@TreestumpsAndTrampolines

I have opinions about rooms. The perfect room size is 3x4m.

Much bigger than 4x5 and you find there's spare bits that just don't get used. For example our living room is 5x8, but there's a good 3 metres at one end that 's just empty, with nothing we can really think to put in it that we'd want in the living room.

See I would line that extra space- i would set up a permanent puzzle table and have room for yoga without rearranging all the furniture each time. I have a friend who has a pole dancing pole in her large living room - not my taste though!

Your Dc are small. When mine were little, they always wanted to be wherever I was, even if they were playing. They just wanted to have that proximity. So, at that age, I would always have said one large space, ideally a playroom/eat in kitchen, as long as I could keep another reception room as a grown up space. So maybe for you that could be filling in the lean to (and that becomes your ear in kitchen), with the middle room knocked through off that, retaining your front reception room as a grown up space.

Now that they are getting bigger, they want their own space downstairs, and basically want a bit of peace to play or game or whatever. So separate rooms would be better.

We have a lounge and playroom, and I love it!! We have a sofa in the playroom but if I don't want to sit in there with the kids I can go sit in the lounge!

It also means when I want to have a private chat with someone we can just pop to the room next door. X

We're moving to a house with a knocked through lounge and extension and we'll be putting a wall back in. It's just too big a space to feel cozy and I don't like having a lounge as a corridor to another space either. We'll use the end room to be a study I think.

Do you not have a hall? Usually opened up rooms in Victorian houses retain the hall. They just open up the two main rooms.

I prefer two separate rooms. I find the knocked through giant rooms to be difficult to keep warm (I've lived in houses with both) and I like having one separate living room that is mostly child-free, always clean and tidy and guest ready.

So we have exactly this. We have two massive reclaimed doors from a concert venue that separate our two rooms. For now we are using the front of the two as a playroom so have put the doors under our bed for the time being out of the way.

It massively depends on the size of the rooms - I think for yours I would consider knocking through (though better would be knocking through to the kitchen, as pp have said).

I'm not a blanket fan of open plan but when we were renting we lived in two Victorian terraces that would have been essentially identical when built; one had been knocked through one hadn't. The one that hadn't was a lot less liveable because both rooms were annoyingly small and so the space taken up with doors and walls really cut into them. One larger space was much more usable. But again, that's because of the room size, not inherently because open plan is superior - so I think it depends on what you could really do with the rooms as they stand.

My original thought was to have the chimney breast in the Kitchen taken down and have the lean to as a dining space. then have the two rooms knocked into one but these comments have made me think about keeping the two rooms and having the second room knocked through to the kitchen for more space and have the lean to as a utility room. Im not sure about the door idea as there's a radiator on that wall and it would diminish wall space to have a radiator placed elsewhere. I've never really been keen on open-plan (never lived anywhere open plan) as I worry about the smell of cooking permeating throughout the house (strange aversion to cooking smells...in my current home the stairs are directly in the living room with a door between the kitchen and living room but cooking smells still get upstairs). I have zero imagination when it comes to design and I need to be spoon fed ideas thanks for all the suggestions they've been a great help.

I'd be inclined to go with knocking through but having some bifold or hidden doors so you can open it up for social events but keep it closed when you want to separate it. Unless you can knock one room into the kitchen to make that open plan and keep a cosy lounge?

I'd keep it as separate rooms. My house is a very similar layout, and when the dc were smaller it was great having a playroom that I could close the door on at night. It also meant they could set up a whole lego city/traintrack or similar and keep it up for a couple of days without it annoying me.

Now they are teens we've turned it into a 3rd bedroom.