Are big bedrooms a deal breaker?

[AmIAWeed]

Our bungalow was originally 3 bedrooms, 2 doubles 1 single.
It was extended and 2 box rooms added (at the opposite end to the current bedrooms, off the living room!) but living space not increased so it doesn't work particularly well as a 5 bedroom home.
We are planning a large extension to the kitchen and a sunroom on the back of the living room to increase living space.

The bedrooms however are getting me in a muddle.

We are planning on going upstairs to create a large master bedroom, only over half the bungalow so we can have a vaulted ceiling in the lounge.
We will likely sacrifice the single room to accommodate the stairs. and potentially add a cupboard for coats etc. So far all good, as the room upstairs is an improvement on this single room.

However, we also want to convert the garage for my husbands business, it must be a secure room. To do this, we'd need to make the 2 double rooms slightly smaller to accommodate a hallway to the garage.
Future uses could be a bedroom for someone or they could make it into an ensuite and dressing room for the small double room.
This means we'd end up with a huge master room upstairs, 2 small doubles and 2 box rooms.

So, would this bother you, 4 (potentially 5) small bedrooms and 1 huge one?

Yes, I could put up with 1 box room but not 2. I'd rather have less rooms with good proportions as this offers much more flexibility.

Unless you are planning to sell in the next 5 years, make the house work for you and how you want to live in it.

Are these box rooms next to each other, and potentially be made into one room?

How close together are the 2 small doubles to each other? Can you knock through and make 1 bigger double and 1 single? Same with the 2 box rooms into one good sized bedroom?

The 2 box rooms have a bathroom in-between so combining into one decent room is sadly a no go. I did think about making them a granny annex with one being a small front room, then bathroom and kitchen at the back but theres no way I can fit a staircase there into the loft to make it self contained. They will forever be 2 crap rooms. Although, bloody nice with the teens - I cant hear them with us being the other side!!

Please see very crap drawing of the 2 doubles

whole current crap house layout.
Proposed we ditch the single for the stairs.
If the door to the double moves to the 'new' hallway then we can make the bathroom and wc smaller.

Also, I know combining utilities and kitchens isn't great, but they are the same size - and both small!!!

It would probably work for me personally but I wouldn't necessarily consider the boxrooms as bedrooms - I've only got one DC. And for me 2 smaller rooms which could be used as offices would be good.

But it would depend how small the small double rooms are?

Can you get rid of the batroom between t he boxrooms and either -

1. just have the other downstairs bathroom and then do an ensuite upstairs.

2. Have the other downstairs bathrrom remain and add another downstairs one in the garage conversion?

Then you can make the 2x boxrooms bigger or have one big room?

If it's already been extended, are you still within the limits of how much you can extend? Just a thought as it might affect your plans.

@JacobReesMogadishu the smallest is 3.5 x 3.2 - that's currently my office with a sofa bed for guests. The single room is my husbands office.

Thinking about it though, it would be easy to stage the 2 box rooms as offices if we ever moved. Which also explains away the odd placement.

We estimate the extension will likely put the house at it's ceiling limit in terms of value, most houses around here for more than £400k would have land. So whilst it is being designed to work for us I'm always thinking that at any point we may need to liquidate assets and at least get out what we put in so don't want to do something that would put people off.

@aliloandabanana we will need planning permission as the utility extension and bedrooms puts it passed permitted for anything else we'd want to do

While you're adding the sunroom are you able to take it across the extra width and make Box 1 into a much bigger room?

A future buyer then could make box 2 into a dressing room or closet on the other side of the Jack and Jill bathroom if they so wished and have a nice big suite.

I’d sack off the sunroom and build an extension between the current utility and the garage. With some internal re-jogging you could probably maintain a the sizes of your current bedrooms and/or increase the size of the single to a double, and increase your living space.

Doesn’t look like the small rooms will ever be anything but small, but so make them both of the offices instead?

Sorry are you saying the smallest box room is over 3x3m? That’s not a box room! That’s a double bedroom!

Sorry you are talking about the doubles - ignore me!

Thats a ton of work and money to try and make the house work for you. You won’t get back what you put in in value imho. Also do not underestimate the chaos of living in a construction zone with work being on and off due to Covid stuff. With there being a stamp duty holiday, I’d personally be selling this house as is and looking to buy one that worked for you better.

Yes

We looked at nearly 100 houses to find the right one for us.
We purchased with parents so needed 5 bedrooms at least.
So many had a huge master with ensuite and tiny box rooms.
The box room would have been fine if they had built in wardrobes or there were a couple of family rooms downstairs.

Can you put the hallway to the garage through just one of the bedrooms, or put a door through from one of them instead, although obviously it couldn't be used as a bedroom then. But you would keep one decent sized double.
Measurements would be useful here.

Do you have an architect?

So long as you can fit a wardrobe in comfortably as well as the double bed then i doubt it’d be a deal breaker for most people.

We did look round a house where the master bedroom had no wardrobe because it didn’t fit! That was a big no. The same house could only fit a cot in its 3rd bedroom

I would never move into a home that was a box room, i would want 3 doubles or atleast 2 doubles and 1 single but no box rooms

It probably would bother me if I was looking, but also I think unless you will move in the next few years then make it work for your own needs. My only suggestion would be when you are building the hallway to the garage, instead of making both bedrooms smaller just reduce one of them and keep the size of the other.

OK,
radical.
I am assuming that is a huge hallway which has the doors to utility, wc bathroom etc?

Why not incorproate that hall into the kitchen you want to make? Keep the single.
Turn the double on the left of your picture into a hall way. Put stairs in there, put door to bathrooms/WC in there (that may need knocking into one)
Leaves you with
master
double
single and 2 small rooms off the lounge which could be office or box rooms.
You could still extend the kitchen too.

This is off th etop of my head, so might not work!

wow so many ideas

@DuzzyFuck I like that idea, if we made the box room bigger it could be a double room, and the box room could potentially be a dressing room or homework/study creating a nice little 'area' for a young adult (if the one of the kids dont move out!!)

@BasinHaircut issue with going from utility to the back of the garage is a catio off the back of the house. I've also spent all my time designing the garden (yes I probably have priorities wrong!) but it would be a huge undertaking and destruction of all ive worked on for the last few years.

@PlanDeRaccordement we'll likely move out when the loft conversion is happening which would be 18 months, by the time we've got planning permission, remortgaged and got a builder in place. The secure room we could do in the next 3/4 months which is why i'm so concerned about shuffling bedrooms now only to regret it in 18 months.

@Bamaluz @ Nordman thats possible - im also wondering if where the stairs go in the single room we may have enough room for a built in wardrobe under them to serve to the master double that would have the hallway in.

@feministbias not yet, I want a clear idea of what we want before I talk to the architects as I worry we'll be talked into what they like, their preferred style before we've sussed it for ourselves.

@steppemum hallway is likely not as big as my terrible not to scale image shows! the front door is like a double door width, has a dsoor to the living room and kitchen, then veres round to the left with doors to 3 bedrooms and bathroom.

Sorry about sizes, what id say is box rooms all fit a single bed, wardrobe and bedside table in - chest of draws would probably be a step too far

Fair enough OP but designing a house around a garden seems bizarre if you eventually plan to sell up and you are worried about the impact of the layout on its value.

I have been trying to convince DH for years to buy a bungalow and renovate because to me the possibilities seem endless. The good thing about extending a bungalow is surely that you can pretty much do anything you want with the layout as it doss was not have an upstairs to support until you put one there. But you need to rip it all out and start again I’d say.

Could you lose the vaulted ceiling for another bedroom upstairs?