Floor plan idea please!

[Cocoaone]

Hi, I'd love hivemind ideas on what to do with our floor plan - I'm useless at this stuff...

1st option I think is just to knock through the kitchen and dining room. Garage is 1.5 spaces and ideally we want to keep one space for bikes, general junk etc, so we could shave 1.6m off the garage and use that as a utility (along the wall next to the stairs) and hopefully connect waste pipes up with the toilet
The current box in the garage is just a makeshift room which would come down

2nd option is to knock through living room and dining room, move the kitchen to the current dining room, put a dining table where the current wall is and sofas at the other end where the fireplace is. Then create a utility where the door to outdoors goes in the current kitchen, and create a small room in the rest of the kitchen.
My worry with this is that the small room would be too small for even a snug (would be around 2.9 x 2.6m). It would be great for an office, but with open plan across the back of the house, we'd prefer a separate room for if someone is cooking, DD has friends over etc.

The garden isn't really big enough to extend, and the back is north facing so keen not to block any more light than necessary. 4 big bedrooms upstairs, we only need 2 for us, so one is likely to be an office and one a guest room. Loft is huge so potential to extend up there at some point if we win the lottery

Would anyone do anything different from this? House is 1980s and needs ceilings skimmed, new boiler and some rads, possible a rewire, new kitchen and bathrooms, so it makes sense to do this all the same time.

I prefer your first option, that snug would just be too small for me

I'd leave the lounge as is, and as you said knock down dining wall to create open plan kitchen diner. Love open plan living downstairs but only if there's a good size separate lounge/snug space.

You could do second option but put the utility in the back half of the garage? Then the old kitchen becomes the snug.
Where is the toilet now? Were you planning on having it in the utility?
How old is your child (if that's who is in the second bedroom). It's a nice option to have a separate living area but definitely needs the utility to go in garage.
We added a family room space so we had open plan kitchen diner family room at the back. The only time the other living room at front of house got used was when we had company, ditto our separate diningroom, or when the older kids had mates over. We had four kids ranging from baby to teens so it suited us to have separate areas. We could have made the family room more formal for company.

Ah that's a good point @Changingwiththetimes - I hadn't thought of leaving the utility in the garage and having a bigger snug...

I'm glad you all agree though - we definitely need a separate lounge with open plan. DD is 11 so starting secondary this year.

We don't entertain much as a couple, but it would also be nice to have the space so I could have friends round for drinks and food, and DH can play computer games somewhere in or watch tv separately.

I have a very similar house layout, although instead of a garage it is a separate room. We have the back of the house opened up with a dining/living/kitchen area. Utility room is next to kitchen and then we also have the separate living room. We don't use the separate living room that much but it is nice to go somewhere away from the kids toys in the evening.

When ever I see this sort of questions on Houzz, the pros like OnePlan, as to see the upstairs too, so they can see where the plumbing is upstairs .

*ask

@121hugsneeded - that's a good point! There is an en-suite and the family bathroom on opposite sides of the house - en-suite running over the walls which separate the garage and living room and family bathroom over the kitchen and the dining room.
So hopefully that means it's fairly flexible plumbing-wise

What about this?