I am open to ideas to help me love my home again given the current space or with minimal changes, design choices, or functional furniture. I am also open to ideas that spend more money to change/renovate it. This community helped me update my kitchen four years ago (https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4408120/10k-kitchen-update - scroll down for finished kitchen) and I loved it! This house was perfect for my husband and me. Small and cozy, but it worked. Fast forward four years and we've added one to our family! That baby is now almost one and we are feeling a little cramped. The lower mortgage is great though and the area has gotten really expensive, so moving and keeping the good locaiton isn't really an option.

I am struggling with a few things:

The eating area. My son is in a highchair and we feel cramped at dinner time. We also use the back entrace 100% of the time, so you walk right into the dining area. Things end up on the table and coats end up on the chairs. I am craving a space to put the diaper bag and shoes, coats, etc. (we are currently using the office). The front closet above the utility area (basement steps) is for coats but feels so out of the way. I've considered replacing the kitchen island and round table with a long skinny dining table that would give us more space and open up the corner with two windows for a coat/bag area. But I would lose my much needed island drawers and counter space. Another thought is to turn the office into a dining room and use the small closet there for a pantry. This would mean relocating the office to the basement which is partially finished but old. How is the flow of a dining room in the current office space? It is a walk thru to our "hallway", bath and bedrooms which is awkward in and of itself.

So many doors! There are two doors in the small office space because it is a walk thru. There is an opening and a door in the living room. The door to the basement opens up right in the middle of our kitchen. The master bedroom door, nursery door and hall closet door are all jammed together. Its just alot of doors in such a small house! We've considered closing off the door from the kitchen to the office area permently and having to walk through the living room to get to the hallway but feel like that may be awkward. And it doesn't give us much in terms of kitchen wall space becuase of the living room opening being right there. We've considered closing off the living room door to the hallway and only using the office walk thru to get to the bath and bedrooms, but find that kind of awkward as well. What would you do? Also... what was anyone thinking with this design?!

Only one bath and sharing a wall with our little one is a bit much. I belive, the only option for this is renovation. If you had about $80-$100k to do something with this layout, what would you do? We've consider an addition with a master bedroom out the back and expanding the kitchen/dining area into the current office and opening it to the living room. It wouldn't solve everything but would cost less to finish the basement with a second living room, full bath, and guest bedroom. Our laundry is down there but we don't currently use the basement for living space. It is the size of our house. If we spend a big chunk of money, our biggest wants are:

Area for coats, shoes and bags inside the back door

Designated dining room/larger eating area

Bigger Kitchen with more cabinet space and counter space

Master bedroom with full bath

Laundry upstairs

I've attached a rendering I did on floorplanner of our current house layout. I've also included a mock up of an addition and kitchen reno. The addition WITHOUT kitchen demo came in around $80k, so the full reno idea is a little far fetched. I am SO open to any and all ideas. Thank you in advance!

*Note: There are outside basement steps to the right of the back entrace door. That is as far as the addition can go without hitting the step area.

Storage = laundry room