Any ideas for a more welcoming feel..?

[1234betty]

Thinking about buying a house with this layout. The issue is the narrow hallway and kitchen. Ideally we'd like the kitchen connected to the living room and a bigger combined kitchen/socialising space than it would be if we just open it up now. We were wondering if there could be any way of using the garage in a clever way - but we do need some storage space, so can't take all of it. And it's a terrace so windows can only go at front - we like light :-)

Any suggestions re how to get a bigger total kitchen and living space, but also retain some storage, get a bigger hallway and a utility room...? Probably asking too much but I've seen great suggestions to people here before so thought I'd give it a shot!

Is the garage fully incorporated into the house already (ie a bedroom above), or is it an add-on? Basically it needs to meet building regs for habitation and if it doesn't it could potentially be quite expensive. Is it insulated?

The internal walls between kitchen/hall and kitchen/living - are they load bearing walls?

What's your budget?

There's a bedroom over half of it (as far out as the kitchen goes), and some other houses in the row have made the garage into a room, so it should be possible regulations wise! (?) It may not be super well insulated but the freezer is there so there were proper walls at least.

I'm not sure if the walls are load bearing. If we can get something we really like, we'd be willing to pay for it!

Do you have room sizes? Depending on room sizes as this may not even be viable, if it were me personally, I like kitchens/dining rooms to open up onto the rear garden, so to try to keep costs down, if cost is an issue, I would turn the current living room into a kitchen/dining room/ family room with open French or bifold doors onto the garden. (Plumbing would come from existing kitchen so not a huge job) I would then use the kitchen space as a compact wash room and the other half as storage ( you could have light into the washroom by adding the washroom half with French doors into the new kitchen area maybe. And I would then turn the garage into my snug living room as you could replace the garage doors with a front window for light.
It all depends on room sizes though. This option would avoid knocking down walls.
This is if you would rather not knock down load bearing walls. Narrow hallways without natural light can look good if you maybe did something like this maybe?

Thank you so much for your suggestions! In principle I like the kitchen and a big dining table towards the garden, it's just that it would be a small space in total... We don't need a second living room, so to speak, prefer them together (ideally in an L so that they're not completely in the same space) so that's the difficulty, it's too small for kitchen, dining table and sofa etc :-/ Would rather knock down walls to get it more right for us!

The lights in the space you posted look great, definitely something to look into!

Room sizes are garage 6.22.5, kitchen 3.52.2, living room 5.6*4.5.

I am not an architect by any stretch of the imagination and no idea if this is possible but this is what I’d do. The red is the utility room opening off a small hallway

And put a glass door in the kitchen and also the front door so that the light flows through a bit. You could either have the stairs in the kitchen and a door into the lounge, or have a back hallway. It’s hard to tell how big the kitchen window is though for the light or if there are other places you could put a window in.

Thank you for your sugggestion! That's the easisest solution perhaps, it's just a little odd maybe that the hallway connects straight into the kitchen? The existing kitchen window is good enough but there's no option of getting more windows, so wonder if the 'garage section' of the kitchen would feel quite dark...

With the glass door in the kitchen - did you mean to go outside, a second door out so to speak?

I would knock down the hall wall between the kitchen and hall, up to the front kitchen wall, including getting rid of the kitchen doorway.

On the right I would knock down the wall up to the same level as the kitchen and put an internal doorway level with the kitchen window wall. So you have a small porch and the loo is off the porch, not off the new open space.

Install supporting RSJs where needed.

Then I'd build a plasterboard wall straight across the back of the garage to create a storage area there, keeping the existing doorway from the current hall.

You then have an open area with the kitchen on the left, and on the front right, (currently the front of the garage) I'd install a window where the garage door is and that could be your dining area - open to the kitchen but separate, like 2 staggered rectangles.

I hope that makes sense.

This is by far the easiest solution but the kitchen would then turn into a hallway for the living room and upstairs. You would maybe always feel that the kitchen had to be spotless all the time as always in view of everyone. I suppose you could add the dining room table to the right side so it feels like a separate area maybe but this area would have limited light. And this would also leave the OP without the storage area they need.

We recently bought a terraced house with an already converted garage, and struggled with what to do with that room as the back half was a bit dark, even with the garage door having been replaced with a window.

In the end we made a small corridor and a utility/wc which worked great, I don't know about your kitchen/dining/living but for the hall/garage I would do something like this.

So keep half the garage for storage and then use the other half as inside storage/utility, also move the loo in there, with its own door if you want to keep it separate from washing etc (obviously this would depend on soil pipe, the location for the loo in my drawing is just an example, I suppose it could be along the garage wall too). With the loo gone from the hall you would get more storage for shoes and jackets, plus the window from the former loo would let more light into the corridor.

This is actually more similar to what we ended up doing, stealing from the garage to make a corridor (the difference being that we didn't have a corridor to begin with), so all we structurally had to do was make another doorway into the garage. If you did this I guess you could open up the kitchen a bit more?

Understand if that is not for everyone though, and the layout is slightly different in our house with the garage being a "proper" room and having a window, so no awkward corner in the corridor.

Yeah what @Susanap mentions are kind of my fears too...

@Swedewithmashedpotatoes - that's an interesting suggestion that I hadn't thought about. I wouldn't be too worried about the corner, could even make it bigger and less garage space to get some drawers for gloves and hats somewhere too...

Thank you all very much for the ideas! Will keep thinking...

All suggestions are great! The only thing I will add is that if you have one large kitchen/diner/living room whilst you are watching tv you will have to sit through dishwasher noise and food smells, I would always try to have the kitchen separate from the main living room even if with glass doors. Everyone I know who has done this has regretted not having a separate living room area from the kitchen. I like the ‘after’ image from Swedewithmashedpotatoes
Lots for you to think about, let us know how you get on!

Sorry I’d have the outside door (with a glass top half or glass in it) leading into an entry way with a door to the kitchen, loo and utility (with storage for coats etc in - it would be a good size) and then a glass door into the kitchen, we have a glass door from our kitchen into the hall - its not fully glass it’s 3/4 glass and oak, looks nice and lets a lot of light in. You would then have somewhere to greet visitors and the drafts wouldn’t go into the kitchen in the winter when you open the front door and anyone just dropping parcels etc off wouldn’t see straight through to your kitchen. If the window is a decent size then there should be light enough in the kitchen even if you knock through.
I guess it depends on how much you want extra storage - would a utility be enough, you can realistically get either 2 of the 3 on your wish list - storage, dining kitchen or utility. If you were happy with no utility you could leave the front half of the garage as a garage. How long have you lived there? What do you feel you need the most?

Thank you all again – super helpful to get your ideas!

@Susanap Susanap – we have one (small) space now and are not bothered by kitchen sounds other than the washing machine, so that’s why we would like to move that. I know it’s not for everyone but works for us :-)

@SPLhelp Splhelp – ah see what you mean with the door! And really good point with getting two out of three. We don’t live there yet, we’ve viewed it and nobody else is interested in it so am getting ready to make an offer but we're slightly hesitating since we can’t figure out how difficult it would be to get it at least slightly better for us…

There is a big (ish) bathroom upstairs so am now thinking that maybe we could put the washing machine there, could be an idea.
Am playing around with the floorplan now based on @Swedewithmashedpotatoes ’s idea :-)