Am I understanding right that the only access into the kitchen is to walk down through the DR and thru that doorway at the bottom? Which room do you do most of your hanging out in?... the Den or Living room? So much depends on how you live and how much you want to spend on this remodel. What/where is your pantry space?

Adding a few more questions.

How do you usually get to the den? Through the kitchen/breakfast room area? I think you might be missing a doorway on the floor plan.

How do you usually enter the house? And where do people go first when they get home? In other words, is the kitchen a main entrance area for the home, or do people enter through the living room and go to their bedrooms mostly?

"old house"....it depends but I'd want to bump out the back wall of den,run a hall thru the middle of home, turn the breakfast nook into hall bath...make one of existing bedrooms ensuite with existing bath. The den bump out would be for 3rd bedroom....a little tv or study room at front part of old den. Also get a laundry setup from part of breakfast nook. Strive for opening up living/dining/kitchen...kitchen doorwayswould be pretty much closed up so you get to use the walls-a better kitchen. This is a longer/broader plan but gives you a 3 bedroom 2 bath home-doesn't look that difficult.

Thanks all for the quick replies!

There is an archway between the den and the breakfast room.

And an archway between the dining room and living room.

The kitchen is accessible from 1) the arch to the breakfast room, 2) the door into the dining room and 3) the door into the hallway.

The pantry space is, essentially non-existant. Our home-canned foods live on shelves in the basement. The rest of the food gets stuffed into cabinets in the kitchen.

The kitchen currently has that strange 2x3" box in the corner that frames in the chimney (which eventually gets removed). It has a 40" range, a 41" fridge and the 54" of washer/dryer. And a mobile 36" square island.

The breakfast room houses a table, microwave cabinet, hutch and a 15" old Hoosier-ish cabinet.

We normally live in the Den and use the entrance door into the Den.

Not shown in that floorplan is that one end of the living room has the stairs leading to a second floor.

Thanks again,
Jim

That is a small kitchen for such a large home. Do you use the living room and dining room, at all? If not (or not often) I think Herbflavor has some interesting ideas.

If you do, then I would check to see if that wall is load bearing...and if you can expand the nook out about three feet. That shouldn't take a new foundation, but it depends on your local codes. Then maybe something like this? It's not great to have the range and sink on opposite sides, but I like the big windows over the sink and small seating peninsula...with pantry on the wall behind the dining room. Just an idea :) {{!gwi}}From Cottage house plans

Jim: assuming the 2nd floor has bedrooms.....could you explain more about how this house works for you? Is it an old house that has been chopped up/reconfigured?? Bedrooms on the main floor with an awkward kitchen and no regard to flow sounds like "stuff"has been done. some pictures and the house overview might be helpful.Many times in older places people undo what was done decades earlier...I think more explanations should be given to get valuable input.

I've often thought of bumping out the breakfast room such that it is even with the kitchen and dining room.

So far as I know, there've only been two changes in the house - both in the 1970s. The den is an add-on from the early 1970s. The bedroom that borders the living room once had a second door into the living room.

I think that bedroom was originally intended to be a study or perhaps a parlor or something of that order.

The upstairs is currently mostly unused. There is a bath plus four other rooms. 3 are set up as bedrooms - the fourth a kitchen that is left over from when the upstairs had a separate entrance and was rented as an apartment. The upstairs has no heating / air.

I'm attaching another layout with a bit more detail of the current setup.

Jim

{{!gwi}}

I would reconfigure the whole space and open it up. This works so much better but you do have to give up some things. I can't figure out how one room flows into the other with what you have now. I don't know where your windows are or which are load bearing walls, but maybe something like this will work for you. It's an expense but it will add so much more value to your home. Let me know what you think!

OK, my picture with the extra details didn't show up ... I'll try again.

Blondelle,

That open of a floorplan isn't for me. The house I grew up in had a more open floorplan and it's not something I enjoy.

The changes to the den shows promise. The addition of that hallway makes me think.

The wall between the den and the breakfast room and bedroom is definitely load-bearing (it's the old outside-of-the-house wall).

Thank you!
Jim

Swap the dining room with the kitchen. It makes more sense to have a smaller dining room and a bigger kitchen. And it creates more of a connection with the living room.

Then I'd look at adding a bathroom to where the breakfast room is and turning the den into a master suite.

Well that would have helped as all that work is for naught. Not even a thank you or comment? I just love playing with space so much, but most of the time I'm always sorry I bothered trying to help, like now...sigh!

Or you could also make the bedroom next to the living room the dining room, and make the old kitchen into a bedroom if you want a larger dining area.

seriously,though...what's the plan for the upstairs with a bathroom,3 bedrooms and kitchen...either complete some work for a serious 2nd income rental,or divide it into part rental/part owner occupied or incorporate it back into the home's footprint. I'd be figuring this out before working on the first floor at all.....if this kind of planning isn't for you,maybe selling is an option,as many people wopuld relish getting something going with it. The right thing to do is to have someone live/use existing sq footage vs. an entire 2nd floor basically unused.

It makes no sense to have a little used dining room with so much more space than the kitchen. Move the kitchen there, and connect it more with the current living room so that it's used more often. You'll get much better flow for the home. And I do like the idea of converting the bedroom or the current kitchen into the dining room.

But none of what you are thinking about will be all that cheap. And since you live in a home that you really don't use the space it contains already, it makes zero sense to think about doing an extensive remodel that would involve any type of bump out or too much structural alterations until you've assessed selling the home and moving to a smaller home that would suit your needs more.

There's no point in paying for space that isn't used.

You've got to develop a whole house master plan for allocating use, and you've got to develop a budget plan for that. Don't think you're going to do any of this on a 10K type budget. Just renovating a kitchen alone is a 30-50K expenditure (national average numbers).

Would it be better to sell the home to someone who wanted to turn it into rental units and then buy something else? Well, if you don't have the capital to do that type of reno yourself or do the extensive integration alterations that would make the house more user friendly, then it probably would make more sense to move on.

Sorry Simanco, I looked but didn't see your comment before. I just saw your new floorplan posting and nothing else. So strange as it's there now. The shows on HGTV make it seem like everyone wants an open floor plan, but It's really about what your comfortable with. All those doorways make it hard to use the space effectively as it's hard to position kitchen cabinets or furniture when you have to allow for all those entrances.

Is the house a Victorian? How old is it? Would this work better for you? This gives you a fitted, functional kitchen with cabinets and some counter space. There's also a better flow to the other rooms.

Sorry Simanco, I looked but didn't see your comment before. I just saw your new floorplan posting and nothing else. So strange as it's there now. The shows on HGTV make it seem like everyone wants an open floor plan, but It's really about what your comfortable with. All those doorways make it hard to use the space effectively as it's hard to position kitchen cabinets or furniture when you have to allow for all those entrances.

Is the house a Victorian? How old is it? Would this work better for you? This gives you a fitted, functional kitchen with cabinets and some counter space. There's also a better flow to the other rooms.

{{!gwi}}

So now it posts it twice...LOL! What's going on with this board? Usually it tells you that you already have a posting with that title. Oh well!

With the kitchen/dining swap, and the master bedroom as suggested above. Or if you wanted to break up the home for additional rental units, the other bedroom adjacent to the living room could be the dining room, and the other bedroom next to the den could become a living/dining combo with the removal of the hall wall and walling it off. The hall itself could become a single wall kitchenette. And the living room itself is large enough to be able to wall off the stairway to the upper unit for more privacy.

This post was edited by GreenDesigns on Tue, Jan 1, 13 at 12:51