I know that remodeling imposes restrictions that one usually doesn't have to deal with when designing fresh so it may be that you're "stuck" with some things due to your current house's layout but some things about this plan strike me as really odd.

But, to start out with, the master bath looks fine except that many people want the masterbath toilet to be located in its own little "throne room." Not sure what your bath dimensions are but you might try something like this instead...

Now on the "odd" things... I don't care for the exceedingly long hallway that goes to the front bedroom but I particularly don't like the way it gets narrow as it goes past the bathroom. That narrow part of the hallway will be the most traveled section. To have it narrower than the rest of the hallway is just strange. And, I suspect, will be rather ugly.

I also note that the bedroom in the middle has no closet. You need to carve out a closet for it from somewhere.

The closet at the end of the hallway looks rather like an afterthought. It isn't exactly in a position where it is likely to get much use because it doesn't seem like anybody except whomever gets the front bedroom (existing den) would ever have much reason to walk all the way down that long hallway.

If you plan for most family meals to be eaten at the kitchen island, be aware that lining everybody up on one side of the island (like birds on a telephone wire) is NOT at all conducive of family conversation! It would be far better off to cut the island off a couple of feet shorter and wrap the seating area around in an L so that two people sit on the end at a 90 degree angle from the other three.

The dining room is way too far from the kitchen. Even if you only plan to use the dining room for occasional holiday meals, getting a meal on the table would require a lot of running back and forth. Ditto the cleaning up process afterwards.

Finally, what is the room across the entry hall from the dining room??? It seems odd to have a room in that location that is only accessible from the mudroom/laundry. Further, it looks like the floor of the mudroom/laundry is located several steps lower than the floor of the rest of the house. Is the floor of the unnamed room on the same level as the mudroom? If not, won't you need steps down from it to the mudroom?

Thank you for your thoughts. That long narrow hallway is existing, unfortunately. The closet at the end of the hallway is currently there also. Our front door is there now, so they just made the closet bigger since they are moving the front door to the other side of the house.

Yes, they removed the bedroom closet, it needs to be put back in.

I agree about the island and am planning on seating at the end also. I also agree about the dining room, but there really isn't another place for it. I would have to bump out the back extension much more than I already am, we are trying to contain costs, as you could imagine.

The room by the mudroom you are talking about, that is my garage. and yes, it is 4 steps down from the main level of the house. In plans A and B we were going to raise that floor up, but I'm not spending the money in plan C!

Thanks for the layout of the master bath, I like it!

The master bedroom area would make a much better dining room.

Does it make it better if I swap the dining room and bathrooms? There would be no window in the dining room but it would be closer to the kitchen??

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No, swapping the bathrooms with the dining room won't work - at least not without redesigning your front elevation. You can't have a wall attached to the middle of a window plus, you probably don't want a window over your vanities. (Where would a mirror go?) Even if you were willing to redesign the front elevation extensively, I don't think the front of your house would look very appealing with only a small high bathroom window or two facing the front porch! Besides which, flipping the bathrooms and dining room puts your kitchen pantry clear across the dining room from the kitchen which also pretty inconvenient.

If you would like suggestions, it would help if we knew what your current floor plan is and had some dimensions to work with. (I never imagined for example that that room on the lower right was a garage because it looked far too narrow to fit a car into! I mean, the kitchen island is nearly as wide as the garage!) On a copy of the house plan, mark where the walls of the current house are located and indicate which walls you plan to keep unchanged. Maybe use pale pink or pale green to mark where current walls are located that you plan to remove and a darker shade to indicate current walls which must remain.

It would also help to know where the kitchen and bath are currently located because, the less you have to move water and sewer lines, the cheaper your renovation will be.

It would also help to have a front elevation drawing or a photo of the front of your home because already existing windows and doors that you don't plan to move WILL affect where walls can be placed.

And of course we need to know how much room for expansion you have on the sides and at the back before you start bumping up against setback lines or other obstacles.

Finally where will the best views from the remodeled house be located (back? front? sides?) and do you have strong feelings about the master bedroom, kitchen, and family room being at the back of the house or could one or more of those be moved to another location if doing so would result in a better flow to the floorplan?

Oh, and when you post a floorplan, it is helpful if you first CROP off as much of the the extra white space around the plan as you can. That way, when the image posts, the plan will be larger and easier to work with.

Okay, I am cracking up about your comment about the island almost as wide as the garage!!! Yes, the garage is very narrow and I cannot fit my car inside it, which makes it basically a storage room (which we need).

Here is our current floor plan. Basically, we are trying to get a dining area, bigger kitchen, family room, master bath and walk in closet. The existing den and kids rooms won't change. The less we move things around the better, but it doesn't appear that we have many options, unfortunately.

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Here is an older photo of the front of the house, the only one I have with me at work right now.

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Here are some outside photos. View from my current kitchen window and the yard.

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Thanks for your help!
Suzanne

I hate to say it but I don't see ANY great options for you right off the bat. That skinny little garage on the side sure boluxes things up, doesn't it? Hard to believe that a 9 ft wide garage was once considered big enough!

I take it that you're not interested in basically tearing the garage down and rebuilding that side of the house up so that the main roof goes straight across and the floor level is even all the way across?

With the skinny garage on one side and the bedroom/den area that you don't want to remodel on the other, I don't see too many options for using that current living room space. You want some kind of "public" space at the front of the house but it is too small for a living room, and too far from the kitchen to serve as the dining room.

Let me cogitate on this for a few days and see if any ideas pop. Meanwhile, maybe Summerfield Designs or some of the many other talented people on this forum will see some possibilities that I'm overlooking. Sorry that I'm not more help.

Truthfully tho, to get the kind of house that I think you want, it might be cheaper to tear the whole thing down and start over. It looks like you have a nice wide lot. What are the other homes in your neighborhood like? Have lots of people remodeled extensively or are most homes in the area still similar to the cottage you have now? One thing you don't want to do is overbuild for the neighborhood.

A lot of people in our neighborhood have either converted their garages into a room, gone back or gone up. We have some beautiful large homes and some modest renovations and then the original 1950's ranches. Ours did have the master bedroom and small bathroom extension done in the 70's, so at least we have that extra space.

Our Plan B is keeping the existing footprint and converting the bedrooms into kitchen, dining and family room (photos are in my photobucket account) and going up.

Plan A is bumping out onto patio, putting second garage on and going up.

So far we are having trouble getting bids, we have had 5 contractors walk through 2 months ago and only received bids from two of them. Their bids on plans A and B were VERY high. Basically double our budget, not good.

Not sure about the teardown and rebuild option, might be worth looking into though. This process really stinks!

Thanks again.

Yup, tear it down and start over if you want to get something more usable to modern living sensibilities.

The thing is, our house is pretty nice inside. It is all updated, nice moldings, nice kitchen (although not my taste), nice bathrooms, newly refinished basement, just re-did the kids bedrooms. We just need more space.

We do want to change the look of the house from the outside, to make it less ranch like. Here is the proposed elevation. If we wind up swapping the dining room and bathrooms, I would just need to figure out what to do instead of those triple windows. We need something there. I can move the layout of the bathroom so the vanities are on a different wall so we can have a window.

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Thoughts?

What you are proposing is like re-making a man's 48 long pant suit into a woman's size 6 skirt suit because you like the fabric and the buttons. If you found it at Goodwill for $5 and did the work yourself, sure, it's a cheap way to have something kinda quirky and neat, but there would never be a secondary market for it. But if you're having to pay a seamstress, you'd be better off buying the cloth direct and then salvaging the buttons from the Goodwill suit to add to the new creation. Or buying something ready made from Macy's.

Calling Summerfield to the rescue! I can't come up with anything...but i hope he can.

I've done a rough sketch of what you could do where I see some minimal movement of things.

It doesn't give you a larger entrance or even moving that, but trying to work with what you have. Not sure on roof line possiblities with this either, but just an idea.

It is about the only thing I see to get somewhat good flow and minimizing changes.

I extended into your existing master bath with the 2nd bath tub, I didn't add space for a powder room, but was thinking it could go in the mudroom area or the extension called storage, depending on how you incorporated it or it may have to be on the would be nice to have, but can't do list or plan for a future expansion to have one, if you don't want to do that now.