I'd lean toward keeping it where it is and removing walls to open it up. In particular, I'd get rid of the wall that forms that long hallway coming in from the garage and have the garage door in the kitchen instead.

Are you planning on using the office as an office? And, if so, does it need to be that big and closed off? If not, you could incorporate that space into the kitchen, as well. It would give you room for a large walk-in pantry, a breakfast area, and some office or playroom space, too.

The half bath and laundry room are in awkward locations, but moving those, too, might be more trouble than it's worth.

Wow, this is exactly what we're doing!!! Our house is also a single-level ranch circa 1956. The great people here helped me think "outside the box" when I was having a hard time coming up with a workable kitchen layout in the existing space. Like you, our first impression when we walked into the house last fall was, "We have to get rid of that wall!" Our final decsions was to move the kitchen into the middle of the house, as you husband advocates. We're at the framing stage right now, and it looks great!

here's our floorplan "before":

here's the new layout. We got rid of the wall between the old kitchen and DR, as well as opened up the old exterior wall and made the enclosed sunporch into the new LR and DR.
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There are many threads on here from February and march where people helped me think though this. I am sure you will get lots of great advice here!!

Stacey

I just looked at your plan and your house is MUCH bigger than ours!! Still, I totally hear you about the kitchen feeling too closed off. We moved into this house in late October and for three months (before the wall came down) I really hated cooking in there. I was totally isolated from the rest of the family activities. Definitely open it up!

I would:

Take down the existing kitchen walls.

Use half of the existing kitchen space (the half that abuts the foyer closet) as the 1/2 bath and laundry rooms.

Use the rest of the area for Kitchen/Living/Dining. Nice space!

Here is a link that might be useful:

Link didn't work...trying again

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Thanks for the great ideas, everyone! I agree that the laundry and powder room are currently in a bad spot. I was thinking about trying to put them off the garage, along with a mudroom, but my husband wants to keep that area as a guest room for when our parents come to visit. I don't think they visit often enough to justify wasting all that space (plus I'd rather have them stay at a hotel!).

I'm intrigued by the idea of putting the laundry/bath where the kitchen currently is, since there are already water lines there. My husband has this rather grandiose idea of having floor-to-ceiling windows or big sliders opening out to the courtyard to let in light and a view of our future Japanese zen oasis, so I'm not sure I could sell him on that location for utility spaces. What about putting an office space there if we use the current office space as laundry/bath/mudroom/pantry?

The real challenge is trying to make floorplan changes without spending too much money (we already have to tear down our chimney and scrape the absestos-containing popcorn ceilings off, which is really expensive--plus add the cost of a new kitchen!). Does anyone here know how expensive it is to take down a load-bearing wall and move plumbing/gas lines? Are we talking hundreds or thousands?

Are you on slab or crawlspace?
Are you a DIYer? or
Will you have to pay for most labor for this?
Where are you located?

Taking down load bearing walls is expensive to have done. How many thousands involves what part of the country you are located in and if you are going to DIY any of it. The expensive part of moving things isn't going to be moving gas lines, or HVAC, or electrical (and those will also cost thousands!), it will be the plumbing. Especially if the home is on slab. The drain lines are already sized for the orignal planned fixtures, and utilizing them for other purposes means that they may need to be replaced with larger lines. Plumbing also has to be vented properly in order to work.

So, what's your budget for this remodel? Average kitchen remodels without any of the moving stuff around are around 30K. Add in a laundry room (5K plus a bath 10K) and you're already at 45K for simple replacement of what's there with no moving of anything. Add in the architect's fees, the structural engineer and the permits to another at least 25K of construction/labor costs (and that's if you don't make any changes that will impact the exterior) and say that 70K might get you what you want--with at least a 21K (30%) contingency fund, and your project is in the 100K range. If you're in a high labor market, times that time 1.5 to 3, depending on location.

I would do this. I stole some space from the office and laundry room, and opened up the floorplan. The pillar and thickened wall should give you enough support on the load bearing wall to open the middle of it for a small eating area and pass through, or you can open it totally up and have a passage to the dining room.

I would think the laundry would be more convenient located near the bedrooms but if you want it on the main floor it's there, but a bit smaller.

Here's the original. Easier to see if they are side by side.

Yeah, I kind of figured that this would be a very expensive undertaking. We could probably devote $90K max to the remodel before going into debt, which we really don't want to do.

I imagine that Portland OR is a more expensive area to remodel, and since we are not DIYers, we'd have to pay for all the labor. The house is on a crawlspace, which makes things easier. We would like to do an Ikea kitchen, which might save a little on materials, but it looks like labor will be the really expensive part of the project.

Blondelle, your design is very interesting--this idea never occurred to me. I love how it opens up to all the communal areas! But I'm a little unclear on what's going on in the former office area. I think there's a desk area in the corner, but what are the other elements in your design? (Sorry, I'm a novice at floorplans, as you can probably tell from what I posted!)

The area with the round table is seating if you want to have a snack there or make a presentation to a client or have a meeting. The other pieces can be file cabinets or storage drawers, and as you come in from the kitchen a wall of bookshelves. You would use a modular office system. IKEA has several. Opposite the seating on the other wall can be an entertainment center with a TV.

I think it works well, opens up the space and gives you a good sized, open kitchen too.

blondelle's plan has a lot of interesting ideas. Using it as the base plan, I'd suggest the following changes to it:

Laundry/powder/office area--

Powder rm--fill in the wall where she has the door. Then stretch out the powder room so it's 7 to 7-1/2' long adjacent to her kitchen wall and 42" wide, with a pocket door on the right wall.

Laundry--this will be outside the powder room, with the small window in it. There would be a door into the family room right next to where the powder room/family room wall ends. Opposite this door and wall would be an identical door and wall, with the office on the other side. Both laundry doors would be pocket doors. The laundry would measure about 7 to 7-1/2' x ~10 to 10-1/2'.

Office--to the right of the door from the garage you could have a 4-6' wide coat closet with a 2+' wide cleaning closet next to it. Opposite it (on the back of the 42" powder room wall) you could have a bench with hooks/cubbies above it. The remainder of the room would be the office (about 9'x 10' with a chunk out of the corner due to the closets).

Now for the kitchen:

Keep the door from the original hall to the family room for easy access to the revised kitchen. Shorten the cabinets on her range wall from both ends from about 11' to about 8' in length. Put the range in the middle of the wall where the fridge was so it's out of the path of the kids. Facing blondelle's range wall, put the fridge on the right, the microwave to the left of it, and a bar sink to the left of it. May have to reverse the fridge and bar sink locations depending on the width of the kitchen. I'm not sure if the kitchen as reconfigured is wide enough for even a 2' wide island.

On the back side of the end of the foyer closet and blondelle's fridge wall, put a hutch for dishes or floor to ceiling 12-15" deep cabinets to be used as a pantry. If there is room for the island, extend it so the end comes out as far as the hutch/pantry cabinets.

Foyer: since this looks to be over 9'x9', and since the living room is so long, you might consider giving it a little bit of definition by putting an 18" square half wall coming out from each of the closet walls, with open shelves above. I remember some very pretty ones in Sarah Susanka's book The Not So Big House, I think on p. 100. (I liked that room so much that I memorized the page!)

Family room: It might be a good idea to keep the wall between it and the dining room. With young kids it's sort of nice to be able to close the doors on the mess if they have their toys in there. Also, as they get older the wall will buffer some of the noise from them and their friends, and the TV if something is on and you don't want to watch it. With the bedrooms on the same floor, it also would keep things quieter when some people are still sleeping, especially when the TV is on. Many people find it very nice to have one of the "public" rooms on the first floor that can be closed off when needed. Also, if the wall remains, you could get a comfortable sofa bed for guests to sleep on.

Sorry I can't draw this up for you, but maybe blondelle or someone else will be able to if there's merit to any of these suggestions.

It would be very helpful to have the EXACT measurements of the kitchen and narrow hall combined. Can you measure it from the left kitchen wall through the doorway to the right hall wall? I can estimate it by using the scale, but it seems to be only 12-1/2' wide. That would be a little too tight for a built in island, with appliances in the cabinets on the walls opposite the island. However, a narrower long free-standing work table would work.

Anne

. . . why tear out any more walls than you need to! For the powder room, forget what I said in my other post. Keep it where blondelle put it, but switch the door from the family room wall to the original laundry room door.

If you're happy with the original 6x9' laundry room, don't tear out any walls there except to put the 2 doors in that I mentioned in the other post, so you can get from the office to the family room through the laundry and have access to the powder room easily from all rooms. Or, if you'd rather, have the laundry open into just the office or just the family room. If the laundry is too narrow, decide if it's worth it to tear out the part of the wall between it and the office and move it over at most 1-1/2 to 2' because of the office window.

The office looks like it's about 10-1/2x15', which is large enough to still take some space from the left side of it for other uses. You could take blondelle's laundry room and make it a large walk in closet/pantry, with coats across the back, and 9 to 12" deep, 4' wide pantry shelves up the right and left side walls of the closet. On the wall opposite this closet door, on the back side of the garage wall, you could have a ~5' wide bench with hooks/cubbies over it. The office would be about 9x10-1/2'.

Anne