Garden access from lower ground bedroom floor of upside down house

[NorthernDuck]

We are looking at an upside down house that we both like on paper, our only problems are the bedroom size downstairs.
On the main ground floor level there is currently a large living dining room, kitchen (that we’d knock through) bedroom (3.6m x 3.2m) with en-suite, utility and loo, there are outside doors in the utility and the front door, upstairs there is one large room (2.2 x 5.6m) currently marketed as a craft/hobby room and three bedrooms and a bathroom on the lower ground floor with a hallway/door to the outside. The lower ground bedrooms are all small two are 2.6m x 3.4 m and one 3
m x 3.4 m. The hallway and the door (if changed to a window) could be knocked into one of the smaller rooms to make it an ok size but we’d lose the access to the outside from this level.
we have one child so we’d want to all be on the same level and we’d probably convert the bedroom and utility on the living floor to a playroom/study and maybe see if we can put an en-suite into the hobby room to use as a guest bedroom room.

The house is a quirky layout but the views etc are amazing and its current layout really capitalises on this and you get a lot more space for your money with the slightly odd layout. Would you knock through the hallway? We could do an extension but I don’t think that it would be the best use of money putting a little extension on to make the bedroom bigger and whilst we could do a bigger one to also include an en-suite it probably isn’t worth it either.

I can't visualise the layout - would it be possible to share a floorplan?

This is the lower ground floor.

And where does that door lead? To the garden? Can you access it from the garden floor too?

I wouldn't get rid of the utility room. So useful.

Tbh I'd think I’d be happy with small bedrooms. All life would usually be concentrated upstairs.

@GrumpySock the door leads to the garden, we wouldn’t get rid of the utility room (I’m discounting houses without a utility room it’s almost top of my essentials list), it’s whether if we got rid of access to the garden on this level whether it would affect the resale and whether one of these bedrooms is currently big enough to be a master or could be made big enough by incorporating the hallway without extending. Currently the master bedroom is on the ground floor but it works so much better as a playroom/snug/office and it’s no bigger than these (but does have an en-suite as it’s on its own floor) we would take the en-suite out if we made it a living room as there is a loo on this level. There are currently 5 bedrooms, these three on the lower ground floor, the master on the ground floor and a long thin one on the first floor but none are a particularly good size for a master bedroom.

Isn’t that a fire escape route for that floor of the house though? I’d be wary of reducing the number of escape routes tbh, especially from an area where you sleep, and live with the small rooms myself. It might not even be possible from a building regs perspective.

Can you add French doors or similar to the two back bedrooms so you access rhr garden through them.

What is that acess like to the main floor? Is it direct at ground level at the front? Or is up a staircase? I don't think I'd loose my only access direct to ground level, if that is the arrangement.

I'd also be wary of putting in 2 sets of French doors. If you loose one wall with windows, and so have a radiator on another wall, plus a door you rapidly run out of walls to put furniture on, which given the size of the rooms could be an issue.

OP your post is confusing because you say main ground floor then upstairs then lower ground floor. By LGF do you mean a basement? A sort of half underground floor? Then main ground floor, is that really ground or are there steps to ground?

Could you not post the actual listing? I feel very confused. (To be fair it might be a bit early to engage with this sort of stuff).

Hi OP, you will need to consider the fire regulations if you remove that hallway, the master bedroom would then become part of the escape route so may need fire rated doors and additionl smoke detection. Do you have the ground floor plan too?

The solution that jumps out at me is to knock through two of the downstairs bedrooms to make a master. Keep the first floor ensuite even if you use the room it's attached to as a playroom. That way you can still use it as a guest room and still resell eventually as a 4 bedroom house.

Can you access the garden from ground level as well? If so then it's fine to not access from lower ground as well. You may want to have a rear bedroom with a french door as that may be nice to be able to access garden anyway
But I don't see why you need to. Just make the master bedroom the one on thr right of the plan knocking through to the cupboard and then to bathroom to make an ensuite?

Is there a way of moving the entrance to the bathroom?

If you did you could expand the back right bedroom by a couple of feet, which might be best used as a massive wardrobe as you'd have room for drawers etc as well in there.

Alternatively, is everyone on the same floor the best plan forever? If not, I'd keep the master bedroom upstairs, use as a play room for now, but store all off season clothes/evening clothes/anything else that you don't wear daily up there, and just manage with a smaller room for now. Then when the child is a bit older you can move upstairs to the master bedroom and they can have a whole floor to themselves, with one room as a snug they can use?

I would knock through but probably keep an access outside through the master bedroom. This assumes you have direct access from the main floor to the garden though.

Don't discount that you might want a bedroom on a separate floor to your kids at some point.