I've been in your shoes :) Maybe start with the people who helped with previous remodeling, and ask anyone in your locale who you trust for recommendations. Smaller local operations with experience with older homes are your best bet, but even then it is not easy. Such pros are fewer and in demand, so you must be prepared with patience, flexibility, and funding for whatever curveballs are thrown. More often you'll need to interact with multiple folks over time. I have not ever hired an architect, but that may be worth investigating if you foresee major changes. Good luck!

Where did you get the quotes to add a dormer? Did you ask an architect for a plan or did you just brainstorm with contractors? Disclaimer: I'm related to an architect and now realise the value of a good architect at the beginning of a project. If you ask him or her to do a plan you pay for it. The architect oversees the contractor and is responsible for the project being completed correctly. That's what you pay for. You may choose not to do this. You've seen those programs "Love it or List it" -- there you get a designer who reorganizes your house according to your budget. They (she) comes up with some really good plans. You could brainstorm with a designer -- I don't know how you find them but there must be a professional listing. Or, finallyl, did you try brainstorming with a contractor -- say about how they could get another room into your existing house? Is it cheaper to add a room than to build up?

How much space is there in your small house?What is the layout? How many bedrooms and baths currently? If you can share a floor plan you will get better advice.

I agree with Hollybar. Sometimes there can be creative ways to use space. We had a small country house years ago. I had a decorator come just for my window treatments.

But being a decorator, she had to put her thoughts in about our home. She said that she could usually make recommendations, but in our case, she saw that we used every available space.

Can you share a floor plan and dimensions? I suggest you first reach out to a local designer, even a design-build firm. Who helped with your kitchen remodel? Maybe reach out to them for references?

I completely understand wanting to stay in your smaller space, and it undoubtedly can be done. One does not need to go to a bigger house just because they are making a bigger family. For your interest, I spent the ages of 5-11 to in a small 1 1/2 story with my mother, stepfather, and three siblings. It was a cozy little home and it worked fine. It probably maxed out at 1100sf or so. Most of my childhood friends, even through my teenage years, lived in similar small homes right until day they moved out - with their parents still in their homes decades later. When my family moved to an 1800sf two story when I was 12 it seemed massive. My stepfather (mother died a couple years ago) still lives in that house 28 years later. In the circle and family I grew up in, people just don’t move that often. Their “starter homes” are often also their final home, and if they add kids they make it work with bunk beds or small additions, of finishing a basement (if available) or attic (if available).

I am unusual in my family for moving as often as I have, but that is in part as I have moved around a bit and rented for many years too (so I can easily pick up and move). My husband and I have lived together in everything together from a 700sf to 1200sf (on my own I have gone down as small as a ~450sf studio loft). Our new house is ~1980sf and feels gluttonous to me for just the two of us (plus one cat) when I lived in a much smaller house as a family of 6 (plus two-three cats!). Our current house is already large for us but we need to move for various reasons and this was a layout that worked. We were standing in it the other day though (under construction) and swore to each other we would never, ever go any bigger! As you said there are so many advantages to a small space. I am already a little sad to be losing a small space - though I know many on here would consider <2000sf small!

I truly believe if you want it to work it is doable. It just may mean some creative minds, here and from a designer :)

When furnishing look for storage furniture.

Also recessed storage

Built in storage

Perhaps it might be to your advantage to think about how you might want to live in your small house. Rather than thinking about storage of stuff, you might think more in terms of living well with less material excess than you are anticipating having.

LIving in a house and in a neighborhood that you enjoy can be much more rewarding than having more creative places to store more stuff that you and your future family probably don't need in order to have a happy life.

Many families in the past have lived and grown in small houses. Husband grew up in such a house as yours,a small post WWII suburban tract house with one small bathroom and only two finished bedrooms. And, they had five kids!

Myself, I lived in a small house trailer with three of us kids where our "bedroom" was a narrow corridor leading to the back of the trailer. There was a full bed on the bottom with a bunk overhead and one small closet for all of our clothes.

One real difference is that, in the past, families have not had so many, many material possessions. Today, families acquire so much stuff that it becomes overwhelming. Most of it is transitory stuff that just passes through our life until we unload it at Goodwill and it becomes landfill.

The only "expert" that you need to hire is YOU! Perhaps a serious assessment of your priorities and your very own values might be more rewarding than trying to seek storage space in your small, but loved, house.

Perhaps give some thought as to how you much "stuff" you are going to store before you invest in places to store it. Less income going to "stuff" means more income to to use to have more experiences in life.

The internet is full of testimonial stories of families who have chosen not to place value in material possessions and of the rewards of such a life.

No matter all the stuff you might acquire in your life, the fact remains that you cannot take it with you and that your children may not need it in order to have a fulfilled life and may not even care to retrieve it from the attic when it all comes to an end.

In the end it is just "stuff" that you worked to acquire and paid hard earned income to store.

Sure, creative storage space is intriguing. But, the truth is that many of these storage solutions yield storage space that requires one to move something in order to get to the stuff that is stored. Much of what most of us end up storing is the type of stuff that does not really get used very much. Those, like myself, who endorse living with less will tell you that is the first stuff to get rid of. If you are doing nothing but storing it.............why.

You mentioned "advantages" of living in a small house. I am curious as to what those advantages might be, in your mind. I can imagine that there are many---maintenance costs, purchase price, etc. Perhaps the opportunity to make a life that is lived with less is one of those advantages.

Investing in upgrades in kitchens and baths and things like new flooring and windows, or an addition to your house, can really make an old house wonderful. But, you really might want to consider the idea of trying to live with less in your small house. It is a no cost and easily attainable solution to living in a small space.

No architect is required..........only YOU!

You might look for a professional organizer; there are professional organizations that certify people, but there's no real clear standard, and things would be hit-or-miss. But you could make some phone calls and see if people would come look at your place and give you an idea of their skills and what they'd charge.

Another professional might be an architect; just call some out of the blue and say, "I'm looking for an architect who specializes in adapting small spaces for people--can you think of anyone in the neighborhood who has done that?"

And cabinet makers might have ideas about how to add storage in important places, etc.

Tally is right, master suites are really over-rated IMHO. And along those lines, I cannot stress the importance of a good-sized kitchen table and room for a high chair. Not just for meals, but homework, crafts and projects, playing games, etc. Ideally, your kitchen table should comfortably sit six.

You have no idea if you will have kids in the end or how many or even what their needs will be, it's putting the cart before the horse so to speak. As others have said, small homes were quite common, people made do. We have a relatively small home (15' wide). We do not have a dining room, we have 1.5 baths, and there is a couch in our kitchen, we have also sacrificed the master bedroom for a workroom, and are in what might have been a kids room/guest bed where there was only a single closet (of the old school kind, 3' wide), so we got a built in clothes "system" from Ikea. Besides the fact that our one full bath is narrow enough that you can touch both walls at one time practically, and it's the ugliest bathroom you'll ever see pretty much, and the front door opens into our only sitting room (with coat and boot storage a major issue), which is currently the "hockey table room" (it's too small for a full couch anyway) we do OK. Because the bathroom is so small we have storage cabinets over the toilet plus a towel rack which doubles as a shelf, and the other 1/2 bath has the washing machine.

OP did not even mention storage as the issue, so some of the responses are a bit odd. I'd ask OP to list what changes they are looking for, what works or doesn't work.

Inevitably, in a small place you will have storage issues, storage is easier when you have closets or extra rooms you do not use, not so much of a thing when you've got a smallish (older) house and a family plus you do work from home (which many people do). Our back "bedroom" has no closet, the main bath had no storage (a pedestal sink) and the front door had no storage arrangements whatsoever with only one single door closet under our stairs which has to hold everything, our pantry has the vacuum as well as holiday stuff, same with the china cabinet, there's lots of things doing double duty. The couch in our kitchen also has a double function as extra seating for our only dining table when we have family over, otherwise we can only seat 4.

In the post WWII tract house that hubby grew up in the kitchen was so small that you could not open the door to the outside and the door to the oven at the same time.

There was one small space where the table went.

This was an Italian family and grandparents and assorted relatives would gather for pasta and "sunday gravy" around this small table. Talk about no elbow room!!!!

Eventually, they eliminated that one outside door and bumped out the kitchen to incorporate the front porch. Even then it was still small.

Lots of good memories and lots of good Italian sausage in "gravy" was had around that tiny kitchen! Some modern houses have closets bigger than that kitchen.

People had different expectations back in those days and a whole lot less stuff.

Take a look at the Houzz stories for small homes and small spaces, here are the links. Add new ideabooks of photos that inspire you.

https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/Small-Homes/query/small-home

https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/Small-Spaces#8