Buying upside down house

[Lanosajulas]

Hi all,

Wanted to get some views on buying an 'upside down' house. Its 3 floors with 2 bedrooms on the LG, 2 bedrooms (including master) on the G where you enter the house and living room, diner and kitchen on the 1st floor. The house is great in terms of space (3,200 sq.ft.) and location but can't get our heads around potential issues/worries. We have a 2 year old with another baby on the way. Potential worries for us:

1. Kids bedrooms will be on LG floor and ours will be on G floor - so not on same floor as young children. Not an issue when they get older

1. Access to the garden is via the 2 bedrooms on the LG floor i.e. the kids rooms. So no real access from the 'Living' spaces and potential security worry for the kids

1. Back garden is small as it has an outdoor pool. Another worry is that if the kids are in the Garden then cannot really monitor them if we were in the living space which is two floors up and potential worry with swimming pool accidents. Would need to be with them at all times they are in the back garden

Ideally would like the traditional layout but we would not get this size house close to the high street and underground station generally and this is a forced sale so could get at a good price.

Thoroughly confused - any insight from anyone massively helpful!

Thanks a lot

Fill in the swimming pool ?
Make door into kids room into window ?
Stairs from main living room or kitchen into garden?

I think I’d change it so that you have the kitchen and lounge on the middle floor (with the nice balcony and some stairs into the garden), 2/3 beds with a bathroom for you and the kids on the top floor, and then chill out space/ office/ self contained annexe on the ground floor. This wouldn’t be cheap but I bet you’d get the money back. No way could I live with it with kids as it is.

I can see why you're tempted! But the use of space is terrible.. the furniture looks quite sad and lost in the lounge.

Do you want a swimming pool? They're quite expensive to fill in. When kids are small (e.g. aged 3-8) it's great to be able to send them to play in the (secure) garden while you make dinner/ clean up etc and watch through the kitchen window. You can't really do that easily being 2 floors up or having a swimming pool. Personally I'd go for a smaller house.

I can’t see that layout being family friendly. So if the kids are in bed and it’s a lovely summer evening could you use the garden without disturbing the children? If you are finding the layout a challenge, it will also be a challenge should you choose to sell. Think carefully.

I think that this house would be a massive project and would cost you a lot to make it function properly as a home for a young family.

On the LG I would make a corridor from the hall to point where each bedroom goes into a sort of sitting area. I’d put one door off each side of the corridor into each bedroom. I’d knock the shower room out of bedroom 2. I’d then have a door at the end of the new corridor into what would be a new room with doors opening out into the garden. The bedrooms could only access this room via the corridor so no direct garden access from the bedrooms. The new room can be a playroom or study.

I’d change the study and WC on the G floor into a large bathroom. I’d also be tempted to divide up one of the bedrooms on this floor.

On the 1st floor I’d open up the kitchen to the dining area and then think carefully about how you could dress/zine the vast living space. I’d think seriously about getting an interior designer to do this.

I’d get rid of the pool and landscape the garden.

And that’s before I get on to the ripping out of awful fitted wardrobes etc.

I have no idea what London renovation costs are like but I doubt you’d get change from £100k given the standard of work you’d want in the context of the asking price. Now that might make sense financially in the long-term but is it feasible in the short term? Personally I think the only way to live in it without doing this is to not use the downstairs at all for the children.

Yeah, only works if you're willing to immediately do some work. Make bedroom 1 a kitchen diner and partition the top floor into 3 bedrooms + bathroom(s) and you've got a sensible layout. Wouldn't be cheap though.

You could do a lot with changing wall layout (it looks like they have taken some out and redesigned already but made it a bit awkward! 2 kitchens??) if you have no budget I think it could be perfectly fine with children on the ground floor and you on lower ground with the other room with a sofa bed used as a dual purpose guest and family room. I wouldn’t put kids downstairs with potential pool access and the floors are stone so that’s an accident waiting to happen too! Wouldn’t worry about them being in a different floor, just get a baby monitor

For that budget, you could buy a house that actually works for your family.

I'd do that.

Could you get a bed (or at least a cot) in the room labelled as study? Then the 3yr old could have bedroom 4 and you'd all be on the same floor to start with? You could maybe use the big room on the LG as a playroom.

It's an odd layout, it has to be said. I've lived in an upside down house but it didn't have direct access from a bedroom to the garden.

With a budget that size, you shouldn't have to be thinking about workarounds and squeezing extra beds into different rooms.

Space is only "great" if it's usable and practical. If it's neither of those, the space is just expensive and pointless.

Yes agreed with most of your comments. Helpful especially from people who have more than 1 child already and know about the dynamic and after the kids are asleep we are two levels above them in the living room as well as danger of access. Also I guess even if we all had bedrooms on the ground floor you don't want your children next to the front door. As someone said one day you forget to lock the front door and or garden doors on the LG floor and could be a disaster. Kept thinking that we could do something with the floorplans to make it all usable but at the end of the day the house would need a full overhaul to get that done and already at the top end of our budget. Shame really. But if I can get it for under £1m I would consider doing the full work on it and turning into a permanent long term Home with living dining etc on GF. Playroom, cinema room, study on the LG. Bedrooms on the top floor. But that's a huge job really and the costs would just rack up. Complete shame as don't get this size house that easy in that location.

I live in an upside down house, so kids on the ground floor (from babies to teenagers) - no different from a bungalow imo. But they have windows not doors to outside and we have steps down from the kitchen to the garden (cut into the hillside so not a full set of stairs)

The layout of that house however looks very unwieldy whatever the kids ages and I'd want to rearrange completely which is probably not worth it.

@Feelingmardy

I wouldn't buy it OP. It's very grand but hugely impractical and the layout is absolutely awful. If you go ahead anyway, I'd suggest some sort of stairs down from the terrace to try and make it marginally less impractical. In addition to the layout issues, the lounge IMHO is too large. It looks like (and currently feels) like a church hall. It's hard to dress such a big room in a way which really works and it's disproportionate to the kitchen (which is too small for a house of this size). It's been really badly done-up.

I agree. For a house cpsting that much, it is not a great house. It all feels like things are in the wrong place. Utility and garden kitchen and sitting area on LG, those are going to be the rooms you use all summer in nice weather.

The main living floor is large, but that is about all it has going for it. The windows are not lovely huge picture windows with a view. The rooms are too big, from the sofa, you can't see the view! The kitchen is poorly laid out, a house that size shoudl have at least a table in the kitchen.

Sorry, not a nice house

whoops, sorry , kitchen is big enough for table

OP, our house has some similar characteristics to the one you're looking at, specifically having the only access to the garden via a bedroom.

I can tell you 100% that this is a massive pain in the arse. It makes using the garden (for anything - barbecues, summer entertaining, just sitting out with a drink on a nice evening) really difficult. This was the case for us, and the bedroom in question for us was a guest room, so there wasn't even anyone in there usually. It was awkward for us, and felt embarrassing if we had guests.

We eventually rejigged the whole layout of the house to get away from it. I wouldn't but any house where this couldn't be changed relatively simply.

Thanks all for your messages. Have told the agent today we will not be making an offer. The negatives just too stacked up. Well I did say if they cannot sell the property and would consider 850k on the basis I need to spend 150-200k completely changing it around then I may be interested. Otherwise it's Gone Baby Gone!

Brave and sensible sounding move. It’s always awful when you’ve kind of fallen for something to realise what your head is telling you ! Good luck with the search/offer.

I think you have done exactly the right thing. That house needs an enormous amount spending on it to get it up to date and working for you, much more than 100K, probably more like 200K now. There are still multiple issues when you come to sell... like the pool etc. which many people actively avoid. Unless you got it so cheaply that it would be almost rude not to buy it of course....