How to fit a downstairs toilet/shower and utility? (plans)

[Irie1980]

Hi,
My parents are determined to fit a downstairs toilet (and shower if possible) into their house - I've attached plans.

They live in a small enough 4 bed - the hallway is narrow and there is a stairs with storage underneath - this would be too tight to fit a downstairs loo unfortunately. There is a utility room down one step, with a passage way to outside, and then the garage to the front.

My dad will reluctantly lose some of the garage storage, but would be very reluctant to lose access to the back garden through the side passage way if at all possible.

Any ideas how to reconfigure this so you could fit a small loo and shower, while keeping a utility area and garage?

Thanks!

I can’t visualise this at all can you post the whole downstairs plan?

Here's the ground floor layout though it's probably not to scale (the utility and garage are though) Thanks

What's the alleyway behind the kitchen with the door from the utility? Is it storage?

Could you move the access to being from the other end outside and then carve a downstairs loo out of the far left corner of the utility?

Thanks - that's a side passage way from the garage through to the garden. I think my Dad would be very reluctant to close that off (he's pretty stubborn about things like that!)

Only option I can see is to make the utility a bit bigger by taking some space from the garage and then make it a shower room/loo/utility. It sounds weird but if you look them up on Pinterest or Instagram or wherever they can actually work quite well. Aka “loo-tility”

Either take part of the living room, put another entry door near the front door. Or take part of the kitchen/diner where it joins the utility room, and move the kitchen units.

Move the internal door to the garage to by the front door. Close off the current door from garage to utility. Take a meter wide strip to create a small loo and shower in that utility room, parallel to the garage wall. You could take some additional space from the under stairs cupboard if needed.
That leaves about 1.6 meters of space in the utility (allowing 150mm for the new stud wall separating the shower room from the utility), which is plenty of room for a run of 600 deep cabinets either side of the new door to the shower room, for the utility space.

If this was mine and all those walls were stud walls, I think I'd be making a few more changes though. That living room is very long and thin. I'd probably shorten it and make it more of a snug, give extra space to the kitchen. I'd reduce the length of the hallway at the same time as that's wasted space. Make the kitchen the wow space with space to cook, eat, sit and entertain. Keep the snug for evenings and TV watching. I'd open up under the stairs, to make the hallway feel more generous. Take a bit of it into the utility, which I'd split into utility and downstairs shower room/ loo and I'd max out the storage in the utility space. I'd be looking to add a shallow pantry between the kitchen and utility too. I'd probably be using pocket doors.

I would move garage access to bottom of stairs, make utility access off kitchen, block off the area in hall and add this to existing utility and then make a small shower room out of that utility. It will be tiny, and the utility will be a bit of an odd shape, but there is space for a washer and drier and some other storage, and access to the under stairs cupboard.

the simplest solution is just to cut off a bit of the garage and make that into a loo, with access via the utility. Or you could make the utility a bit bigger and put the loo in that room. the loo would then have 3 doors - 2 for the garage / garden access plus one for the house. so whoever uses the loo would either need to be careful on locking / unlocking the doors if they want 100% privacy.

but this would be fairly cheap, not disruptive and it retains the important passageway to the garden.