Chimney breast removal for storage reasons

[Resetneeded]

OK - so just a quick bit of background to my longish dilemma/vent. Family of 4, 2 DS age 5 and nearly 2. We live in a victorian-style 3 bed semi. All three bedrooms are decent double bed sizes, and in fact we have a small mini office attached to the master bedroom. We bought because of the lovely tall ceilings and location. It has been abused by previous owners with successive poor quality DIY.

I feel like I'm a bit stuck on how to set up the home for success. Storage is a big issue and we've sort of tinkered with it around the edges, buying multiple cupboards, book cases, chests of drawers etc. But it doesn't all hang together properly, in part because we have chimney breasts and radiators all in the wrong places.

Bedroom 1 - bed is up against chimney breast - wasted space, no room to put bed side tables off the shelf, would need to be bespoke. Other wall has radiator. Bed is massive superking so also an absolute pain to move, but we could use the storage opportunity underneath better.

Bedroom 2 - has double bed tucked in corner, again annoying chimney breast meaning no room for a full end to end wardrobe. None of the furniture was actually bought for the room, including the WFH office set up I have. Want DS5 to have this room but need to find a new home for its current contents such as adults coats, bedding, paperwork, printer etc.

Bedroom 3 - Kids share, cot bed, single (extendable) bed, 2 chest of drawers, a wardrobe, chimney breast (which the cot bed is up against) and then another pointless cupboard. Once DS5 moves, the cot bed goes and some of the toys downstairs can come back up.

So, in my view the most logical option is to take out all the chimney breasts upstairs. This would cost around 35k I reckon as we need multiple steels per room. Plus probably more for renovation etc.

Does that make sense?

I'd leave the downstairs chimney breasts in the living and dining rooms, but ultimately remove the one in the kitchen.

Just interested in hearing from others with similar set up how they solved their storage issues with this kind of age group?

And this is before I even talk about the kitchen/utility/conservatory space.

Looking at your office layout I’d probably get a large corner desk installed and use one side each. It would look a lot less disjointed. You could either move the radiator or run it across the window.

Photo meant for previous post!

Thanks all. I think we must just have far (too many) clothes and hobbies. Two of our wardrobes alone are full of coats.

Additional underbed storage is due to arrive shortly.... I'll see how we get on. I had a look underneath and a lot of the things I remembered being underneath there have actually been used and discarded.

I'm also looking into some wardrobe organizers. It won't solve all the issues but it is a good start and I think this has cemented my thoughts that downstairs does need to work much harder. We had considered doing a large extension at one point but that is years still down the line. So I'm thinking the utility needs to do more as does the space under the stairs. That is no regrets spending and more localized. Possibly then I can whittle down the number of laundry bins and baskets down.

Yes this would have been ideal but we can't share an office for various reasons.

Understair cupboard is a good idea.

Looking at my house there is a lot of space for storage upwards on the walls. Put shelves and cupboards in and you can get a massive amount of extra space.

If your floorplan is to scale it doesn't look like removing the chimneys will get you that much space, will cost a fortune and obviously have a significant amount of disruption and potential risk.

You don't mention your loft storage, whether the loft is boarded and whether stuff can go up there. You can get vacuum packed sealed bags to put stuff in, and a loft ladder if you need access to be more regular.

If you have stuff that is not used for months at a time then loft storage is a good solution.

@Resetneeded Could you rent a lock up or garage nearby and outsource the stuff you don’t use often like Christmas decorations, etc? That’s what we plan on doing. I can’t bear having stuff everywhere but we have two boys and lots of hobbies.

I think the cost and disruption of all this is really high. I think you would spend much less money taking a different approach.

First properly declutter. Get help if you're bad at it. Consider someone like a professional organiser. In some rooms having proper built in furniture will utilise that space properly. You could also look at replacing radiators with tall vertical ones. All beds should be the kind that allow storage. You can get so much in them. Great for out of season clothes, towels, bedding etc.

Next rent a storage unit. Or if you have attic space use it for seasonal stuff. So the wardrobe full of coats is a bit mad. You don't need all of them all of the time. Your kids ages means you have lots of big stuff like toys. I'm 10 years on and the toys have gone and have been for a while. But again rotating toys is great so put some in storage and rotate it over the year. Same with books.

I think you could probably find that with a bit of work you can make a real difference without spending anywhere near as much.

Funnily enough been having a lot of convos w/ DH and think we are slowly...ever so slowly...moving into the right direction/thinking pattern around some of this.

I'm making a list of what seems to objectively not have a "natural" home at the moment and where that should be so that's giving us some food for thought. In any case for now the chimney breasts are safe until we've taken stock of things.

I may come back in a few weeks to update on progress if Christmas doesn't completely derail me!