You really up for a 250-300K project here?

Here is a link that might be useful: Cost vs. Value

"You really up for a 250-300K project here?"

Hollysprings: For better or worse, we are committed already for a major expense. House was described by the appraiser as "barely habitable" and that was not an exaggeration. Entire kitchen (wherever it goes) will be new, as will all bathrooms. Many existing walls need to be patched or replaced entirely. It's a big job. Wish me luck!

I'll post a before thread sometime, and then start filling it in with after photos as we make progress.

The original plan doesn't seem to have any entrances to or from the original kitchen. Is there a door from the garage to the kitchen? Is there a door from the kitchen to the hallway? I would assume so, right? But where?

For how you live, it seems as if you need the kitchen to be placed where it is touching the garage, the dining, and the living room for easy of bringing in groceries and for the easy, open flow of informal living between all the house's public rooms. And I would add that you also want the kitchen to be placed where it can have good natural light.

Ideally, all rooms should have good light, but dark living rooms can be played off as "cozy", darker dining rooms don't matter so much because you use them most at night, and dark hallways are generally not a sticking point for anyone because you don't spend hours in the hallway. However, there is no saving grace for a dark kitchen. It is just a situation that sucks.

(This is the reason I would vote against using the dining room as a kitchen. It just doesn't have enough light.)

And I would add that having access to the backyard from the kitchen would be a real plus, so you can easily take your food and enjoy it outside.

You also mentioned disliking the location of the powder room since it can only be accessed through the office, and I would add that since your family and guests all enter the house through your garage rather than through the current foyer, that what you need is almost a second foyer at that entrance. Something with mudroom functionality that is also pretty enough to make a good first impression on guests.

Given this, I think the obvious choice for your kitchen is placing it in the multipurpose room. That room has light coming in on three sides and is adjacent to the backyard, dining, and living rooms. You would have to create an opening between the kitchen and living room, but that is minor because that wall is not load-bearing. (I would also suggest also adding an opening between the dining and living rooms, but I know that wall is load-bearing, so perhaps you might leave that as an optional project for if you have extra money at the end of all this. The opening would be good both for flow and for bringing light from the living room window into the dark end of the foyer.)

The only box this plan doesn't tick is access to the garage. However, I think you could add a door from the garage to the patio directly across from the door between the patio and multipurpose room. Go that way when you have groceries, and go through the current garage door straight into the house all other times when you don't have groceries. This compromise has the silver lining of having the kitchen not be the first thing guests see when they come in the garage. Again, if that entrance is going to become a secondary foyer of sorts, some of the rules of the traditional foyer would apply, and most people prefer to have more presentable rooms immediately visible from the foyer rather than having the kitchen visible.

This leaves the current kitchen and pantry space unspoken for. I would rework this into a mudroom/foyer/hallway. It is a crazy large space for a mudroom to be sure, so that is another reason why making it like a foyer makes sense.

In that context, having a half bath here is a good location. Half baths are often placed in the foyer hallway or off mudrooms. You'd have to rejig the door so it opens to this new space rather than the office, but you could spare yourselves the very large expenses of moving bathroom plumbing.

If you went with this plan, it is probably quite feasible to get away without touching any load-bearing walls or bathroom plumbing (saving thousands of dollars). And because you are moving the kitchen, you could keep and use the current kitchen while the new one is being built, so you would never be without a kitchen at any point. Then after the new one is up and running, remodel the old kitchen space.

If you can fix the floor plan to show where the kitchen doors are now, I can make a suggestion for how to layout the new mudroom/foyer/hallway/half bath. In general, it seems as if a lot of doorways are missing, and it would be helpful to have them all added. Surely there are doorways between the foyer and the dining and between the foyer and the living room.

Many thanks again to all for the thoughts.

Jillius, here are responses to a few of your points, which may also answer points others raised.

1. Location of doorways in current kitchen. It's hard to see in the drawing. Think of the original drawing as having simple compass directions (north=top, west=left, etc). There is a doorway heading out the northwest corner of the kitchen to a small outdoor vestibule, which provides access to the garage. The second door into the kitchen is near the southeast corner, heading west into the pantry. Traffic flow thru the existing kitchen would run diagonally across the center.

2. Light. The existing kitchen is relatively dark. It has only one window, facing west. By contrast, the existing dining room has the best natural light in the house, because it has a large bank of windows facing north to the backyard. Regardless of which plan we choose, we'd like to convert some of those dining room windows to French doors opening out to the back patio.

3. Putting the kitchen in the multipurpose room is something we considered. But it is a really hard option for a few reasons. The multipurpose room was originally a screened porch when the house was built, with an outdoor "loggia" sitting area underneath it. As a result, if we run water and gas over to there, we will be sacrificing the loggia space, and we will need to seal it up. Also, the finished portion of the basement has French doors opening out to that loggia, so we'd be making that portion of the basement less attractive. Also, that multi-purpose room is really open to the living room, which could make for a nice kitchen-family room combo, but we'd definitely be sacrificing any semblance of the separate living room. Also, getting groceries over to the kitchen from the garage would be a significant hike.

4. Opening between the dining room and living room. I totally agree with that suggestion. And yes, the wall is load-bearing, but I think the opening could not be much wider than a standard doorway, so I suspect it should not pose a problem. One of our goals is to open the living room up to the rest of the house so it will get more use, and putting an opening there seems like a perfect solution.

5. Foyer in the back. You make a great point about wanting that back door entrance to be somewhat nice and follow some of the traditional foyer rules, since it will be a primary entrance. But to be clear, although it will be our primary entrance, it will be a very informal entrance for family/friends/neighbors, most of whom have young kids like we do, and thus who will equally value function over form. If we ever have any semblance of actual grown-up company, we'd clean the house and welcome them through the front foyer.

6. Door from garage to patio. Great idea. I want to think about that more, but the slope of the site may make it hard. The garage floor sits 3-4 feet higher than the patio level, so it would need either steps dug into the garage floor, or outdoor steps which would rob us of patio space. Will need to think about that more.

7. Bathroom door. If that northwest corner of the house does not remain a kitchen, we definitely would want the bathroom to open into it. If it remains a kitchen, we'd probably need to move the bathroom.

8. Just to be clear, we are not currently living in this house full time, and having the house functional during the renovation process is not a high priority. It's in rough shape right now, and so we are staying over there only sporadically. We stay most nights at our old house a few miles away. We are planning to sell the old house in the Spring, and will be slowly shifting our lives over to the new house over the next several months as the situation evolves. The benefit of this situation is that we are less confined by the current house layout, but the difficulty is that since we have not lived in the house previously, we don't have a great sense of how the traffic patterns will work or how we will use different spaces.

I'm still not understanding the opposition many people have to moving the kitchen into the space currently occupied by the dining room. It is the room in the house with the best natural light and the best access to the backyard. Having the kitchen there would seem to act as a central node, making all other parts of the first floor more active spaces. In other words, the living room would feel close enough to the kitchen to do double duty as a family room (especially with the door opening Jillius suggested), but could be closed off too as needed. The multi-purpose room (which currently doesn't seem to have much of a function) would gain a role as the dining room.

Is the opposition focused on the concern that you'd see too much of the kitchen from the front foyer? I'm thinking that's not much of an issue because (1) people will only rarely enter the house from the front foyer, and (2) whenever they do (for example if we have a party), I'm pretty confident we'll have cleaned the kitchen to a high polish in advance.

Is the opposition based on the fact that we'd be eliminating the large formal dining room? I can understand that from a preservationist perspective, and an architect friend is strongly encouraging us to retain that room as a formal dining room. But the problem I see is that we just don't do many large sit-down meals, so devoting that much space to a big dining room is really out-of-step with how we live. Perhaps we made a mistake in buying a house with a large formal dining room we won't use, but that's a different problem!

Is the opposition because of traffic patterns? I can understand that, for sure. But it seems like a logical layout could address that issue. In the layout from my first post, there really aren't many routes people would seem to travel through the kitchen work area. Or at least, there are plenty of alternate routes to anywhere you'd want to go, so people can easily avoid the work area.

To be clear, I'm not trying to be argumentative. All the constructive criticism people have offered is exactly what I wanted. Please keep it coming. I probably did a poor job initially describing some of the particular features of the house, so that may have side-tracked the discussion. We've been thinking for a while of various layouts that would open the kitchen up, and we've been moving it all around the house in various plans. We're kind of excited about this new option of putting it in the center, but we're trying to understand the potential pitfalls.

I'll post more pictures, so people can visualize the situation better. So sorry to ramble on with so much text! All input greatly appreciated!

Labradane again. Posting pics. I'm hoping they are worth at least 1000 words.

Don't be confused by the fact that they were all taken at different times. Some show the house filled with the sellers' stuff, and others show the house in various states of emptiness. I was trying to find the best views.

Looking from the front foyer into the (pink) dining room.

Looking from the dining room toward the front foyer (left doorway). The right doorway leads to the pantry/kitchen.

Standing in the multi-purpose (purpose-less?) room, with the living room to your left and the dining room to your right.

Looking from the dining room into the pantry, and you can see the back door of the kitchen in the distance.

Another pic from the dining room into the pantry and kitchen.

Standing in the doorway between the dining room and the pantry, looking toward the back door and the kitchen. The pantry is to your right, and the kitchen is straight ahead.

Looking from the front of the living room toward the back multi-purpose room.

This post was edited by Labradane on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 9:52

One further set of comments about the possibility of leaving the kitchen where it is, and simply combining it with the pantry space. We've considered many designs for leaving it in place. But leaving it there creates several problems.

A. The kitchen space is odd. It's too small to fit an island, but without an island, it's verging on too big for a square.

B. We'd probably need to move the bathroom if we leave the kitchen there. There's no obvious place to move the bathroom to, where it doesn't create problems.

C. No good mudroom options, unless perhaps we carve one out of the garage.

D. Opening up the kitchen to the dining room solves the size problem, and creates potential for a combination kitchen / family room. The wall we'd open up is a structural wall, so that's a bit problematic.

E. If we create this kitchen / family room combo, the living room (which is a really nice space) may end up being a forgotten or redundant room.

F. If we create this kitchen / family room combo, the multi-purpose room likely becomes a combination dining room & kids work area. I predict this will be somewhat annoying, because our kids will junk it up too much to use it for dining without some major clean up. And there's no obvious place to put all the arts & crafts materials they will cart into that space. So the likely result will be we have no usable dining room at all.

G. If we create this kitchen / family room combo, I'm having trouble visualizing how we'd actually use the family room part of that area (the former dining room). I guess it would have couches and a tv, but I have trouble seeing where they'd fit without creating a traffic slow problem.

Many thanks to everyone for bearing with me though all this soul-searching.

Those pictures are great, I was envisioning a much grander dining room. I would get rid of that room in a heartbeat. I would stick with reworking that original plan a bit. Steal some space from the kids room and the living room to make the kitchen bigger. The living room is gigantic considering it's a space you won't use that much. It's great to have a formal space but it doesn't need to be one third of your living area. Also get rid of both doors that go into the powder room and have access through the hallway not through those two rooms because that's a weird use of space. I do you think you will use the kids room a lot. For art and play area now and it can be homework and electronics computer access later when they're older. Don't get rid of that room you'll love it!

Could you please also add pictures of the loggia and basement?

My main objection to the dining room as kitchen was the kitchen should have good light, and it appeared from the floor plan that the dining room had just one window on one end of the long room. The pictures show that that one window is actually a whole wall of windows, which provides better light than I was picturing, but it is still only on one end of a long, otherwise windowless room. The picture of the other end of the dining (the one with no windows) shows barely any natural light. This will only get worse if you replace those windows with ones 36" from the floor so you can run cabinets under them. And if you don't do that, now all your cabinets are against walls with no windows, which is quite undwsirable.

To me, that makes this space instantly less preferable to the multi-purpose room as a kitchen, which if does not already, could have waaaaay better light by virtue of its three exterior walls that could all have windows. That is light coming in on three sides, and there is no way that would not be better natural light than the dining has. The dining room will only ever be able to have windows on one side, and it's on the short side at that, which means worse light penetration into the room than if they were on the long wall.

Honestly, my point could start and stop with the natural light. It is that big a deal to have good light in your kitchen, and one of these options is that clearly superior to the other that regard. But I also don't think the dining room has good traffic flow for a kitchen. Ideally, you want people to walk BY your kitchen, not THROUGH your kitchen. There should be no reason to walk into the kitchen unless you need to be in the kitchen specifically because you don't want people who are not involved with cooking to be getting in the way of people who are cooking. With rooms on all sides of the dining room, it is inevitable that people will be passing through it to get from one room to another, even if they don't need anything in the kitchen itself.

In contrast, there are no other rooms beyond multipurpose room. It is a destination, not a way station. And that is what you want for your kitchen.

Lastly, however minor this is, most people are not crazy about being able to see the kitchen from the foyer. It is clearly not an issue for you, but if resale is ever a possibility, you don't want a layout that makes most people pause. Just look at the response you got here just about that.

So let's work on mitigating the negatives of the multipurpose room as kitchen.

1. Ruining the loggia. Have you spoken to a contractor about running pipes and electrical? Surely some electrical is already present since it is an interior room of a house (there must be outlets or a ceiling light or something), so you know at least some can and has been run there without ruining the loggia. Plumbing is certainly nowhere near bulky enough to require an entire loggia's space and can be snaked through all kinds of places. I cannot imagine that it can't be run in a strategically placed chase or column or up a basement wall and then across the multipurpose room floor. I am certain there is a way to run utilities and keep the loggia. You could post pictures of the loggia space here to get suggestions, but mostly you should be talking to a plumber and an electrician and a contractor.

2. If the multipurpose room's being totally open to the living room is a concern, consider adding a wide doorway with pocket doors between them. You could even live with it open for a while, see how you feel, and add the doorway later if you still want it. Just make sure any other work you do in the meantime wouldn't prevent that addition.

Kiko, many thx. If we do go with original plan, I do want to steal space from kids room / mud room, but not sure how it will best improve kitchen footprint. Less interested in stealing space from living room, because it's actually a really nice room, but just too closed off from rest of house.

Jillius, I will get pics of loggia. Not sure I have any yet, so may need to make a trip. I completely agree that multi purpose room will have best natural light. But doesn't putting it there lock it off from the rest of the house? What I see in most houses is that no matter where you put the kitchen, everyone always hangs out there. And if the kitchen here is in a somewhat isolated part of the house (albeit a nice area, or maybe especially if it's a nice area!), everyone will suddenly start cramming themselves into that space and abandoning other rooms. Alternatively, the person cooking will feel walled off. We have three young kids and big dogs, so adults are always wanting to be in same general vicinity as kids, and vice versa, and dogs are always following us too and absorbing space. That won't last forever, but likely will be our life for at least 10 more years, maybe more if they don't hate us too much when they are teenagers (and surely for the dogs!). With that "familial" lifestyle, it seems critical to have common spaces where we can all engage together (along with some smaller escape spaces for when someone needs to be alone). It seems you and I have slightly different views on whether the kitchen will operate as a destination vs a communal space.

All very good thoughts though. One that makes me very nervous is the point about resale value. Loving this house, but we might be forced to move in about 10 years, so want to think ahead on layout to avoid something that might be a turnoff to most people. At the very least , if kitchen is a communal space (wherever located), we obviously ought to make sure it's done nicely.

Sorry, if this has been suggested before.

Can you use a frosted glass barn door or something like that for the (present) DR opening across the entry door or is the opening too big for that? Then I suggest using the area b/w the garage wall and ofiice wall for DR, mudroom, pantry and bath and use all purpose room as kid's work area.

sena01, very interesting idea. I'm not sure if there's enough space to hold the dining room and powder room where you've put them, but that's definitely something to explore. I like how it tries to make more efficient use of the space back there. As for the frosted-glass barn door, regardless of what layout we choose, we definitely are thinking about something like that. That opening b/w dining room and foyer originally had double doors (maybe with glass?), and I know the doors are still in the basement.

Jillius, you asked for pics of the loggia. A couple mediocre ones are posted below. These are pics standing in the finished part of the basement (under the living room), looking back toward the loggia space below the multi-purpose room. I'll try to take a better one later this week of the loggia space itself.

Pic facing east out the door to the loggia while standing in the unfinished part of the basement under the current dining room.

This post was edited by Labradane on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 15:08

I would definitely keep the kitchen as I had it above. Don't block those lovely dining room windows with a counter...and you don't want your kitchen to be a hallway, either.

If it were me...I would make the multi-purpose room a sunroom/craft room for the kids, the living room would be the living room, the dining room remain the dining room, and the pantry kitchen would be the new kitchen.

Open up equal sized spaces in the living room from foyer to living room and dining room to living room. Add a larger entry between kitchen and dining room...with new french doors between living room and multi-purpose room. Hope this helps :)

I like Lavender's last design. It flows so well. I also noticed in your kitchen pictures that the kitchen seemed to have great light. I don't remember seeing your back door to the outside on your plans. That seems to be a nice view with lots of light coming in. On the plans, is that a covered porch entry?
I like your dining room window and trim.

Hi Lavender_Lass. What you show makes a ton of sense, and that's very similar to what we originally hoped for when we first started looking at this space. I completely agree with your idea to open a doorway between the dining room and living room, right where you show it. But here's where we got concerned with the kitchen ...

If you look at the measurements for the current kitchen, it's 12'5" north-to-south. Assume 2' is used up by the stovetop and associated counter on the north wall. Assume the aisles on either side of the island are 48" (especially since they're also walkways to get through the kitchen to the rest of the house). That leaves only 2' of space for the island itself, which is too tight for one with seating. You might be able to shrink the aisles to 42" in order to expand the island to 3' wide, but then things will get pretty snug if anyone is sitting in the island seats.

So to make the island fit north-to-south, we'd need to eliminate our 1st floor closets, just like you did. And we'd need to push the island a little closer to the dining room to avoid a bottleneck at the corner of the bathroom. The total east-to-west width of the kitchen-pantry is roughly 14'10", and the bathroom is 6'2" wide, so you may have to push the island pretty far. That's probably do-able, but if you assume a 6' island, the end seat seems to map like it will be in the dining room.

So it all fits, sort of, but not well. And we'd lose at least three other things we want: (1) any hope of creating an entrance to the bathroom that's not passing through the office, (2) all our 1st floor closets, and (3) any mudroom option. We talked about sliding the bathroom east to the southeast corner of the kitchen, and having it open to the foyer, so that might solve problem #1. And we thought we might be able to create a closet in some corner of the foyer to solve problem #2. And we were trying to convince ourselves we could train our family to cross the patio and enter the house through the multi-purpose room, so it could act as a mudroom of sorts, to address problem #3.

But the more we thought about it, all those solutions seemed sort of kludgy, especially combined with barely-fitting island.

And on top of that, there seems to be a lot of duplicate house functions close together. The kitchen island likely would be where our kids eat most quick meals, but it's just 5' away from the dining room table. And if we instead use the dining room as a family room, then it's basically duplicating the function of the living room.

It all just started to seem like we were pushing a square peg into a round hole. So that's when we tried to think outside the box. I'm still hoping someone can create something that makes it all fit, because keeping the kitchen in the same general area would really help keep costs down!

Also, as an aside, if we did move the kitchen into the dining room, we would not put counters in front of the windows. We'd convert the windows to big French doors opening out to the patio. The kitchen counter space would be along one of the walls and on the central island.

This whole process has given me lots more respect for kitchen designers! Please don't give up on me -- I'm still struggling to solve this problem.

Karenseb, the plans are a little confusing. The back door is in the northwest corner of the kitchen. It opens out to the west to a little covered alcove which is open to the side yard. On the north side of that alcove is a set of steps leading up into the garage. Does that make sense, or is it more confusing?

You can kind of see what's going on with this pic. This is looking east into the kitchen from the side yard. The garage is to your left.

Regarding the tightness of the kitchen space in Lavender's plan as well as your desire to move the door to the powder room - what about moving the powder room down into the office space and making it slightly wider north to south so that both sink and vanity could be on the outside wall (north wall of powder room would be where office wall is now.) Then have the door facing east into the little hallway that leads to the office door? This would help make the kitchen work in the existing space. I don't remember seeing much about the current office space, so not sure if there are any constraints on it?

This might be insane, but would you have the space between your property and the neighbor's to the left to turn the garage 90° and attach it to the left side of the top left corner of the house instead of the back?

I presume the driveway currently runs up the left side of the house, and then you turn right into the garage, so what I am proposing would mean you drive up the left of the house straight into the garage.

You said the best light in the house was in the back of the house, and the garage is unfortunately blocking the entire left third of the house from that good light. It is the reason why the current kitchen is so dark and why it can't have direct access to the back patio. And I presume the garage is also taking up a big chunk of the backyard where it is. It sounds as if the garage is also not big enough to include a mudroom space, but if it were moved, you could make sure the new garage included a mudroom space. And you could also make it so the the door from the garage goes directly inside the kitchen instead of through an outdoor area first.

Add lots of windows to that new exterior wall in the kitchen, and voila! The kitchen can stay where it is, in a room that is larger than the multi-purpose room and that has direct access to the garage, and now that has lots of natural light. That would be by far the best case scenario for your kitchen.

Aside from adding a doorway between the dining and living room (just make it the same size as and in line with the door way from the pantry to the dining), this would mean you could leave the entire right two thirds of the house alone. Which honestly makes sense because it is already nice.

The dining room with its pretty moldings and windows could stay the same (with access to the backyard from the multipurpose room, you don't need French doors, and the windows are lovely), the living room with its pretty detailing and symmetries could stay the same, and the multipurpose room with its decent windows and nice open-but-separate situation with the living room could stay the same. I would use that room for yoga, but it could be a craft room or an office or a playroom -- a little bonus space like that has a lot of possibility and appeal just as it is for buyers.

While you guys are living there, you could furnish the dining room as a play room (easy to see from either the kitchen or living room) with an informal kitchen table with bench seating on one end of the room and either put the dining table in the multipurpose room for the adults to use or just not have one. When the kids get to be all middle school age or older, or if you sell in ten years, you can put the dining table back in the dining room.

Separately, I would suggest swapping out your front for for one with glass to get some light in the foyer. Also is there no door between the living room and foyer? You could out front hall closets on that wall, and then you won't miss the other hall closets that keep getting removed.

Labradane - I am playing around a bit with your space and drawing some things up - but quick question (and sorry if you already answered this!) - do you need to have a separate kids' work area? Or can you use the office or dining room (or even the island?) for them to work at? I know a mudroom is a high priority (which I agree that it should be for today's family!) but I see all of these designs with that kids table drawn in and I'm wondering why that is a defined space. Is this for messy painting/crafts? If this is a high priority - what about the office as a priority? Or again, can you put a desk in the kids crafts room?

OR, even better, could you turn the garage 90° and attach it to the bottom left corner of the house? You'd enter from the garage to the office, which would be converted into your mudroom with lots of storage It would have bathroom access with the powder room that does not now need moving(!), and then you would walk from the mudroom into the hallway where you could either choose to walk straight into the kitchen with your groceries or to go down the hallway to your other rooms or to the stairs without entering the kitchen and disturbing the cooks.

This would mean the backyard could extend entirely into where the garage currently is - the yard would be enormous! And the kitchen would have such a nice view of all that with all its many new windows on two sides.

This is a way better idea than my last one -- if you move the garage, do this. The multipurpose room can be your office.

atmoscat & Jillius, I'm loving that I've seemingly gotten you both joining me in crazy-town planning now!

atmoscat, that's an interesting idea on pushing the bathroom into the office space, or maybe even rotating it. The office has nice original built-in bookcases along the west wall, but I've got no major objection to sacrificing those if it solves other problems. I'd need to think more about how shifting the bathroom might improve the layout.

Jillius, I love your idea about moving the garage, and you're right that moving it would open up lots of options for the kitchen. Unfortunately, moving it would not be so easy. Our lot is on a small sliver of land between two full streets. So we have one street in the front of the house, and another full street in the back of the house. The driveway enters straight from the back street and goes directly into the garage. We have only about 10' on either side of the house before you reach the property line, so no room to route a driveway along the side of the house or to shift the garage.

One idea we considered was converting the garage into a kitchen or perhaps a family room. But in addition to sacrificing our garage, that did not really solve many problems, because it would still be cut off from the rest of the house, and it would require 3-4 steps down to get to the level of the main floor.

But please keep flowing the ideas, because this is just the sort of creativity the situation may require.

Also, on the front door, we both agree with you. The original house plans called for putting windows on either side of the front door, but for some reason they were never added. We have talked about either adding the windows or at least getting a front door with glass, so more light will get to the foyer. (Of course, it will irk me endlessly to eliminate the original double door from the front. Ever heard of anyone adding glass panes to an existing door? Is that even possible?)

aokat15, we'd like to have both an office and some sort of kids work area, if we can manage it. For the kids' work area, we've found in our current house that it's constantly messy from all the kids' arts & crafts projects and other papers/books/toys they set up at the kitchen table. We want to create a space on the 1st floor where we can contain all that stuff without it cluttering the rest of the house. For the office, we each work from home fairly regularly, and we agree it would be good to have an office that's on the first floor, so we can keep watch on kids and be part of the action, but also have some privacy.

So everything fits, but the access to the bathroom?

Do you need the office? Is a desk enough? Why not re-work the space to include a larger powder room and linen closet? Then the remaining office space could include a wall of storage, window seat with shelves on both sides, and a desk (or two...just read your new post).

Maybe something like this? Would this solve some of those other issues?

Also, have the craft area in the sunroom (lots of light and low storage under windows) with sheers on french doors to living room and dining room. If you add french doors or a slider, from the dining room to the patio, then the sunroom/craft room works even better...as it would no longer be the main access to the outside.

I do NOT think you are duplicating spaces! There is a table for eating, a table for crafts/puzzles (that will not always have to be put away before meals) a great living room and a kitchen for helpers to sit at the island...helping. You decide if they eat there or move to the table :)

This post was edited by lavender_lass on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 16:55

Labradane - Can you enclose the alcove between the kitchen and the garage? You could put a small bench and hooks on the right of that space as I'm looking from the pic above (where there are perhaps shelves already?)

If the garage cannot be turned 90°, could it keep its current orientation and be moved to be attached to the bottom wall of the office? It wouldn't stick out to the left any more than the current garage does, since it would just be flipped horizontally to the front if the house. You'd just need to run the driveway straight from the street in front of your house rather than from the street in back. The office could still be your mudroom with lots of storage and a window, the half bath could still stay where it is off the new mudroom, the backyard could still expand, and the kitchen could get all those new windows overlooking the extended backyard and not lose any room to mudroom stuff and not be subjected to unnecessary traffic.

And you'd lose nothing except some front yard you don't use, and the office, which is easily enough relocated.

Like this:

This post was edited by Jillius on Mon, Nov 17, 14 at 18:17

I'm starting to see your original proposal as very good. You get your mud room, and a nice dining room. I suppose you might be able to open up the rooms more as shown on Lavender's last plan. You could steal room for a reconfigured bathroom from the mud room sort of like in Lavender's plan. Just combine what works in her plan with your central kitchen plan. Put the mud room storage on the wall backing up to the new kitchen wall.

aokat15 -- Yes, we have been talking for a while about enclosing that alcove so it might act as a mini-mudroom. We were thinking glass bricks in the archway, so we'd get some light and maintain privacy from the neighbors. The drawbacks are (1) it's a pretty small alcove so it won't hold much, (2) we'd need to add some other wall system in the garage so the alcove won't be too exposed to the elements, and (3) the only way to enter that back door would be by walking through the dark garage, as opposed to now when people can come to the kitchen door by walking down a side pathway and entering the alcove through the side archway, which is a much more pleasant entrance to the back of the house.

Jillius, I again applaud the creativity, but there's no way moving the garage to the front would work. The house is a classic brick colonial with a symmetrical front, and it sits up on a little hill. So moving the garage would destroy the look of the house. It also would mean we'd be driving up a 25% grade from the street to reach the garage, which is no good in the mid-Atlantic winters. Just would not work at all for this particular house.

Lavender_Lass, I guess it might all work. I need to double check the measurements. But I'm still not totally sold. It seems like we're making lots of changes and sacrifices, and creating some really disjointed spaces (the popular kitchen area far from the living room), all to preserve the integrity of the dining room. I'm just not sure it's worth it.

I'd like to come alongside you and say that I like the idea you have of putting the kitchen in the center, where the dining room was when you bought the house. I've googled some images of kitchens with French doors, and looked at a few on Houzz, and they can be beautiful and bright, a real gathering place for the family. The access to the patio and back yard would be fantastic.

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[Traditional Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by Wellesley Kitchen & Bath Designers Divine Design+Build

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[Eclectic Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/eclectic-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2104) by Tel Aviv Architects & Building Designers Davidie Rozin Architects

I would consider putting in French doors, possibly with seeded or frosted glass, between the kitchen and the front foyer. Even if you leave them open most of the time, if you ever do go to sell, they will give that visual separation that some folks are looking for.

I think your idea of turning the kitchen into a mudroom would work well for most busy young families today. The mudroom area is the thing that most home plans sorely lack. Where is the laundry currently located? Would you like that in this area, too? How about a dog washing station (can be simply a shower base with a handheld sprayer, or something more elaborate) where you could also hose off muddy boots in the winter and leave them to dry? The plumbing is already available, so you might as well make the best of it. : )

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[Traditional Laundry Room[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-laundry-room-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_753~s_2107) by Norwich Architects & Building Designers Smith & Vansant Architects PC

The one thing I might consider changing is to put the kids creative zone in the North-East room (what did you call it, the all purpose room?) Northern light is usually a painter's first choice in case your kids artistic pursuits turn into something serious. ; )

I like the idea of putting the mess in an area that's not the first thing you walk in on from the garage. I'm not sure I'd want the mess of paints and paper clippings and sewing detritus mixing with muddy boots and jackets and mittens and .... The only advantage I see to mixing the two is a convenient water source for craft projects.

As the kids get older, the project room could turn into more of a family room, away space, library, music room, whatever works for you down the road.

I then think I would open up the wall from the kitchen with some sort of archway to the living room, and put the dining table at the north end of the living room, if it doesn't interrupt the beautiful details that are already there. It looks like that room could easily handle a table and a sitting area, and perhaps you'd be more likely to use the dining table if it wasn't in a room all by itself.

The thing to keep in mind with the kitchen you have drawn is to protect your cooking zone and keep the lines of traffic from crossing the work triangle as much as possible.

What an exciting project! : )

Labradane - I like the idea of the kitchen in the back center. I grew up near a lot of older center hall colonials with access through the foyer to the kitchen. I also like reworking your existing kitchen to a really functional mudroom, bathroom, maybe even laundry if needed (Laughable - was thinking the same thing!), and/or pantry space. I do have a tough time adding the kids table there - if the idea is to let them be messy and not put things away, then I don't think that would be the spot for it as you said 90% of the time people will use that entrance to the house. So really you are going to want that mudroom area to be well organized and easy to get through. I played around with a much smaller entrance hall mudroom and a second small room in between the mudroom and the office as the kids craft room, but I wasn't sure if having a lot of small spaces there walled off was good for your family down the line or for resale (I can post if you like). I was moving around lockers, etc., but let me first post the kitchen space to see if this would work before mapping out the rest of the mudroom space. What I didn't like about your proposed plan was how you walked through the cooking zone etc. I like the idea of the whole back wall being windows (more than I have here) and a glass door to the patio. I think this will be plenty of light. If there is any other concern about natural light, I would suggest really opening up the walls to the living room and adding additional windows there and also making the back of the dining room have good windows. Here is my mock up:

I think given the size of this first floor and all that you want to accomplish with it, I would highly suggest using one space as both kids area and dining or like Laughable said for now put the dining in the living and use the dining as the craft room. You can invest in nice built-ins that can store a lot of things but still look really nice if storage is a concern. The office area is probably the best corner for hiding the mess and has more closet space if you want to use the dining as more of a library/office for now. Anyway, just lots of thoughts. I think you have some great possibilities for the mudroom area, but wanted to put this out there first before I spend any more time on it :) Happy planning!

quick example of possible mudroom/laundry space:

Would you need an extra fridge or freezer in the mudroom? How about dog crates, room for sports gear, or any other special needs?

I moved the left wall of the kitchen over when I drew up the plans above. If I left that wall where it was you could have another wall of storage in the mudroom area for pantry storage, freezer, more cabinetry, etc. There really are a lot of options. I liked the bigger kitchen and bigger island, but this is nice too:

Living in a smaller open concept home for the past 7+ years I've developed an appreciation for designs where kitchens have their "own space". So I like Lavender Lass's ideas personally.

However, if I had 3 small kids I would probably prefer the back central kitchen design so I could be in the kitchen and watch the kids playing in the backyard. Also more convenient for backyard/patio entertaining and just in and out for snacks.

I like aokat 15 's design because it puts the walkway to the backyard away from the range. The island seating would allow for visitor's without getting in the cook's way too much. I'd hope anyway.

Much as I'd like a mudroom after shoveling snow yesterday, I don't think I'd be willing to waste too much valuable real estate on having a big one. I like your original design Labradane, of putting the kids' space there. Why not configure the powder room to open to there as well? Easiest for little kids when they "gotta go!". :)

I have another idea, but first could you please post pictures of the stairs? There appear to be two staircases side by side, one going upstairs, and one going to the basement. Is that right? Or is it one staircase that turn 180° at the landing?

I've been following this thread with interest. We moved our own kitchen from the center behind the foyer to off to the side, but still open to the living spaces and moved our dining into the center. Funny how that is.

I do want to say that kids only stay little kids for a short time. Mine are now 12 and 13. They do homework in their rooms, they play video games in our finished basement, and they do any computer work in our family office. I AM thankful for a mudroom to help contain my son's hockey gear and my daughter's seemingly endless laundry (which she now does herself.) Of course, you want space for all the craziness that comes with 3 little boys at home. But plan with flexibility in mind. By 6 mine were doing most activities and outside play independently. Unless you plan to homeschool, or are an avid crafter/seamstress, I worry that a designated kid space will be unused in 3 or 4 yrs. Just something to think about because the "little kid constantly under your feet" phase actually goes by in a blink of an eye, even if it doesn't feel like it right now.

Labradane, how would you feel about the kitchen in the center, but closing the doorway between the kitchen and the foyer? This would allow you to have an L-shaped kitchen with the island and leave the window wall as the traffic lane. This would steer traffic around the kitchen work area and provide two full walls for cabinets and appliances.

Lots of new comments since last night. I'll review and respond soon. Many thanks to all for the flood of ideas.

One question: Do you really think it makes sense to put counters and a sink under the dining room windows? If you go back to the original sketch in the 1st post, you can see I had envisioned just leaving those unimpeded, and converting them to French doors, to maximize light and to ensure people passing along that route would not be walking through a work area. Isn't that free pathway exactly what many people had encouraged? (Not that there can't be competing ideas, of course!)

Jillius, the stairs to 2nd floors start where the "up" is, and then do a clockwise 180 on a landing before continuing to the 2nd floor. Underneath that second level of steps is a door opening to similar steps leading down (with a counterclockwise 180).

Thanks again for all the help.

I don't think putting a counter and sink there is an issue for light - you can have all windows above, a glass door out, and even transom windows above the windows and doors if you want. I was concerned with the flow of traffic through the cooking area and in general with your initial plan. If you close off the door to the foyer and do an L on that side, then maybe you make the windows the french doors as you had, but I'm not sure that is great for other flow around the first floor. Just my thinking.

Labradane,

Your drawing doesn't seem to show fridge/ range placements. Maybe that's why people are putting kitchen sink / counterspace under the windows and putting fridge/range on the wall you had the sink.

Also, the green line you have extending from the front door to the back makes it look like the designated pathway goes between the island and workspace and not around it.

What is the ceiling height of the first floor and of the basement?

Two comments.

First, you're not going to get any practical suggestions until you post legible, detailed plans of the kitchen, pantry, dining room and multipurpose room with accurate dimensions. That means every door, window, etc. as well as load bearing walls. It may look like an island may fit here or a fridge there, but it's all just speculation without the numbers.

Second, on a more philosophical note, it keeps sounding to me like you're trying to plan this house for the way you think you will live in it over the short term. As opposed to the way you will really live in it, which you don't know yet. And as opposed to the way you will live in it over time.

Putting too much purpose-built function in a house based on speculation can really backfire. You may end up not using much of what you've built. Even worse, I think, the house may end up forcing you to live in the way you planned to, even if that way no longer works for you.

Examples: No dining room? You may not eat together much now. But that's not a habit you would want to be forced into because you forgot to plan for a comfortable dining room. There are few ways that parents can damage their own children worse than refusing to eat family meals together; the research on that is pretty overwhelming. You wouldn't want to reach a point where schedules have settled down but oops, now there's no place to sit and eat.

Other example: designing a special place just for kids to mess up, and then putting that at the most-used entry of the house. What kids need most is not really a place to spread out, but a place to put their crap away. Most importantly, they won't be young for very long at all. You have a half-finished basement with terrific potential. While you wouldn't send them down there today, someday soon they'll be jonesing to get down there and away from their embarrassing old 'rents.

Stay flexible and don't do weird things.

"atmoscat & Jillius, I'm loving that I've seemingly gotten you both joining me in crazy-town planning now!"

Ha! It's so much fun with someone else's house. It's like a puzzle. I'm doing the same thing with my own house right now (in my head), getting ready to post here for ideas. When I do, you'll have to return the favor.

What Lavender drew in her last design is pretty much what I was thinking for the bathroom. But, I'd only want to remove original built-ins in the office if the plan has everything you want and it's necessary to making it work. I'm not sure that's the case here. You make a good point about making a lot of changes but still having the kitchen far away from the living area. So, putting it in the middle could be a better way to go. The other advantage is having a good mudroom space, which would be *huge* for me, and plenty of space to make the powder room more accessible.

So many great ideas today! I agree with marcolo about the importance of a sit-down dining area, so if you do put the kitchen in the middle, keep the dining area in the multipurpose room like you have in your first sketch.

Many thanks as always for the comments.

Marcolo, I think the pic in my first post has most of the measurements you'd want, including not only room dimensions but also distances to various windows and doorways. It's hard to read because of so many numbers, but if you use ctrl-+ on your keyboard, it will blow up to a more readable size.

I get you point about the danger of designing a house without knowing how you'll really live in the space. But that's simply unavoidable here because the house is not effectively a space we can live in full time until it's been refurbished. And it would not make sense to gut and refurbish the existing spaces, just to use them for a year so we can do it all over again. For better or worse, we need to design the space for how we anticipate we will want to live in it. And echoing your point about how the logistics of the space define how people live in it, even if we actually had lived there for a year, that experience would not necessarily tell us how we may use a differently configured space.

Try turning the front half of the current living room into the dining room (which would look very pretty to see the chandelier shining in the window as you come up to the front door of the house)

Then turn the back half of the current living room into a true family area with the TV and sectional and cozy chairs .....(maybe even add a see-through fireplace onto a new porch and doors to the side OR French doors to a covered deck)

Yes -- the kitchen in the middle section -- and the new mud-room/kid work area just off the garage .....

No offense...but these measurements are NOT easy to read. Between all the lines and blurry numbers (when they're made larger) it would really help to have clearer dimensions of the rooms.

The kitchen seems to be about 13' wide by 14' deep. Is that correct?

If you could do something like Laughable posted...that would be nice. Would that mean consolidating the kids' space and dining room into one area...in the current multi-purpose room?

I think you need the mudroom area and more storage...with all the walkways through the kitchen. You don't seem to have much space for storage, but again...that might change with clearer plans.

If you want to move your rooms around...by all means, it's your house! LOL We are just trying to tell you that it may not work in your space. If you put the sink under the windows, you're going to lose light. If you stay with your one wall plan with island (and small storage on foyer wall) you won't have much storage space.

Everything is always a trade off. Again, if you could find a way for the house to work with the mudroom and kitchen Laughable suggests...that would be great! I would get dimensions and see if it's going to fit, with all the other things you hope to have on this floor :)

I agree with teacats that DR can be in the LR.

If present DR wall on the pantry side can be removed I'd consider having the new kitchen in the old DR + pantry and have mudroom, panty and half bath (or maybe a full bath) in the old kitchen area.

Have you considered putting the dining table in the current kitchen space? Perhaps carving out a small mudroom/vestibule there since that's where most people enter? My thought is with that configuration visitors don't walk directly into the kids' clutter.

The multipurpose room might make a good kid space with it's proximity to the patio and backyard. Later when they outgrow it as work space, it becomes the quiet sunroom for reading, private conversation. It's position between the living room and patio would seem to be natural 'extra' space for entertaining large groups as well.

I wouldn't worry about having to remodel before actually living there you just have to think through very carefully how you live and would use the spaces. Kind of like when designing and building a new home.

For how we live I would put the kitchen in the middle. Make the old kitchen/pantry into mudroom/pantry/laundry/powder room and then make sure there is a walk way out of there that is not through the kitchen. I also would want to make sure the opening tothe kitchen is a little offset from the front door so you'd see the island and stool part more than the main cooking area. You would have people walking through when going to the new dining room if they come from upstairs or the office, but if in the living room then you wouldn't and they would walk behind the stools to do so. Honestly not a big deal to me. No different than thousands of other kitchens on here. Question is more if you can for all you want and need with French doors there.

Okay, this is my last idea to get you a big kitchen with good light.

I altered the staircase, added a window, changed the back door to a window, and put a new door in from the garage (where you don't have to walk outside to get inside or take two 90 degree turns while carrying groceries -- it's now a straight shot into the kitchen). Your dining room, living room, and multipurpose room are unaltered except for doorways added in various places.

The kitchen is now enormous and has light coming in on two sides. You have a mud room that also has a window, and you have an enormous pantry. I didn't spend a ton of time on the mudroom or kitchen layout, but you can see what is possible with this kind of space. Sky's the limit, really.

The difficult part is obviously reconfiguring the stairs. I am not an expert on stairs, but estimating your ceiling height to be 8' - 9', I think where I put the new stairs will fit a straight staircase that turns at the bottom with winder steps (so the bottom steps don't protrude from the overall stairs footprint and get in the way of the front door).

Like these:

The door to the basement stairs would be underneath those stairs, like this:

The basement stairs would have to be shaped differently from the main floor stairs, and I don't know the basement layout anyway, so I haven't taken a guess at that.

(This stair stuff is DEFINITELY something you should consult a professional about -- what would fit, code, shapes, options. I know so little -- I only learned today that winder steps exist.)

A variation of this idea would be to not have the basement stairs under the foyer stairs at all. You could move the basement stairs somewhere underneath the mudroom/pantry area and have the entrance to it somewhere in the mudroom/pantry (maybe having the basement stairs over there does nice things for the basement layout?). And then instead of having the basement stairs access under the foyer staircase, you could either have a front hall closet or a doorway to the kitchen.

And totally separate from any of this, you could put a skylight above the staircase. Perhaps that would bring enough light to the foyer that you could keep the original door and not bother getting one with glass in it.

This post was edited by Jillius on Wed, Nov 19, 14 at 18:28

Just realized I forgot the half bath. I gave it the window. The pantry is now floor to ceiling cabinets, and the mud room is a closet with sliding doors, benches on opposite walls with shoe storage under the benches and hooks above. I am sure there is a better layout for the mudroom -- that is just an example.

I also put in a sliding door to separate the kitchen from the mudroom room area.

Update: First, many apologies for suddenly going dark. Things got really crazy at work, and then all the family obligations of the holidays hit, and this thread unfortunately got shoved to the back burner. I know it's rude to gather advice and then disappear, so I apologize. Very bad of me.

In the meantime, we got some on-site advice from a couple relatives with design backgrounds who visited over Thanksgiving, and we met with the designer/contractor helping us with this project, so we're getting lots of site-specfic ideas now. I fed many of the excellent comments from this thread into those discussions. Thank you all - your many comments, and your constructive criticism, helped a lot with focusing thoughts.

Still no final decision on design, but I think we're still aiming for putting the kitchen in the center room, and shifting the dining room to the back right corner. I'm convinced that layout will provide the best overall flow and use of the house, if we set it up right. We're still sorting through how all the other adjacent rooms will connect to the kitchen, so still in a state of some flux. Once we land on a final conceptual design, I'll post it here as follow-up.

Thanks again for all the advice and help. I'll be continuing to post throughout the forums on various specific topics, and I'm sure I'll have other kitchen design hiccups as we move forward, so please don't give up on me!

-- Labradane