This is where side entry door would be and the lower front room is what I want to make mudroom

More people have not done it, because this style of home is difficult to remodel without making major changes and spending lots of money. I had good friends that owned one and wanted to expand. They got an architect to draw plans and got bids from contractors. After all that, they sold it and bought a larger colonial style house. A reconfigured and expanded bi-level is still a bi-level and not as popular for all the reasons you listed in your post.

The opic in no way helps wth this issue I strongly advise you get an architect to see if it is possible with in your budget . I might be misunderstanding the plan but it sounds like you waill lose a bedroom to get a mud room that does not make sense to me.

Thanks for advice. Yes we want to turn the bedroom downstairs (that we use as play room) into mud room. We plan to stay in this house and not sell or move. my husband said we will be here until we are old lol. It’s very rare to find a house on dead end block with high elevation (no flooding) and great ocean views in an amazing school district in Long Island. We also absolutely love all of our neighbors. We don’t want to leave at all, but just need to make house work for us. We only have two kids and have 3 bedrooms upstairs. We don’t use 4th downstairs bedroom room at all. We desperately need storage and space for everything that would go in mud room. We do plan to get an architect as we are doing over kitchen and whole upstairs/outside. So this option does not really help with stairs but would help with storage. I was just trying to get a visual if anyone did this in a bi level/high ranch.

So you are just trying to avoid going up the stairs and then down the stairs to reach the ground level "mudroom"?

You might want to get a contractor in first to assess how the house foundation sits compared to the ground. Many of the bi-levels I have been in have the ground floor slightly buried into the ground, so trying to place a door into the "mudroom" might create drainage issues. In the photo , when looking at the house it looks like the ground slopes up from left to right, so your "mudroom" might not be at ground level, but slightly below it. Of course, you can always excavate and change the slope. Talk to a contractor first to see what you have as a staring point.

Yes ours is same like yours with garage but we use garage for storage. So we park in driveway. Our house is on a slab because we live right on the water with a bulkhead, so my lower living area is right at the ground. That’s another reason why we have so many steps to get in.

This is back of house. We really love being right on water and having a slip for our boat right in the back yard. Unfortunately most houses on Long Island, Ny on water are Bi level/raised ranch. We just need to figure out how to make this house what we want. I know it’s probably going to be costly bc bi levels are hard to renovate.

We love outside, view and big deck for entertaining. Now if house was just a Dutch colonial I would be in heaven lol

Is there an entry to the house from the garage? That would be the logical place for a mudroom. Can you do a floorplan of the lower level.

This is lower level…sorry for my bad drawing lol. I could just make that front room a mid room and not do door but o would like to walk right into it. Especially when kids come in from snow/sports etc. we literally don’t even use that room now that kids are older.

Drawing lower

Yes there is entry from garage but we use for storage and it would actually take longer to go that way every day bc through gate on side of house and through the whole garage then I am assuming through another door into mud room. We also have boiler there and water purifying system so I don’t think we could put room in garage as mud room. We would also have to build a whole new room and the play room is already in house

Play room door is right next to stairs to go up

My steps outside are huge and it’s hard to hold railing on way down. I am always worried about kids slipping on ice or something. It’s always a traffic jam coming out/in of house bc of tiny landing inside. I HATE it. Originally I wanted to lower door to ground level and have one flight of stairs up, but I think that will be way more costly than putting a door on side of house. The ground is not totally even on that side but we are filling in that whole side and removing big tree bc growing into house. We are doing that either way so it will be flat and house is a ground level. I am not doing myself and we are having an architect and builders do all this. I was just wondering if anyone else did what I am thinking and had photos.

I don't know anything about your actual question, but after seeing those backyard pics -- there's no way I'd be moving, either!!

Gorgeous back yard views and deck!

Search for "basement mudroom ideas" there are plenty online. Can't give you any specifics without more information.

Have you considered converting a portion of your garage to become a mudroom/multipurpose area? Turn the garage into a one stall on the far left and have the doorway to the mudroom area on the right hand side of your current garage door (directly to the left of your front door stairs). That area of your lower level is already ‘at grade’ (so you wouldn’t have to worry about re-grading or potential drainage problems), and I think it would feel more natural to have a mudroom door directly off your driveway area vs having to walk around your front steps to the other side of the house. If you had this new room run the length of the house, you could also have entry to the mudroom area from the back of the house (and add an entrance from it to your existing bath), which would be nice when coming in from the water.

I am not sure I understand the garage entry door to the house. What is stored in the garage? Why can’t you enter the house via the garage and have the mudroom right inside the entryway? You probably need to declutter the garage. You should at least be able to park one car in there. We are on a farm and have a mud room in the basement. Yes it takes longer to walk past the back door and down a flight of steps, but it keeps the mud out of the main level of the house, and it’s a better place to store skis and winter farm outerwear than the detached garage or the kitchen. Once it becomes a habit you forget about a 15-20 second inconvenience. You do have a fabulous house, getting it set up to function for you can probably be done without having to knock a hole in an exterior wall.

I think your solution makes sense. You have lived there long enough to know that you don’t use the downstairs bedroom. It is small and easy to access. The downstairs living room can double as a guest bedroom when needed. The boots and junk will be well out of sight but easily accessible. Go for it!

I think it will become annoying to walk around the steps to get to the new door on the other side, especially when you’re holding groceries or it’s raining/snowing. I would work with part of the garage to make a mudroom there. If you can’t get rid of any of the stuff you’re storing in the garage, would you be able to move it to the room you use as a playroom now? There are some really nice examples of redone raised ranch exteriors in Houzz for inspiration.

Thank you all for recommendations. PD I didn’t even think about putting two doors one in back and one in front if I do in garage. That’s great idea.

Not sure if you would have water views from the backside of your current garage area, but I’ve always loved being able to see through a house to the backyard when you walk in. And, in addition to potentially orienting your bathroom door to open into this new mudroom area, you could potentially also re-orient your washer/dryer so that the space becomes a combined mud and laundry area (iPhone thumb drawing attached to give a rough idea)

Does your bathroom connect to your living room right now? And how do you access your living room right now -- is the doorway under the xxx'd steps?

One more idea: we contemplated converting our traditional garage door into carriage doors, in order to accommodate a sound-proof room that was a few inches too high and would interfere with the rails. :P We ended up not doing that (sadly) -- but this kind of solution might work for you if you want to add a front-of-garage entrance, which I honestly think is the best solution. Terrible photoshop job, but this is what it would have looked like -- the far right door would have been what we would use to enter the garage. Maybe something like this would be easier for you than cutting a door into the wall.

Love these ideas! Thank you

The bathroom is connected to living room. I have two living rooms one downstairs and one upstairs. The door to garage is next to stairs and connected to living room.

This might be too dramatic, but what about tearing out the steps, putting a fixed glass window where the front door currenty is, and adding a front door and porch on the ground level?

Rocky I would love to do that and we are doing a big reno. I am just stuck on how to do the stairs if I do that. If anyone did this to a bi level can you please share pictures?

I think this is an amazing project.
I will suggest, get an Estimate for how much it would cost to knock down and build something from scratch in comparison to your renovations…. It might be worth your while
(Even if you wind up building something smaller with less square feet than the current house…)

How about turning the entire space into one large mudroom? Move the washer/dryer into the space; add lots of storage and if there is room left, it could become a game room, as well.

Have you seen this blog? This girl has got a lot of ideas (and talent).

https://www.lemonthistle.com/mini-mud-room-makeover-making-the-most-of-a-split-level/

My brother has a split level like yours. Their mudroom is in the garage level, along with a bunch of other finished space (playroom, bathroom, drum/music/recording studio 😁). They park one car in their garage and go in that way; but their guests go in through the front door, up the steps like yours, and it definitely is a cram when there are multiple people trying to get in.

Do you park in your garage at all? I do think making a nicer ‘second main’ door down there, with a nice mudroom entry, makes sense — especially since I’m guessing many of your guests go straight out to the back deck/water anyways.

I was thinking that you remove the staircase and siding around it. Add a glass door in front at ground level. Fill in the open space above with window. You can fill in the areas where you removed the siding with charcoal colored or dark green wood. You coud add a ground level entry porch if you wanted.

I personally would not redo the garage. I feel like it’s important to keep it for resale.

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Something like this?

If the pink brick doesn't go all the way to the ground behind the stairs, and can't be matched, then other siding options will be necessary for that area (fill in with non-matching brick and then paint all bricks? cover with wood? other?). Other than the entry changes, I just evened out the siding color, washed the brick to tone in, and darkened the garage doors and roof.

You're describing a fairly large-scale renovation, so I recommend getting an architect in to plan it out. It's really not something to crowd-source.

OP says she has an architect; just looking for photos for visualization of possibilities. I always lean toward simpler and less expensive (this world is nearing its end), but certainly the house could be more extensively redone if desires, budget, and neighborhood would support that.

Oh I missed the point that she has an architect. In that case have him or her draw up a sketch of what it could look like. When we were renovating our home the architect was fabulous. He could sketch anything on the fly and we could see right away what it would look like.

Thanks everyone and thank you simply natural for the picture! Looks great. Elcige thank you for that blog I am going to check it out. Yes we have an architect, just trying to get some ideas of what people have done. Bi levels are tricky and unfortunately I don’t see many changed unlike ranches and capes. Great ideas thank you!

Here are some impressive split-level renovations I’ve seen here on Houzz:

https://houzz.com/projects/425631

https://houzz.com/projects/33216

https://houzz.com/projects/55828

https://houzz.com/projects/5893995