Low bathroom vs internal steps (vs £££ to fix!)

[BadgeredBadger]

Hello, we’d love to get some advice on our upcoming house renovation.

We want to convert “Living 2” room in the attached plan into a kitchen (current kitchen is in a gloomy basement room), “Shower” room into a dining room, and knock down the two highlighted walls to more openly connect these two new rooms. Upstairs, we want to turn “Bedroom 3” into a family bathroom.

The two back rooms of the house, “Shower” and “Bedroom 3”, are both currently a few steps below the corresponding main floors.

We are considering the idea of raising the new dining room floor to be level with the new kitchen floor (so there are no steps in between), and also raising the new family bathroom floor to be level with the door entrance to this room (currently you open the door and go down some steps).
However, the ceiling in the new family bathroom is sloped, and if we were to raise the floor as proposed, the headheight would be 1.5m at the short wall, and 2.5m at the tall wall (as shown in the attached plan).

We feel that this would give the bathroom an ‘attic’ feel, but that it may still be worth it in order to level out the floor below, and not worth the money to raise the roof of the short wall. We would strategically place the bath and storage cupboards in the short part of the bathroom so that anyone six foot tall could stand up in all the walkable parts of the room (and anyone 6’6” could stand up from the loo and effectively access the shower without ducking), and put large velux windows in to make it feel airier. However, we are worried that it may feel too cramped for a family bathroom.

Would you mind such a bathroom, eg that you couldn’t stand up in the bath? Would it put you off buying? For context, the ceiling height in the whole of our basement floor (not shown) is about 6’2” so nobody that tall is going to buy this house anyway!

The alternatives would be to either raise the short wall (which we expect to be expensive as we’d also have to use different roof tiles and we’re not convinced we’d get the value back, seeing as it wouldn’t increase the useable floor space), or to keep the internal steps between the kitchen and dining room below (which we’re keen to avoid if possible due to carrying food etc).

Greatly appreciate people’s opinions!

Why not just live with the steps?

We have steps like this in our house. I wouldn’t do what you intend. But we are able bodied.

Seems an odd idea. Have you spoken to a builder/architect as to budget? It's a lot of work removing load bearing walls, changing floor heights and possibly additional fire safety measures for a compromised design (low ceiling heights, stairs opening into a kitchen).

Just spotted the other bedroom at the bottom of your image so just ignore me.

Might be worth checking the fire safety regulations though because of the basement?

We've recently renovated what had been a derelict property and we had multiple steps and levels from various, previous extensions. Your biggest expense will be moving the sewer/water pipes to the bedroom, because presumably, there is currently no pipework near bedroom 3?

Have you enquired how much a dormer window would be in the bathroom?
If you kept the step into the bathroom, how high would the shorter ceiling be?
If you change the door to swing outwards into the hall, or change to a sliding door, you'll save 1m2 within the bathroom, and might mean you can re-arrange where things go.
If the bathroom was on the ground floor, I would definitely try to keep it on 1 level. People need to climb the main stairs to get to it, so having a step down into the room isn't a massive thing IMO.

Will you be keeping a downstairs toilet/shower? I think building regs means you cannot remove an existing downstairs toilet without replacing 1 on the same level. Have you spoken to an architect/builders as yet?

Thank you so much for the responses, this is very valuable.

@BettyBardMacDonald We have considered keeping the level-change, as in the first of the two attached images. However, we have been told by several people that we should level out the future dining room with the future kitchen if possible, partly because steps will take up space in an already small dining area, but also because we will often be carrying food between the rooms (and minimising trip hazards).

@MumonabikeE5 Between which rooms do you have your steps, and how many? Do you also have an equivalent setup with steps as soon as you go into “Bedroom 3”?

@Hridms When you say odd, what specifically do you think doesn’t work? (don’t mean to sound defensive, genuinely want to know issues any issues!) And do you mean the whole layout seems odd, or just the idea of having a low bathroom? The rationale of the whole layout is that we need to move the kitchen to this floor, and although we do have money to renovate we don’t have the money for an extension. We thought the room at the back (where the dining room will go) was too small for a kitchen, and DP has always wanted a kitchen island, so we deduced this was the only place for the kitchen. We have an architect, but they haven’t given us much pushback. We have factored in the cost of removing two load-bearing walls, installing a mist system (due to the exposed staircase), moving the floor height between the back rooms, and seems like it will still be substantially cheaper than an extension?

@Geneticsbunny Thanks, the basement has several external doors so think that should be ok.

@JC03745 That’s really helpful to know. We hope our plumbing costs won’t be too bad because we’re effectively moving the bathroom directly up a floor, and so should be able to just extend the current sewer pipe upwards.
I’m not sure we’d be allowed a dormer window (at least with clear glass), as it would face sideways and look onto the neighbours’ property?
I’ve included plans with and without the step change, which include the future bathroom head heights. If we kept the step change we would have about 60cm more height in the bathroom.
Thank you for the future bathroom door suggestions - I think the issue is less about bathroom floor space (as both scenarios still allow us to get a separate bath and shower in), but more about how airy it will feel when you walk into the room.
We have had plans drawn up by an architect, they haven’t mentioned any issue with moving the bathroom, although that might be because it’s currently 4 steps down from the main ground floor? We’ll definitely ask them about it though, thank you.

Each of our bedrooms have a random one or two steps into them, which we just don’t even notice now

I did choose a house that was almost level on ground flooor however, and then made the ground floor entirely wheelchair accessible, from the street to the rear garden .
other houses on local streets have changes in levels, that wouldn’t have worked for my family.

i am not sure I would spend the money on changing the levels. But I guess now is the time to do it if you might regret it!