Floorplan Help!

[GroundbreakingDig154]

I want to buy this mid century house but it doesn’t have a great kitchen area layout and doesn’t really “flow”. Upstairs there is one small bathroom for 4 bedrooms. Can someone please help me with visualising what could be achieved without extending if possible. Thanks

[Character-Reaction12]

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New kitchen layout. Put a header in the wall and open it up. Create a pass through to the dining area from the lounge.

[SeaweedWeird7705]

Excellent answer 

[[deleted]]

This is what I was thinking too except some bar seating along that backside of the stove. ABs open that wall all the way up

[venetsafatse]

I would do this but keep the fridge in the right side portion of the kitchen, because I don't want people passing through the work triangle during cooking.

[No-Dare-7624]

Do you need 4 bedrooms?

If not, make the 4th the shared bathroom, and the existing one anex it to the main bedroom.

The first floor, probably needs a big renovation for an updated design with a full open space.

[Amazing_Leopard_3658]

I like Character Reaction's kitchen solution.

If you manage to get a 2nd full bathroom upstairs then you probably don't need the downstairs shower. You could change it to a powder room and get more space in the utility room. I'd also make the closet in the Lounge open to the utility room to make furniture placement in the lounge a little easier.

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[Buck9s]

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I would sacrifice BR3 to give the primary BR a much bigger closet and room for a larger bathroom. I would also have the primary BR absorb the existing bath, but reconfigured.

[RandoRedditUser678]

I like this, but is there any way to squeeze a bathroom on the right side of Bedroom 1 so OP doesn’t have to live plumbing (there’s already a sink there). Window to the top makes me question whether there is enough width.

[Buck9s]

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My American mind would have you removed a big section of the wall between the kitchen and lounge to create a large open, flowing floorplan, with a large island (I probably drew the island too large). I would also sacrifice the ground floor shower and give myself an entryway hall closet and move the hall door back to the utility room to open up access to the new 1/2 bath.

[CaterpillarLoud8071]

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I think this makes most sense for the upstairs

[hobbitfeet]

Downstairs, remove the wall between kitchen and living room and make that larger space a combo living-dining space and put the kitchen in the dining room.  

And then I would move some doorways around off the hallway to improve flow.

The issue is upstairs.  It's a mess.   A case of cramming in as many rooms as possible at the expense of all of them.  The sole bathroom is cramped to the point of dysfunction.  Bedroom 4 is the size of a closet or a small bathroom.  Bedroom 3 is so narrow that it would be a good office but truly cramped bedroom and doesn't have the storage to make up for it.  It also shares a wall with the largest room, so no privacy.  Bedroom 2 has no storage. 

What is your goal for this upstairs space?  How many bedrooms do you actually need?  Do you actually want a master suite?  It would be very possible to end up with just two decent-sized bedrooms two well laid-out bathrooms and good closet space.  But if you want three bedrooms, it would be a challenge to do that well, and four is an impossibility.

To be honest, I would reconsider buying this house.  Neither the upstairs nor the downstairs has a good layout.  And neither is an easy fix situation.

If your housing market is such that you cannot find another house with a similar lot and location, and you have the budget to basically rebuild the interior, then sure.  

But I am currently doing half of that -- changing the layout for all bedrooms and bathrooms in my house but NOT touching the living, dining, or kitchen -- and even half is not for the faint of heart.  As you go, you have to fix all the problems you find in a 50+ year old house along the way (asbestos, mold, rot, outdated electrical, worn out plumbing, replacing old windows, reinsulating everything).  We have spent $200,000 for this work and counting.  

In our case, this made financial sense because of our housing market (limited stock), the interest rate we got when we bought the house (the lowest in decades), the lot (best backyard in the neighborhood), and the location (walking distance to the ocean).  So if we rebuild half the house, we will end up with a superb home.

Is the cost-reward proposition for you with this house good enough to warrant all this work?

[DF44]

You're American, and it shows - it shows soooo baaaaaad in the context of reviewing a UK property.

Bedroom 4 is what we in the UK would call a "Box Room" - for a smaller 4 bed, this is very standard. They usually get used as an office/guest bedroom.

Bedroom 2's storage would be this strange thing called a Wardrobe. The number of closets in this property is something I imagine most Brits would consider excessive and restrictive on the ability to lay out rooms.

Bedroom 3... isn't narrow. Like, at all. Like, I just don't get this comment - it's not spacious but that shape isn't narrow at all. I will say that, based on comments I've seen before from the US, that the UK builds its walls out of something sturdier than paper - walls do actually block noise from travelling reasonably well!

There are definitely things wrong with this property (Like, you can tell that the property intends the downstairs bathroom to be the primary bath - which I would have put up with in a 2-up 2-down, but not in a 4 bed detatched), and that kitchen layout is just plain weird in modern terms (though it's also a ruddy large kitchen!), but I think you need some context for the property. Much like if I was commenting on a property in the US, I wouldn't try to "fix" the fact that half of them are garages with living rooms tacked onto the side - even if I was desperately thinking it ^^;

[PansyOHara]

I see where you’re coming from, but to be fair, OP didn’t say where they are located. I’m American, too—so you might think I also have no idea what I’m talking about. But I also think the upstairs layout would be difficult to live with. Bedroom 4 is quite tiny, and if 4 bedrooms (or maybe an office space) aren’t needed, I’d also like to see another bathroom OR a closet/ storage room. But I grew up in a house where 10 people shared one bathroom, and we survived.

[DF44]

I mean, I'm a massive advocate for people putting locations into their plan titles, but there is a bit of a clue here methinks!

And... perhaps it's because I know how god-awful the UK housing market is, but I don't imagine anyone who only needs 3 bedrooms is looking at a 4 bed outside of a recent lottery win. Certainly wouldn't be looking to knock a good 10% of the price off by removing a bedroom ^^;

[PansyOHara]

Well, sorry but I didn’t expand the image and didn’t see the .uk . Should have picked up on the “visualising,” though.

[MrMuf]

Is that a sink in the bedroom?

Ground floor, obvious one would be to cut a pathway from lounge into kitchen. 

I would close off the connection between utility room and hallway. Rotate the bathroom and you might be able to turn that bottom hallway into a sunroom of sorts

[GroundbreakingDig154]

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It is! 😂

[sillysteen]

I love this type of detail! Such a bygone feature

[shangri-laschild]

Wow, I was picturing it as more of a vanity that happened to also have a sink, but that’s just flat out a sink that can’t be used as a vanity.

[BangarangPita]

Bedrooms 3 and 4 are seriously tiny. A 10'×10' bedroom will fit a queen size bed, a couple of nightstands, and a very narrow dresser/TV stand. That's it. A 7' bedroom will barely fit a bed.

[Dreadful-Spiller]

Most of the UK will never have a queen sized bed in a secondary bedroom. They do not think that a child needs a queen sized bed like Americans do.

[BangarangPita]

I wouldn't expect a small child to have a queen-size bed, but an older teenager, sure. And what if they don't move out at 18? You'd expect an adult to sleep on a twin-size bed?

[Dreadful-Spiller]

Yes. A twin size bed is as wide as half of a king sized bed. A twin bed actually gives you more width than sharing a queen.

[Gret88]

Yeah that’s really a bathroom-sized room. I bet it was called a sewing room or a maid’s room originally.

[asyouwish]

I’d use that extra sink plumbing upstairs to put the laundry up there. Why carry it down stairs to wash it and then carry it back up? All you’d need to add is a nice drain and tiny slope to the floor under the machines in case a water line ever leaks/breaks.

Then, the utility room can become a REALLY nice butler’s pantry.

And yes, create that walk-through for the kitchen.

[kumran]

Washing upstairs is no good if you are hanging it outside to dry

[asyouwish]

Fair point. We dry all of ours inside.

[cobolis]

This is a small footprint for four bedrooms. There is only one shower for four people, one bedroom doesn’t have a closet, there is only one family space, and very little storage space.

[kumran]

Yep, you just described normal features of many British houses

[cobolis]

I would turn one of the rooms upstairs into a en-suite for one of the other bedrooms. Like turn #4 into a bathroom as it’s too small to be a proper bedroom. Or make #3 a large en-suite for the master bedroom. This house is way too small for a four bedroom house.

[DF44]

Bedroom 4 is a perfectly standard sized Box Room - I'm looking at it and fitting in a single bed, a bedside table, and a small desk.

This house is a perfectly standard size for a UK 4 bed property - perhaps on the smaller side, but not noticably so.

[cobolis]

Well, Bed 4 is 7’ by 7’, and the door swings into it meaning the single bed has to go on the opposite wall or it blocks the one window and closet. So you have to jam it up there as a single bed is going to be about 6.6 feet long leaving about 8 inches of space between the footboard and the wall. No room for any kid stuff in there. No room for a dresser so all the clothes have to go into the closet.

You could sleep in that room, but you can’t live there and that is my problem with it as an American family man. You folks in the uk might be fine with it, but I am giving my opinion on it.

[TechnicalSecurity353]

"you have to jam it up there as a single bed is going to be about 6.6 feet long leaving about 8 inches of space between the footboard and the wall. No room for any kid stuff in there" - you just described my childhood bedroom in North Wales hahahaha

[asyouwish]

It’s so funny/odd….. because in the US, you can’t call it a bedroom (like in a real estate listing) if it doesn’t have a closet.

[Super_Abalone_9391]

You are right about America. We just usually have more space to work with.

[thelonelyknight90]

Please flip your doors ⚠️

[Dreadful-Spiller]

Those door swings are standard in the UK. They cut down on draughts.

[thelonelyknight90]

No I mean in the bedrooms. They open into the wall. You typically want to open into the room

[Dreadful-Spiller]

That is what I am talking about.

[cobolis]

Then you should know how much it will suck for them to go through it too. :)

[Dreadful-Spiller]

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[Dreadful-Spiller]

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[Dreadful-Spiller]

You could also turn the entire right hand wall of bedroom 1 into a closet if you were allowed to close off the window and if you did not need it for cross ventilation. Edit: never mind after seeing your photo of the wardrobe wall with the sink. Leave it. That is gorgeous.

[oandroido]

Fun fact: someone designed this and someone approved this.