Help me carve out a family bathroom!

[notanothernvr]

Currently looking at a house which only has a (pretty sad) downstairs bathroom. Ideally we want to knock it down to make a kitchen diner downstairs instead. We need the four bedrooms on Floor 1 and 2 as we have 3 kids. How feasible would it be to get a family bathroom on the first floor?! I'm terrible with evisaging these things and just can't see how it would work. Any ideas?

Floor plan?

I thought I copied in the floor plan but it doesn't seem to be loading!

Can you post the ground floor plan too?

One solution I’ve seen is kitchen extension out the back, then bathroom is built on top of that. Sounds like you may already have the kitchen out the back?

Here is the ground floor (image just under review). I think a double story extension would be far too expensive and take us well over the ceiling price for the road.

I would steal some room from bedrooms 1 & 3, to squeeze a bathroom in between them. Mostly bed 1. Then you end with 3 smaller rooms for the kids and have the large room on 2nd floor as master.

Yes that's my thinking too. I suppose just wondering if there's enough space there to have a decent single bedroom and a decent family bathroom.

The nicest solution would be to split bedroom 1. Make it a mirror image of bedroom 3 and put the bathroom in the leftover space. However, it looks like all your drainage and plumbing is at the back of the house so this could be tricky.

I reckon you have enough space for a smallish bathroom. Can keep it small with an over bath shower rather than seperate. Could you keep a downstairs loo. That would help. The main problem will be routing the plumbing, and dealing with supporting walls.

Yes if you don’t want to extend at first floor one option is to take space from bed 1&2 and create a bathroom between them. It would be a windowless bathroom. Or you can carve up bedroom 1 and use the right hand side of it as a bathroom. So you end up with two equal size bedrooms and a bathroom on that floor.

It would be worth investigating cost for the extension option before writing it off- if the kitchen foundations are decent it might not cost as much as you think.

I had a few goes. The issue is leaving both bedrooms with a window at the same time as having the plumbing on the back of the house. I think the cost will be on par with extending on top of existing GF extension which would the most rational solution.

Yes exactly, by the time you’ve mucked about with the bedroom walls (which also means the electrics to move light switches etc) and extended plumbing from the back of the house, the non extension options may cost similar to the extension option.

Your plumbings at the back, so make bed 3 the bathroom, and split bed 1 into 2 which would be really easy given there’s two windows.

Thank you all, you’re much more creative with your visions! We will investigate costs for a double story extension as it may be more viable than we thought.

Honestly I think you would be best searching for another house.

I agree this house is not ideal unless it is a bargain. You would also want to keep at least a loo downstairs as one bathroom for 5 people is tricky.

i do realise though that house hunting is often filled with compromises.

Also this. The current owners are selling for 30k less than they paid 4 years ago which makes me think they haven’t been able to make the layout work either. Knocking down the kitchen and rebuilding a two story extension would definitely cost 100k which I don’t see how we would make back. And also we don’t have 100k 🫠 back to rightmove we go…

I would divide the big first floor bedroom into 2 small rooms . Then make the bedroom above the utility room into a spacious bathroom with some storage.

And I would leave the ground floor alone. Not exactly what you want but it's practical and gives you a second bathroom.

If you are going to put in a bathroom normally it has to go above existing plumbing facilities, so over a bathroom or at least a kitchen.

That house is massively under resourced in terms of toilets to bedrooms and has a huge hike from bedroom 2 to the bathroom.

You also have the fact that the bathroom is an add on so the toilet drain will be hard to reach from the upper floors.

I would just find another place.

I would look elsewhere, as there really isn't an easy fix. If you wanted this one with a bigher kitchen, you could knock through utility amd dining room to have one larger open plan space, while leaving the bathroom where it is. I wouldn't want less than 2 bathrooms for 5 people though. We have one for 4 and that is bad enough!

Cut bed 3 down in size and give it to the big room which you then cut in two so a window each and a doorway where bed 3 was and keep existing door

Surely the easy fix is to use the downstairs front room as a bedroom? Then you could put a bathroom in the smaller 1st floor bedroom and have your kitchen diner downstairs with dining room as a snug. You could probably fit in a downstairs toilet too. Unlikely to add value but you would have the space you need with fairly minimal work.

Why wouldn’t you just make that bedroom at the back into the bathroom

Because we need 4 bedrooms

I hadn’t considered this but our children are young enough that I wouldn’t want them on the ground floor.