Hi GW'ers!

We are batting around ideas for remodeling our main living spaces in the house and wanted to get some feedback. (warning, this is a LOOOOOONG post! I'm trying to be thorough, lol)

Background:

House is a 1960's ranch (cookie cutter). Main floor is 1500 sf with a fully finished basement. Full bath servicing 3 bedrooms on the main floor, and in the basement, there's a kitchenette, rec room, 3/4 bath and 2 bedrooms. The house has a family room + basement addition on the back.

Here's a floor plan of the main level:

We have lived here for over 2 years with no plans to move. It is me and the mr, 3 cats and 2 dogs. No plans for kids. ( In the above photo, disregard furniture placement in the formal living room and the layout of the bathroom is different but the footprint is the same). We tend to host the holiday dinners (to do that, we move all tables into the family room and have to shuffle things around to accommodate. We also entertain friends and family a few times a month. This means we eat on the main floor and then either retreat out to the deck or patio, or head downstairs to watch TV.

Anywho, In our time here, we have noticed a few things:

1. overnight guests sleep in the guest bedroom downstairs. They have a 3/4 bath at their disposal down there. The only folks that use the main floor bath are us, and any drop-in short-term company.

2. it's a loooooong walk to get to the bathroom when hanging out in the family room addition. That room is where we eat and entertain guests upstairs. TV watching now occurs in the rec room basement (we hope to add a TV to the family room as part of our plans).

3. trying to keep the main floor bathroom "tidy" for the random visitors is kind of a pain. Limited counter space means bottles and toiletries are usually in plain sight. We have no true "master bath" so this main bath is where we do all of our primping and such.

4. we never ever ever really spend any time in the "formal" living room. Right now, it houses our fish tank and some antiques from my parents. It's nice to look at, but we just don't spend any time here.

Ideas for change:

We know we want to remodel the kitchen. It is tiny, closed in, and prep space is miniscule. There's an annoying column where the previous owners took down a chunk of wall that is really out of place and the resulting doorway gives front door visitors a lovely view of our trashcan. The kitchen and dining room combined are 18'6" by 10'8". Here's a closeup of the existing kitchen, dining room and family room:

Yes, we have 2 tables, but the one we usually eat at is the one in the family room. It is much bigger and that's just an all-around nicer room -- windows, openness, etc.

When I first started thinking about remodeling the kitchen, I got the wonderful idea from the kitchens forum to open up the space with a peninsula, sort of like this:

This was my idea of choice up until recently, when I decided i'm ready to think about nixing the "formal living room". It's a decent room by neighborhood standards (about 15 x 15) with a nice big bay window. There's lots of room for a real dining table to seat 10 people at least, with room to spare for a buffet, breakfront, etc.

Soooo, armed with this new information, I started exploring ideas on commandeering more space for the new kitchen. As I was playing around, I thought that using the whole 18 foot width for a kitchen isn't really keeping in scale with this humble house. How can I make the kitchen bigger, but still make some useful space?

Then it hit me! What about a powder room? And maybe a walk-in Pantry?

Here's sort of what i'm thinking:

When it's just the two of us, we can eat either at the peninsula or use a small cafe table in the family room (although truthfully, we usually just eat on a couch, lol). When there's guests, we can use the former formal living room-now-dining room.

We have no plans to move, and our realtor has told us that for this neighborhood, so long as you have an "eating" space and a "living" space, we're good. Keeping a formal living room isn't really necessary since we have the family room in the back.

Some potential concerns with this idea:

1. the pantry access would be kind of weird. From the family room, there's a step down to a landing, and then a step up into the pantry. I'm less concerned about this being far away from the kitchen as i'd rather use the kitchen walls for counters, wall ovens, etc.

2. entering the house and being "in" the dining room. Is that weird?

3. Powder room door may be half visible from the front door and dining room. It would be next to the coat closet going in to the former kitchen. Here's a zoomed in shot of the existing layout showing labeling where the door would actually be but it boils down to just to the left of the existing kitchen sink:

4. Is it weird to have a powder room on the same level as the main bathroom? We would do it purely for convenience, and in fact, we originally thought of doing a full bath here and converting the existing bath into a master, but then we realized that guests only ever shower in the basement, so nixed that idea. Resale would probably dictate another full bath is better, but we just don't need it and we don't plan on selling any time soon.

5. Right now, our formal living room and dining room is pretty open and spacious feeling. Closing off the wall between LR and DR will negate that, but to get a better kitchen, I think i'm ok with it. Plus, the kitchen will be open to the family room, so bonus points, right?

Anywho, i'm QUITE smitten with the possibilities that this new kitchen holds, so i'm anxious to hear your thoughts on the pros and cons of playing "musical rooms" like this.

Apologies for the super-long post... hope you've stuck with me this far!