Floorplan advice

[WingingItThroughLife]

We're in the really early stages of planning a renovation and I'm hoping for some ideas/feedback.

We have a large openish plan area that will be the kitchen/diner and living space.

Currently the kitchen is in the middle of the house and the utiliroom is next to the garden.
We want to move the kitchen to be next the garden and put a utility room and little study space in. This is a first attempt mock up of what it will be.

The bits I'm sort of struggling with are

• is a very small utility room a mistake? What's the smallest size that it can be and still be practical. It might be 1.5m x 2m.
• the sofa/TV area just feels like a big slightly wasted space. And it's hard to work out where best to put the TV.
• Is it going to feel like a claustrophobic corridor as you come in.

We do have an office/spare room/snug already but need another office space (both work from home regularly). But I really want a utility space separate to the kitchen.
Anything else that's not going to work? And any ideas of how to make it better?

Which is the study space? In the corridor bit? Or that little room? Where is the garden? To the bottom or right if the picture?

I've added some annotations where I guessed about where stuff is. but I might be wrong.

garden outside sliding doors?
office (O) bottom right
utility (U) next to it.

small utility is fine - I would stack the washer & dryer and then have a bit of space beside for cupboards etc.

and some tweaks -

• i'm not sure why you have a wall between living and dining space. I got rid of it.
• i put the TV flat against the wall so people at the dining table (and even kitchen) can see it. This depends a bit on how you watch TV. If you only watch one movie at a time with everyone on the sofa, this is probably not helpful. but if you have the TV on while cooking / chatting / hanging out, it might be good to have it in a central location.
• To go with the TV, I turned the sofa around (S) and added a chair (C). Also added bookshelves (B) on the wall behind the sofa. Or this could be a decorative console table instead, but I think you can never have too many bookshelves.

Yes, you're right that the garden is outside the sliding doors and U and O are utility room and office.

There needs to be a bit of a pillar where the white square is. Then there'll be two steels across the space. The kitchen/dining area half is an old extension which was built many decades without adequate support. So we need to put in some and it'll be cheaper to do two and have a column/pillar in the middle of the room.

And there's a bit that sticks out that's the old external wall so the TV can't go flat against the wall there.

DH doesn't like the idea of having the back of the sofa as you walk in. But I think I probably agree that makes more sense to have the sofa like that with a chair.

I wouldn't like that corridor like entrance. Is that just a run of base units? I can see why you'd need the extra units, but it would feel a bit tight imo.

Change the door from the utility into the kitchen to the wall directly in front of the door and make it a pocket door or barn door (marked yellow). That would free up that door opening space in the kitchen.
Instead of the peninsula I'd try have an island long ways through the space.

If you have to keep the wall for support reasons then I'd use it, and create banquet seating (marked as A in the image) with benches on two sides and then chairs on two sides.

You could possibly make the sitting room slightly smaller to make the back hallway less cramped.
Also, do you need a back door out the utility room and beside the office?

If you removed the door beside the office the office could take some of that space.
Or if it made more sense to get rid of the one in the utility, you'd have a bigger utility space. The back hallway as it is looks a bit like wasted space.

I just noticed there is another door directly into the sitting room? Is that hallway door the front door then?

I assume OP hasn't included the front of her house in the plan. Both those doors will lead onto her hallway I should think.

Having been through this with our own extension, I'd be wary of how small you've made the utility room. Ours is tight - about 1.8 m wide which was just enough for a washing machine and dryer under the counter, with a small sink between them - but yours seems too small to me.

The width of 1.5m could be just about okay if you stack a washer and dryer, but the depth could be a problem - the units on your plan don't look as deep as those in the kitchen and will need to be full depth to accommodate laundry appliances. If you make them any deeper you'll block the back door.

I would recommend that you don't make rooms the absolute minimum size when you plan them out, as the builders will inevitably lose a few cm somewhere by the time they finish plastering the walls. We had to swap a couple of kitchen units round to deal with this, and the utility room got so tight that part of the skirting board had to be removable so the dryer could be pulled out!!

Sorry, misread the dimensions of the utility - it's 2m wide not 1.5m - but the point still stands.

I have a utility room that’s 1.3 x 2. It is a bit squashed (definitely can’t iron in there!) but also, awesome. On the longer wall I have a worktop with a huge sink in the middle. Under the counter I have a freezer, the under sink cupboard, and a washing machine. On the counter I have a tumble drier (above washer) and a microwave. Above the microwave and sink I have wall cabinets. You could also have hooks on the wall for hanging apron, ironing board etc. I have a pop up laundry rack that just about fits in the floorspace, and a dehumidifier and radiator next to it. That room works hard!! (Pm for photo). I do wish I’d put a oull down laundry rack but couldn’t find one right for the space.

Re. your current plan: think about where is your washer/drier goes, as that makes a lot of noise and you don’t want it backing onto the study or kitchen wall. Ideally you want it in the corner on an external wall and definitely put a rubber mat under it to help silence vibrations. (Your workmen will tell you that you don’t need this: please don’t listen to them like I did, and get them to put it under before the washer is installed so you aren’t later trying to drag the washer across your new floor).

Looking at your plan I would at least swap the utility and study so that the washer/drier can go in the external corner. But my preferred option is to move the study to where you currently have the armchair. That gets you a smaller dining space but a bigger study, a bigger kitchen, loses the dark corridor and it makes the study area much quieter, you can even use bookshelves against the stud wall to insultate it - maybe even hide the door behind a bookcase, my friend did that with a secret door attached to a bookcase and it is awesome.

I’m not sure if your external doors are already in place, but if not, I’d change it so the living room door opens from the hall, not the outside. That makes the room cosier and gives you more armchair/wall space.

Also, where is your soil vent pipe and sewer? Could you perhaps squeeze in a tiny toilet next to utility near the front door? Even 1m would be enough.

Kinda like this. The blue is seating.

Also, is that a sliding door to your utility? If ao get rid of it and replace witb normal door even if that makes corridor squashed. My architect talked me into a sliding door, we bought top if the range but is still shit. When a screw works loose then the door hangs out of alignment and sticks (people have got stuck in there), and you can’t tighten the screw without removing all the door architrave which means replacing and repainting it everytime you need to tighten a screw.

Architects love sliding doors because they can comply with their silly ideal ‘rules’ for how much space a door shouod have. But take it from me you do not want a sliding door and the architect doesn’t have to live with it, you do.

Also noise (and smell) travels around a sliding door very easily because it isn’t tightly wedged into a frame. So not ideal for a utility or toilet.

Some really helpful ideas I'm just processing them. I am worried about the utility room being too small. We had been wondering about a garden office, but using the armchair space might work. It might make the space behind it quite dark though. The windows in that bit are really small/east facing/looking out onto a fence.

Yes, it is just the back of the house. So the door goes into our hallway. We're not going to be changing the rest of the house as part of this so I didn't bother drawing it out.

We do have a bathroom downstairs so weren't planning on another one. I had wondered about a little guest toilet but it's probably unnecessary.

Interesting about the sliding doors... Probably is a good idea to have a proper door for the utility room

I would make the green square a walk through office space. Can have pocket doors at either end to close off if in use, and use as hallway when not.

Red area then become one bigger utility area, accessed from kitchen

With that other door to sofa area, then people can walk through living area to kitchen if office important call happening

Is this the whole of the ground floor?
Where are the stairs?

Here’s another idea.

Study is moved to armchair area. It is windowless BUT you can build a small glass panel in the top of the stud wall which will let daylight in from the patio doors. We have this. This plan also lets you keep a small armchair with view over patio.

Utility is thus much bigger, and so is kitchen, and you lose the wasted space in the dark corridor. And you can mostly conceal your pillar in the study wall.

Be aware if the utility is very small then you have to leave the door open whenever th tumble drier is on to prevent overheating. Thisnis annoying if washermon at same time.

But definitely have a utility it is awesome and you’d be amazed what you can do with even 1.5x2.

Here's the current floorplan that hopefully makes sense of things - where the stairs are etc.

Do you use your garage? Seeing the full floorplan, I'd consider converting the back third into a utility room.

Get rid of the peninsula and have an island instead.

In the lounge, I'd personally consider blocking the door in from the hallway, using the long wall for the TV above a nice sideboard and the sofa in front. Or alternatively, the TV on the wall that backs onto the corridor.

I also think the space in your dining area, where the armchair is is a bit wasted. Can you use it for a built-in, floor-to-ceiling cupboard-come-desk? Depends on how occasional your WFH is/will be. Then your kitchen/study/utility area can be reconfigured and a bit more spacious.

Was going to say the same! You have the door in there already too and will get rid of the corridor effect.