Floor plan

[Mishmash12]

Our house has a really odd layout downstairs and we have saved some money to make it flow (make sense!) better.

I cannot decide whether an extension is needed or whether we change the layout. Would really appreciate everyone’s views. I have uploaded a rough idea of the layout in sticky notes but ask as many questions as needed.

Essentially, the kitchen is a decent size but it’s not a social space. There feels like there are too many small rooms and none of it flows smoothly.

We were thinking are options are:

1. Extend off the back of the house by 4m and have a big kitchen diner.
2. Knock the shared kitchen and dining room wall and put pocket doors in so you can actually walk into the dining room through the kitchen rather than having to go out of the kitchen and through the hallway.

I don’t like the narrow corridor that is created by having the utility, w/c and pantry as they are either. Feels cramped and dark. Our neighbour has a very similar floor plan but they’ve kept it as is. There is only two of them. The dining room is currently a playroom (dumping ground).

Could you draw a diagram that shows where doors are including doors to outside? It’s not really clear atm.

Lines are where the doors are (roughly) with the arms showing direction. I think all the doors open into a room. The rooms aren’t perfectly square but the hallway has 4 doors leading out to all the other rooms. I also forgot to add the door from the kitchen to outside.

I can't see the load-bearing walls or the access to outside, but my first feeling without all the information would be to knock-down the wall to make it a kitchen/diner, extend the WC into the corridor (possibly making a shower room) and push the utilty/pantry to narrow corridor side (and probably combine the two) so that you just have one hallway. I realise this may not be possible if you haven't suggested it.

It seems like the extension would make the kitchen a social space but still leave you with lots of other smaller rooms/used space, unless I've misunderstood.

Could you extend the hallway to the back and then scrap the narrow hallway and better arrange those three little rooms?
At the moment if you're watching telly and need a wee you have to go into the hall then the kitchen, past the utility and the pantry and then finally reach the loo.
You could then knock through the current dining and kitchen to create one spacious kitchen diner.

The size of the rooms might be completely different to how I'm imagining them though, can you add rough measurements? Would make it easier to see if rearrangement would work or if the extension is your best shot.

Unfortunately not as the stairs is at the back of the hallway where the pantry and utility room is.

Lounge is 4.8x4.2m
Dining room 4.6x3.6m
Kitchen 3.5x3.3m
W/c 2x1m
pantry roughly same as loo
utility room is 2.5x2m

(All approximate)

Where is the garden? Looking at your post it’s I would combine kitchen diner and possibly some of utility and narrow hall so essentially L shaped and make loo and utility all one.

Garden is off the back of the hallway/ kitchen. Worried the kitchen diner would be narrow and long and we would also lose out on a kid room for all the rubbish (toys)! 😂 Assume that is the cheaper option though.

What do you mean by your No 2 point ‘shared’ kitchen. Don’t understand what ‘shared ‘ is?

Where have I said shared kitchen? I can’t find it to clarify what was meant.

Ah! Spotted it! The shared kitchen and diner wall I.e the wall that is between the kitchen diner (they both share one side of that wall) so if we knock that down, it’ll be a kitchen diner.

Suggest a good way to start a floor plan discussion would be to draw an actual floor plan.

Well I agree with pp that it's too difficult to understand the current layout. You need to draw a scale drawing so we can understand proportions.

Make a meter equal 2cm (1:50scale) and draw the rooms correctly so a 3.5m x4.5m room would measure as 7cm x 9cm. Make sure the door positions are fairly accurate and roughly the right size (about 1.6cm wide as above)

Alternatively. Find the original advert from when you bought the house and it may have a floor plan already drawn up. They won't be perfectly to scale but are usually close enough.

It’s in your original post point 2. I understand now as you mean the wall between the kitchen and dining room is shared.

Do you have a proper floorplan from when you bought the house?

check Rightmove or Zoopla for old listings as your house might be on there. It’s hard to see what’s going on with your sticky notes. I think you’d get better advice if you dug that out?

That’s really difficult to read. If you don’t want to draw a floor plan, can you at least write bigger and more clearly?!

Where are the stairs? Where do they start, and what direction do they go?

Yes to previous people's suggestion to finding a floor plan from when yours (or a neighbours with the same plan) was advertised.

I think this won't work due to stairs, but remove utility, pantry, hallway. Reconfigure WC to have utility, and leave rest if space as kitchen. The hallway seems a massive waste of space.

I can’t find a floor plan. I don’t think our EA published them at the time. Red are all doors and stairs are the triangle thing as they eat into utility space slightly (boxed in) and are not straight.

My reluctance to remove the space in the hall is down to its character. If I remove change the space, I’d have to remove many of the original features such as the wooden paneling.

Sorry I’m being daft but can you mark where garden is and where you approach the house from. are you suggesting an L-shaped kitchen extension?

If you extend the kitchen and hallway are you eating into the garden or is it parking in the front?

if you extend you could swap the utility and pantry and have access to the pantry from the kitchen. I’d keep toilet and utility separate personally.

what is the hall used for?

Could you lose a bit of the pantry and make access to the living room direct from the hall? Then maybe knock the rest of the pantry and utility together, pop a door or archway between the kitchen and dining room and possibly move the living room door to the hallway a bit.

your latest floorplan is a big improvement but i still have questions

how old is the house? Are any features important to keep?
where is the front door?
can you also mark windows and major things like any fireplaces
where is the garden?
is the house detached and which spaces are available at the sides / back for a potential extension?

it is very likely that something can be done with the dark corridor at the back to consolidate the little rooms and make a light useful space with a big sociable kitchen. but a full floorplan would really help people give sensible comments.

Garden is out the back in green, the driveway is down the right hand side and front in orange (there’s a garage to the right of the kitchen - not attached). There is a path down the left handside (pink). Door is at the front of the hallway in pink.

I was actually thinking of knocking the all room together (bar lounge and hall) or extending off the back of the hall and kitchen, removing hall. Knocking the pantry and utility together to have one big utility room.

The hallway is the room you enter into and go into the other rooms by. It’s where shoes and bags etc are stored.

It’s a 1930s and has most original features. For example, wooden panelled walls in the hallway, original doors, picture rails, fire places.

It is a detached house. We could only extend out the back without knocking down the
garage as access to the garage would be blocked if we extended on the side.

so the obvious thing would be a bit like this - extend the kitchen to take over the utility and part of the garden.

keep the WC and combine with the corridor to get a new utility room

keep the front rooms untouched to preserve all the nice original features

Ahhh sorry I was clearly having a moment. Doh!! I couldn’t work out what you use as your main entry point. 🫣

i like Parietal‘s suggestion.

is there space on the left of the stairs in the hall to create a door? You could put the loo there?

what is labelled WC/utility in Parietal’s suggestion could then be utility/pantry accessed via the extended kitchen/diner.

avoids the toilet being off the kitchen conundrum that some people dislike.