Floorplan help

[Anyother]

Moving (if all goes well) into the house that has the space we need for our big family. I may be comparing to the house that I loved but ultimately I lost out on, but I feel that the downstairs has a few flaws.

1. the only way to enter the big reception room is through the kitchen

2. when you enter the house, you enter into a small porch-like area and then a tiny corridor hall leads to the kitchen and second reception room and up the stairs. No sense of 'arrival' (though I may have been watching too many home improvement shows)

3. kitchen is small for the size of the house and no direct access to the garden (though can/ will have to live with this for now as can't afford a new kitchen/ don't want the hassle of this now)

4. Want to possibly leave the option open for a loft conversion in the future.

Floor plans are attached - I've thought about it but not sure what to do. 1 seems easier to solve (move cloakroom to porch and then put a door in its place) but I'm also quite bothered about 2.

Personally I wouldn't worry about a 'sense of arrival' in my own home, it's my home, not a company reception area for clients. Guests who come here take it or leave it, as I do when I go to other people's houses. It wouldn't bother me either way. I might make the smaller recep. the one I took gusts rather than freinds to, if my kitchen was often somtimes untidy. In my house it's a bit of a trek from the dining room/kitchen to the sitting rooms, so be it. I have some nice pics in the hall for anyone who gets bored on the way.😊
If you live in it for a bit, you may find the layout doesn't bother you, works well for you, or needs changing, but not in the way you think now. I think I'd live in it and see before spending money moving anything.

Guests, friends, sorry about my terrible spelling.😊

Can you not put a door to the dining room on the right hand side of the porch?

I'd turn the kitchen into a utility, toilet, pantry and move the kitchen in to the dining room. A new door where the current downstairs toilet is.

Has it had a big extension?
The quickest way would be a door from the lobby into the big reception room. Moving the cloakroom is a bigger job.
Can you remove the internal door from the lobby to give you a feeling of more space on arrival?

I agree with @meateatingveggie about the kitchen. But I also agree I’d live in it for a year before making any decisions. See how the light falls, what irritates you, and what works surprisingly well.

If you have enough children to make a 5 bed a good proposition, don’t underestimate how useful a big porch area will be!

Thanks all. I will wait to live in it for a while and see how I feel. The house is a head move (and I missed out on the one I really love) I've always really liked a spacious hallway and this one is just really, really cramped and claustrophobic.
We're exchanging Monday and I wake up at night worrying because I just don't love the house, so I guess I want to feel that I can mould it to what I like.

if you have plenty of money and don't mind the disruption, this might work

close of the existing front door and make the porch into a utility room with the loo in their too.

Make a new front door in the window to the right. Make the big room into a kitchen (K) with big dining table (D).

Make the existing kitchen into a playroom for kids (or a study if you close off the wall instead of opening it up).

open up a door from dining area to the inner hall to connect the rooms together.

But as others have said above, live there for a year first and see how things work.

if Money allowed I would turn the stairs so that instead of curving towards the kitchen then curved at the bottom into the porch area. I would also change the doors so that both reception rooms were accessed off the porch/entrance hall too. I would move the downstairs toilet to below the upstairs bathrooms, shouldn’t be too expensive as the plumbing could come from the upstairs services. This would them free up more room to make a bigger kitchen which would allow you to move units and therefore create a space to make a back door from the kitchen.

Thank you so much for your suggestions. This has actually made me start to feel excited about the move. I hadn't thought of either of these ideas. @parietal love this idea so much - can imagine it being so spacious and light and fun to be in. And @QueryA love how simple your idea is and how much difference it would make. I feel like with time to plan (and a lot of money!) it could actually be really nice.

I’m with parietal - I’d move the kitchen into the dining room. Might be inclined to keep the old kitchen separate as a utility room/pantry (nice to close the doors on the laundry!).

That would give you direct access to the back garden too. Look at Herringbone or Neptune for some kitchen inspo OP (and then prepare to sell a kidney…).