Any ideas of how to best use our space?

[WhatshouldIdowithmyhouse]

We’re lucky to have a house with quite a lot of reasonably flexible space downstairs (result of wrap round extensions, which means we are very bottom heavy, with 3 modest bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs). When we bought the house the left hand “annex” was rented as a separate entity, we have reincorporated it into living space and refurbed the old kitchen and bathroom into another bathroom with washer/dryer down the end.

We have 3 children and I’d like them to have their own rooms sooner or later, so the original idea was to use the annex as our master bedroom. We’re now thinking it would be better as our main living area as the other spaces don’t work easily with 2 sofas in - it’s quite open plan so not many walls to use without feeling tight. I think we could use the play room as another bed room, DH disagrees.

Would appreciate any views/ideas of how best to use the space! North is top of the diagram if that makes a difference and we are detached.

Kitchen seems miles away from the rest of the rooms. I'd make the play room into the kitchen and maybe knock through to the dining room. Kitchen would become play room/ future den. I'd keep the annex as a bedroom either the master or for kids in the future.

where is the front door?

where are the stairs?

where is the garden and which of the various double doors gives the best access to the garden that should be kept?

do you have the kind of budget for knocking down walls / rebuilding things or do you want to work with the space you have?

Thanks, interestingly I suggested swapping kitchen with play room but DH not keen as would be a lot of work and he thinks the space would be too small. The picture probably makes the kitchen look further away, in reality the paler walls aren't there, the diagram just uses them for dimensions so it's pretty open.

Garden is at bottom, living space currently has sliding door, considering opening up and knocking a wall out to double it at some point. Front door is between play room and study. Stairs in the corridor bit on diagram between shower and utility.

DH is pretty handy so happy to do some modification though knocking into the annex would require some serious structural stuff. Wall between dining room and playroom is stud so could come down easily. We're probably here for the long haul and always have projects on the go so not too worried about budget as we'd adjust timescale to manage that if needed. Potential to extend upstairs to get the 4th bedroom so may do that at some point but looking to see if we can use what we have better first.

here is a different way around.

playroom becomes dining room D
middle space becomes kitchen K
old utility room knocks through to become a larger living room (L). there is space for a big L-shape sofa and a comfy chair watching the TV (turn the utility door into a window W).

old study becomes a utility room U

other end of the living room can be zoned as a study (S) with bookshelves etc. Or as a playspace with big toys (play kitchen or pool table or whatever) if that suits you better.

Or if you need a good wfh space, you could partition this off (and add a window).

Annex remains as a big bedroom B

this might not be perfect but you don't have to knock down too many walls. and you could have pocket doors to separate the spaces a bit if you need to.

if you really want bigger rooms than that, I think you'll need to tackle the big wall in the centre of the house which looks pretty structural and hard to move.