Floorplan advice

[Sidindigo]

Hi everyone,
We're currently looking at a house and are unsure what wed do with the downstairs layout. The current ground floor makes the house feel small and I think as a family of 5 it would be slightly too small for us. We have money to extend and reconfigure but just unsure what would be best. I think we'd add an extention on the back off the current lounge and a porch at the front. How would you do it? Open to any suggestions :) Thankyou

Need more info - what age are the DC? Is the garden all to the rear? What rooms do you need - does that bedroom/office need to stay as a bedroom office? Personally my starting point would be:

Rooms needed:
-Open plan family kitchen diner with seating/TV/play area

• Grown up separate sitting room
• utility room
• downstairs loo
• study

Assuming the garden is to then read, with it being North facing, I'd be trying to find a way for the kitchen diner to have max light, but also outlook to the garden (French doors of sliders). I'd also want any extension not to block light.

If you have money then I would just buy somewhere that is already done how you like? Renovation is really expensive at the moment (and extremely stressful).

However if I have this house I would block off the door between the kitchen and the office/ bedroom and put a new door in between dining room and office/ bedroom and make the office bedroom into a snug. The I would make the rest open plan and keep the kitchen where it is with a peninsula where the current worktop is. You might even get away with broken plan rather than open plan and just put two large serving hatches in between the kitchen and diner and the kitchen and living room.

The downstairs layout is awful. To get to the office from the front door you need to go through every other downstairs room. If you could create a hall it might work better.

Bloody hell that's a poor layout! 4 beds all sharing one bathroom. A random shower on its own upstairs. Going through the living room to access everywhere else and no downstairs loo or utility.

I'd recommend a decent architect to redo the whole thing tbh.

I agree with Titchy it is a really odd layout, and also with Genetics that I wouldn't go through the stress of buying a house that was all wrong to then go through the stress of a big building project.
I'd keep looking for a house that suits, or at least had a straightforward solution that meant you could live there while the extension were being built.

Yes you absolutely do need to do more than extend and add a porch!

As others have said you’re walking through the lounge AND the dining room to get to the kitchen, then right through the kitchen to get to the bedroom/ office. Plus no storage, no utility, no space at the bottom of the stairs and no room to put shoes on etc. Kitchen is also tiny as well as being a corridor. I don’t think a porch and a bigger kitchen/ lounge would solve this.

I think I would maybe think about moving the front door into the middle and having a large ish porch and corridor along the front, with doors to all 3 rooms and a loo/ seating area, then extending the kitchen and lounge out to the back to have a massive kitchen/ diner (with existing kitchen as utility) and then lounge separate in the current office/ bedroom. But I do think this might be one to get a view from an architect and definitely get some quotes from a builder before you get much further as I think this would probably be quite expensive. I also don’t know if moving the front door is feasible or would look really odd.