Tell me about about you 2 bed+ box room home

[ShimmyingThroughTheChaos]

Currently house-hunting. Most of the 3-bed housing stock in the area we are looking in (which is in zone 3/4 London) that is within our budget is 1930s built and consists of 2 bedrooms and a box room which is literally only big enough to fit a single bed (at a push) or a desk.
Does anyone else have a home that is similar, and how do you manage if you have more than one DC? Or relatives who come to stay?
Any inspo about how to configure the box room so that it could be a bedroom? or anyone who can tell me that I wouldn't be a monster for expecting two children to share a bedroom, and could share some positive stories of family living in this kind of set-up?
We just have the one DC at the moment and it's not certain if we will be able to have another... but hypothetically I would like to think we could have another and still fit in the house!
Houses with a more sizeable 3rd room or a 4-bed are stretching our budget a bit more than I'm comfortable with what with interest rates and cost of living ATM so I've made my peace with going for a slightly smaller home. We love the area because the schools are really good, there is loads of green space and family are close by. Doing a loft conversion in a few years is definitely an option.

I grew up in a house like that and there were 3 kids so 2 shared and the lucky one got the box room. We swapped regularly so each got the small room at some point and when my parents had a lodger or Foster kids we 3 shared the 2nd bedroom. Worked fine for us and only 1 tiny bathroom too.

@lavender2023

Yes that would be an idea re converting the loft of a maisonette

Only issue is, we'd have to get first floor maisonette so wouldn't have direct access to the garden, which we really love having now with the DC

Where we live we're in a ground floor split level maisonette but have no left as we've got neighbours above

*no loft!

Yes a maisonette would definitely be cheaper than a house

Round here in SE London zone 5, maisonettes are (optimistically) around £400,000 and 3 bed semi-detached from around £550-600,000 and the rest

We moved the wall between big room and bigger bed room, which meant we could fit in a wardrobe and drawers. We also rehung the door to open outwards. Still small though - saving for a loft conversion!

One thing we are considering (although might not be for everyone), is converting the downstairs front room to a bedroom. As we have a conservatory with solid roof we are using this as a dining room, meaning that we have an extra downstairs room potentially for 2nd child when they need it. Not perfect by any means - means we need to be quiet in the evening, they are on a different floor to the bathroom, etc. But in a pinch, it may be possible. I grew up in a house too small upstairs where one of the downstairs rooms could have been converted but my parents never bothered. Would have made 3 of us sharing 2 rooms much more pleasant if we had each had our own space and not so much bickering about it.

Out of interest, @ShimmyingThroughTheChaos , which bit of London?

I agree with 2+ box room for now, then extension/loft conversion as and when you need the space. Growing up, I had friends who had a 4 bed house but 2 of the 4 were teeny tiny box rooms (no way of knocking through, it was an odd layout) so the parents’ set up was each child had a box room with a bed in, and almost nothing else, then they shared a playroom in the 4th decent sized room (rather than sharing a bigger room and having two small box rooms left over).

Make sure a house like this has a box room big enough to take a full size single bed. Ours only takes a shorty, which means a loft conversion will become essential rather than nice to have at some point if we don’t want our two to share. I find lower furniture opens up the room, with maybe a stand for hoodies and “hanging” clothes like shirts kept in another wardrobe.

We had a 2 bed + box room... and garage!
So we used to have a cot bed in there plus a wardrobe (specially built fot the space.)

Once DC grew out of the cot bed - at nearly 6- we had a cabin bed built as a normal one wouldn't fit due to window sill.
When DS hit 10, we decided to build an extra bedroom on top of the garage.

There were a few moments when we thought we couldn't do it, covid-19 & garage foundations, but all worked out fine.

The cabin bed is still in there as a spare/ guest room.

Yes we have had a child in the box room .. all children have had a turn over the years..
At the moment we have a midsleeper with storage under it

We don't live in London and are now in a 4 bed but for a long time lived in a 3 bed with 3DC. The three kids shared a room (the eldest was 10 when we moved) and the third bedroom was a study that could fit a single bed when DM or MIL visited. Even now we have a 4 bed the DDs share a twin room and DS has the box room (fourth bedroom is a spare double room/office space). DS has a cabin bed with bookshelves, a desk that pulls out and a cupboard below him. He also has a small wardrobe. My eldest DD wants his room, I think a well designed boxroom can work well as a child's bedroom or as a study/single bedroom for a guest.

I've seen quite a few where the wall between the box room and bedroom next to it is moved to make the box room bigger and 2 more equal sized rooms for the DC to have.

We lived in a two bed and a box terrace in Streatham Common where there are rows and rows of such houses. The box didn’t fit a single bed only a toddler bed although some families had custom beds in there. Most families with more than one child did loft conversions and back extensions. We priced up an extension when our youngest child was about a year and decided to move instead.
our neighbours however had four kids and with extensions were very happy with their house so depends whether the location is more important than the house and if an extension is a realistic possibility.

See if you can find the details of other similar houses on the same or nearby streets with similar sized houses.. you will get some information as to what other people have done.. loft conversion sacrificing the small room for the stairs to the room in the loft, rear double height extemsion, ground floor extension to give extra play / study / living space, garden room (shed!) for ocassional guests / study space, moving walls upstairs to equalise room sizes or using downstairs space as a bedroom. All of these are ways of using the space in different ways.

My kids are 19, 17 and 14 .. none of them have ever had a wardrobe in their bedrooms.. chest of drawers only and we have a shared wardrobe on the landing for dresses / suits etc and a closet in the hallway for coats.

Our,smallest bedroom is 5ft9 wide x 7ft long. I had a bed made to fit the 5ft9 width (only marginally more than buying a standard bed), a chest of drawers alongside the bed and there is space for a wardrobe behind the door.

With the bed up against the wall there is still a decent amount of floor space.

Our box room has the stair box in it too, but a cabin bed works well

We have this .
Downstairs is a 12x10 living room and a seperate 10x10 back room back room which leads through to the extension ( kitchen/dining room)

We use this as the family space , DS has the front room (since he was 10yo) he's now 24 yo and who knows how long he'll be living with us , at least another couple of years .
DD has the back bedroom.
Small bedroom is storage + DS wardrobe .

It works ok, as they can do their own thing . If they want to stay up late we're not disturbed by them

Loft conversion would be ideal but I don;t think I'd want the upheaval now .

@ShimmyingThroughTheChaos I grew up in a house with 2 bedrooms no box room and it was my mum, dad, brother and me. Age gap of 6 years between my brother and me. We shared a room until he was 15 and I was 9. My mum and dad had to build an extension to add another bedroom to the back of the house so we could have our own rooms. Growing up until then sharing a room was fine though although I was the younger one perhaps my brother hated it more.

I've now bought this style of house with 2 bedrooms and a box room and currently have 1 toddler with the intention of having a second child but we do have an extension at the back of the house which needs a lot of work and is currently unused (has some damp and is very old) but our plan is to make use of that as a bedroom if we have a second child as eventually we'd have to split them. I'd have 2 children share when younger though. Our box room is functioning as a home office right now.

We have 4 bedrooms but 3dc. Box room has bunkbeds (cuddly toys stored in the bed dd isn’t using as she goes through phases it top or bottom bunk sleeping), clever under bed storage, chest of drawers and small wardrobe.

When visitors come, other dd goes into the bunk bed and her bed converts into a double.

my dc don’t really spend much time in their rooms to be honest (possibly because they’re small).

I grew up in a house with 2 + box room. The box room was mine until I left home!

The bed went under the window with a shelf over the end of it for some stuff, wardrobe by the door on the right and behind the door a small dressing table with some drawers and cupboard above. The bed wouldn't fit the other way round.

When my parents felt the pinch money wise in the late 70's from interest rates up to 17% the box room was rented out to a lodger and I shared with my sister. I studied at the dining room table.

Eventually we built an extension to the side downstairs with en-suite which was a guest room.

Whoever said a bedroom has to be a min of 3x3 is mad! Both my DC's rooms are smaller than this.

I had the box room growing up - it was fine. My parents rejigged the house around to give me a slither of their room and we were clever with storage etc. I don't ever remember it being a problem.

My kids share a room - I don't have a problem with it. They are really close. If you can consider an extension in the future then I wouldn't worry too much about the now.

While you have 1 child if thinking about guests why not give them the small room and turn the middle room into a guest room / playroom. Or just be flexible when guests come over.

We live in a house like this and are a family of 5. Bedrooms are the easy bit for us. The hard bit is all of the stuff that migrates to the rest of the house and lack of storage.

We have two youngest DC sharing a bunk that has a pull out trundle for sleepovers. Then oldest has their own room (the box), which has a lot of built in storage underneath the bed.

We never have guests. SIL will stay a couple of times a year. We have a blow up double bed that goes in the lounge and a single blow up as well. It's fine and works for us. If my parents were to stay we would give them our bed and we would take the blow up.

We put the stairs to the loft conversion in the box room. I have the loft conversion and I use the box room as my study. I like to pretend I'm posh and have my own entire suite 🤣

Bunk beds in the box room, for sleeping only. Then they can have the bigger room as a playroom?

We're in a 2 up/2 down new-build semi. We only have one DC and he's lucky he has his own room. The only problem is DH teaches online from home and the only place he can have his office is in the main bedroom. He used to be in DS's room when DS was in ours but we couldn't go on like that so we moved it all around. It's horrendous tbh as we can't use the bedroom when he's working! We would love to get the loft converted but can't afford it, plus there is probably restrictions due to it being shared ownership. I try not to dwell on it too much, we just feel lucky we have somewhere we can call ours.