RE drop zone/ coat rack etc...where is car and entrance of day to day flow of foot traffic? seems unusual that laundry and family room have openings to a front patio alongside main front porch and entry...typically there is a rear or side entrance for family use in most situations but its not obvious.

Good point, I left that out of the screenshot - my bad! The garage door is right across the porch from the main front door to the foyer. There is a fence between the porch and the covered patio, with a door for access.

You need............

A Hard measure of the floor plan you posted. Every solid wall, every single window, width of fire, single opening and a dimension for EACH!

Add pictures of the current and then return here , this thread with all.

Use Jpegs : )

IT's a terrible idea to eliminate the breakfast area. Family dining is important, and you aren't going to shift that to the dining room as your everyday spot. You'd be better off right sizing the kitchen, and keeping the breakfast area.

It depends THE whole STORY.......Where are the bedrooms?

The mess of coats /shoes is more annoying than finding another spot for laundry?

Do the hard measure and add pics form every angle everywhere.

Adding to provide the full picture of the house!

Size of FAMILY ? Number of kids, who shares, etc. and any work planned here? Y/N

Hard measure all, full context all : ) = best answers..............

Between your hosting events, how many people live in the house? Can the family room serve double-duty as family space? I grew up in a house with, besides formal doning and breakfast nook, had a game table in the family room that was the favorite place to eat.

What kind of hosting do you do? How often? Sit-down meals? Need to be able to add and subtract table leaves for dinner for 6 or for 22? (Where would the extra chairs be?)

I see the ”bridge” to a bedroom, can the space below be enclosed to be the drop zone? (Thinking this is a contemporary style house?)

Answering questions (bear with me, learning here 😅) -

Size of family - 2 adults, 1 toddler

1 adult is a work-from-home parent (hence the thinking about a dedicated office space as well)

The corner bedroom is getting converted to a huge walk-in closet

Large bedroom connected by the walkway we envision will be a play room - toys, board games, rock climbing wall, etc.

Hosting will probably be 5-10x/year plus more weekends with out of town visitors. It won't be formal sit-down events since we'll always have a group of kiddos that is running around - so food on the dining table, grilling& games outside in the yard, plus kids all over playing with toys lol. We had 20+ people over and between the dining ("family room" in floorplan) and patio area, the space worked pretty well.

The area below the "bridge" is an uncovered patio area, open to the elements. There are some floorplans that have this area enclosed but it would cost quite a bit - we wouldn't do that in the near-term unfortunately.

Hope you have a half million ! : )

Since all the bedrooms are upstairs and you are moving closet, I would move the laundry to the existing master closet since you won’t need it with the massive one. 😍 I would move the entry door to the hallway.

Here is a rough idea for the kitchen and mudrooms.

I made a space in the main hallway for a bench and hooks by bumping back into the office. You would use this when you come in through the front door. It is the ”pretty” mudroom for guests, purse, kid‘s school packpacks, etc… The kid’s mudroom would be where the existing laundry room is. This is the ”messy” mudroom where kids come in all dirty from playing in the yard. You could use this as the family mudroom from the garage by going through the patio gate.

I like rebunky’s idea. I think the study is too closed off if you want to use it for other purposes, and besides I like circulation, more than one way to get around a house. So, removed the coat closet since you have hooks and bench, and split the pantry to be a slightly deeper one on one side, and shallower on the other, and you can walk between them to the the kitchen to check on the stew. You could add a pocket door at the study end.

Bpath,

I actually played with a similar idea!

I erased the hall closet, didn’t add the pantry door from the hallway, and instead added two pocket doors across from each other to access the office through the pantry. It would be convenient to refill coffee or grab a snack while working.

I think my thought for putting a pantry door from the hallway was because it would be a straight shot carrying groceries in through the mudroom. But maybe they don’t even use the mudroom (existing laundry) as the family entry so a door or opening from the kitchen is fine.

I thought maybe it would be good to keep the hall closet to store extra coats, vacuum, and whatever else you wanted to hide away or not have the hooks.

I also thought an office probably needs a real door for privacy and to be more sound proof. Pocket doors don‘t work well for blocking sound, so I decided to nix the idea.

I have found that people like the idea of closing off the pantry so guests can’t see inside, but leaving it open the rest of the time, so that’s why I thought a pocket door would be nice.

If it wasn’t an office, wouldn’t it make a great kid’s playroom being open like you showed? Toys could be hidden from the living room and kids contained behind the door across from the main entry. The parents could watch them through the open pantry as they were working in the kitchen.

I'm loving the ideas! Certainly options I haven't considered yet.

I've only seen one other home that converted the dining area to an office, and they did it by adding a diagonal wall and extended the current pantry so it wasn't as dramatic of an angle. This gave us the inspiration to create an office in this area in the first place. I like how it still kept an open feel throughout the entire ground floor. Would introducing a wall here create too much of a separation between kitchen + dining, and the living room and entry? Open to feedback. The option to have a door for circulation is a good one, I like that, too.

French door to the office would be great in this location.

I also liked the suggestion of treating this area as a flex space but there is the concern that an office wouldn't have enough privacy / sound proofing in this setup - unless there are good ways to combat this??

I was thinking of a french door to the foyer. Not sure how you work and what your style is, what sounds and visuals disturb you and how, ahem, messy you might, so a lot depends on that.

At one time when I was contracting from home for several months, and we had a pre-pre-schooler, he set himself up a play area on the landing outside the bedroom-turned-office. He was very professional about it! setting up his activity like little stations. Our second one, that wouldn’t have worked. (he was the classic case of ”if he had been the first child, there wouldn’t have been a second” lol)

What kind of angled wall were you thinking? where would it be?

Sorry, I am not understanding the angled wall. Can you draw it on the floor plan or do you have a picture of the other house that did it?

Here is different idea. (The kitchen can be played with more) I don’t know if the wall that I put a red X on could be removed, but if so, it would make the LR/BR feel more connected.

I added a new fence/front yard gate and removed the existing. You would still have front yard access to the patio. This gives you a straight shot from the garage to the family entry through the mudroom. Covering (extending the covered patio) that whole space including the front porch would be a nice future project for whenever you can afford it.

I kept the larger dining room where you wanted it.

I moved the breakfast room to the original dining. I think it makes more sense with the future patio and making some space that is connected with the LR. Otherwise the LR is sort of all by itself. Window would be replaced with a french door or slider. Breakfast table woukd be great for family and friend game night. Homework table? Buffet table for parties? Very flexable.

I left the same kitchen, but I added tall pantries and an appliance cabinet for the coffee maker, toaster, blender, microwave, etc… You could also do a microwave drawer here if you like. Like I said, the kitchen can be played with still, but we’d need all the measurement of everything on the floor plan. Walls, windows, doors, openings….

This is an example of the appliance cabinet.

Hall tree example

So where is the office you ask?

It could go in the larger upstairs bedroom. With the long hallway, it would be very private and quiet. This could be a flex room as well. Office/Guest room?

Or maybe you could make one of the smaller bedrooms the office and make the larger room a TV room/Playroom? You could have a mini fridge to keep drinks/snacks and a coffee/tea station above it. That way you wouldn’t have to go all the way downstairs to the kitchen. But, maybe you would like going downstairs for a break to stretch your legs?

Do you plan for more kids? How many? If so, I thought maybe you could make the planned master closet more like a dressing room/closet. Then if you do have more children, it could become a connected nursery/closet. My friend did that in her huge master closet and it worked great. 🥰

Here is the office plan we saw in the other house. It unfortunately isolates the future patio in that corner and I was thinking it could be more of a private patio for me while I work (get some fresh air more often) but otherwise it would be weird to walk through the office to get there.

Love the appliance cabinet idea! I've been thinking about that and really want to incorporate that into the kitchen plan.

The hall tree you showed is also amazing - we have a very bare bones one right now but clearly we need to up our game!

Not sure if the wall can be removed but will look into it. We don't know for a fact which walls/posts are weight bearing.

I am currently using the big isolated room as my office location. I like the wall down to the kitchen to stretch my legs. If we don't end up having another baby I could definitely use one of the bedrooms for a more private office. Otherwise I'm not sure. A lot to noodle on....

Thanks, I understand the diaginal wall now. I would not do that. It seems to make the room too small and an awkward shape to layout furniture for an office. Plus, it is a bit weird, like you mentioned, walking through an office to get to the patio.

What don’t you like about the office currently being upstairs?

You said you have a toddler, and I assume they have the bedroom closest to the master. What is in the other smaller bedroom?

If the support beam spans across the current dining room opening from the closet corner to the living room corner, then that short wall should be removable.

If you really want that room as the office, I suppose you could add a door on the left side of the fireplace to access the patio.

Yes, lots to think about. Please keep us updated on the progress!