Critique this layout please - 1920s house

[DiggerDiggerDigger]

I’d love all the opinions, please.

I’m looking to buy a 1920s house, currently set up as two flats and very run down. There aren’t many around (or around here anyway), so I’m battling to imagine how to make it fit our family life with young kids. It’s east/west facing so should be bright but is currently dingy, dark and unloved.

I’ve attached the current layout along with my “knock allll the walls down, privacy is overrated” approach - what do you reckon?

Leaving aside the basement, we need some living space, a kitchen and dining area, a bathroom w/utility space and ideally would like a large-ish hallway. What might work?

If it were me, I'd leave the two reception rooms at the front - very useful when the kids are older to have the option separate spaces for TV, computer gaming etc. Then I would turn current kitchen into downstairs loo and utility and remove the bathroom and walls beyond that to make a larger kitchen diner. Up to you whether to have bi-folds of course

Do you have a bathroom upstairs? Or is that the only bathroom in the house?

@Justkeeppedaling there’s another one upstairs (along with a spare kitchen, at the mo).

I wouldn't knock the wall down separating the living room from the hallway and front door

Why not @User72614643, if I can ask? I don’t want to open the door straight into the living room, but I don’t fancy a long narrow hallway either.

The rule used to be that you need 2 doors between a kitchen and a loo. Not sure whether that’s still the case?

So much space and east-west orientation. You’re lucky, OP.

Second the PP who said keep the sitting room at the front self-contained as a private kid-free space.

The rear section of that double reception could be a playroom or teenage den. I would have sliding doors into the kitchen which means you’ll know when the kids are playing up.

Then a utility room and bootroom/storage room where the existing kitchen is. I don’t like a downstairs bathroom or shower but that may be necessary. Then a lovely wide kitchen and dining space at the back, where the third reception room is currently.

You could knock down the wall where the small second reception room is separating the hallway but keep the wall with the bay window reception room separating the hallway? I personally like hallways as a space for coats/shoes and in older homes with beautiful tiles it can be a real feature. I think it's more elegant than opening the front door straight into the living room but just my opinion.

Definitely keep the front reception room. We have a lovely big open family area but we use the separate reception all the time too. Someone always wants to escape. Front door open into hall - it won't feel like a corridor once you lose the door from hall to downstairs rooms. The noise will also just carry upstairs if you keep it open.

I'd also keep second reception - pefapd with door between the 2 or as playroom/office/teen den.

Knock through the kitchen bathroom and back reception to create utility, kitchen and dining . (Squeeze downstairs under stairs if poss )

There is an issue in terms of safety/building control with opening stairwells if you have more than 2 floors. I think you may need fire doors and possibly sprinklers? Also in an Edwardian house you might end up being cold as they are not often all that well insulated and all the heat will head up the staircase. Where will you put radiators?

Keep the 2 reception rooms, move the dining room door to open from the hallway. Utility either alongside there or at the back of the house depending where the best windows are. Don't go all open plan especially if you have growing kids. Also open stairways all the noise travels up.

Meant to say then open up the rest of the space to an open plan kitchen diner. Looks like a good space

(Yellow) Keep the front room enclosed.

(Red) Save the very back room for a playroom/office/game room etc, then the separate bit a downstairs loo with the washer/dryer stacked in the same room.

(Blue) open the rest in the middle and have a large kitchen diner with access to the yarden, and maybe even space for a sofa.

A neighbour of ours also did a similar reno; and they put a second staircase in on the very far back wall up to the room above. The room it goes into would have been odd to access from upstairs as it's then through a bedroom so they closed it off from upstairs and had access from below and used it as an office.

Can I ask what height the basement is? Is it potentially useable? If so, I'd consider having your utility down there?

I'd do something very like your original plan but keep a door between the front and back halves of the house so that you can have different tv / music / conversation in the two areas.

The cellar could make a cinema room (c) and utility (u) especially if you can get ventilation installed.

Keep room at front as is then divide up second reception into cloakroom, WC and utility (with garden and kitchen access, so could go through utility/cloak to get to garden or kitchen) then open up whole back of the house for the kitchen diner

OP, have you done similar renovations before and/or do you have a budget in mind?

We did similar on a smaller scale in a 1930s house in 2020 and are still paying off the over-spend! :) Those steels that hold the roof up where the walls used to be are not cheap... So there may be budgetary advantage to leaving the front room in situ - one less wall to come down!

Having said that we did our equivalent of your idea - all walls gone - and we love the space. It's great for entertaining and it's actually much more practical with little kids - especially with the bifolds, I can keep an eye on them basically anywhere they're playing on the ground floor.

While I agree that with teens the "private spaces" are useful, I'm a decade off that and suspect we'll have moved on by then :) So the age of your kids might dictate which way you go.

Best of luck!

I’ve attached the current layout along with my “knock allll the walls down, privacy is overrated” approach - what do you reckon?

Wide open spaces are definitely overrated if you have teenagers in the house!

We have a small seating area in our kitchen as well as a separate dining room and a separate formal sitting (TV) room - we use them all, all the time. It means DP and I can still have somewhere to sit (other than our bed!) even if one DC has friends round and the other is studying or has her boyfriend over. It's not a big house (small rooms) but feels so much more spacious than our old place which was all open plan and we were all tripping over each other all the time.

Spaces, not space, is is what you need when you have older kids in the house.

@DiggerDiggerDigger

Why not *@User72614643*, if I can ask? I don’t want to open the door straight into the living room, but I don’t fancy a long narrow hallway either.

With current building regs, I am fairly sure that losing the hallway and opening the staircase up (as per your diagram) will mean you can't do a loft conversion in future without installing complicated and expensive sprinkler systems throughout the house.

Wow, thank you very much for the replies and doodles! To answer questions, kids are very young (4 and under), basement is just about head height but probably needs a bit more depth to be viable. Loft conversion impossible anyway. We;d want underfloor heating throughout anyway, which should knock out the rad/heating issue.

Budget: quite large as the house is under budget because it;s so unlovely at the mo.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz I really like your suggested layout as long as we somehow can get the light into the middle bit.

I always feel like utility rooms ought to be where the bedrooms are, no? Since that's where you generate most of the dirty clothes, and where cupboards for clean clothes are. But it's not workable if we need four bedrooms upstairs.

I'd keep the front reception room too. I have a similar house and have knocked through apart from the lounge, and it's nice to have a quiet space to read, or have friends round, or watch a movie, without interrupting the rest of the house.

@DiggerDiggerDigger

Wow, thank you very much for the replies and doodles! To answer questions, kids are very young (4 and under), basement is just about head height but probably needs a bit more depth to be viable. Loft conversion impossible anyway. We;d want underfloor heating throughout anyway, which should knock out the rad/heating issue.

Budget: quite large as the house is under budget because it;s so unlovely at the mo.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz I really like your suggested layout as long as we somehow can get the light into the middle bit.

I always feel like utility rooms ought to be where the bedrooms are, no? Since that's where you generate most of the dirty clothes, and where cupboards for clean clothes are. But it's not workable if we need four bedrooms upstairs.

To maximise light in the middle bit, google "glass side return extension" as a possibility for the bit of outside space the left of the current kitchen (to come off the current dining room and all up that gap outside).

@DiggerDiggerDigger

Wow, thank you very much for the replies and doodles! To answer questions, kids are very young (4 and under), basement is just about head height but probably needs a bit more depth to be viable. Loft conversion impossible anyway. We;d want underfloor heating throughout anyway, which should knock out the rad/heating issue.

Budget: quite large as the house is under budget because it;s so unlovely at the mo.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz I really like your suggested layout as long as we somehow can get the light into the middle bit.

I always feel like utility rooms ought to be where the bedrooms are, no? Since that's where you generate most of the dirty clothes, and where cupboards for clean clothes are. But it's not workable if we need four bedrooms upstairs.

I know very few people with upstairs utilities and standard floor plans for most of UK housing is to have the utility downstairs: it’s much easier to carry dirty but dry bed linen and clothes downstairs from the bedrooms than it is to carry wet washing downstairs from an upstairs utility to hang it out! You need the utility close to the outside for hanging out; plus for all the other utility stuff – mud room, cleaning bike wheels where small children have unerringly aimed for the dog poo, cleaning gardening things, etc. Place to store boot polish and lightbulbs and household crap, etc etc. A utility is inherently a “dirty” room that makes more sense downstairs with outside access than it does upstairs.

I’d definitely keep the hallway, if you have the whole front open plan and open to the stairs it will be freezing all the time and the building regs will be a nightmare- as others have said you will probably have to replace all the upstairs doors to fire doors and you may not be able to do a loft conversion. As others have suggested up thread I would keep a separate lounge at the front and then open up the back rooms to make a kitchen/ living space, with a utility and loo either at the rear of the second reception room or where the old kitchen is. If you put the utility/ loo at the back of the second reception you could include the front part in the front reception (as an office/ music space) with a large doorway to it, and then turn the old kitchen into a snug/ playroom area (semi open plan).