Do you think you have enough room to do this?

Why don't you just make the kitchen bigger? It looks like you have the room to push the exterior walls out. I assume that second level is a basement?

The second level is the basement and the space between the kitchen and the bathrooms is where the front door is. I know there is a city ordinance that the house has to be back 20' from the property line so I don't think there's much room to push the exterior walls out. The house is a fixer upper and will have to be completely gutted and re done anyways.

shift the stairs 90 degrees left so they run against the garage wall. If you can do this, you will have the same layout as a friend of mine. A great use of space in a small house!

You absolutely can move stairs, but yes, it is an expensive process. I would think the best spot would be along the wall between the living room and bedrooms. That might mean the stairs end in the middle of your family room in the basement, though, so definitely talk to an architect about options. You could also relocate your kitchen to the other side of the stairs, open up the bedroom closest to the living room to give you more living space, and turn the current kitchen into a bedroom if you don't want to lose a bedroom.

You are essentially reconfiguring you entire floor system. Including posssibly the second floor due to the loads and properly carrying them.

I like typeandrun's idea. Have them open from the living room side, then you'll be able to close off the kitchen end for uninterrupted space. We moved our stairs and have zero regrets. Enabled us to do what we wanted in our kitchen area.

Literally, this could run $50k (way more if lots of structural work required), so be sure you know what you're getting into before designing around this fantasy. When people say it costs a ton, they mean it. You might be better off making that into a small bedroom and putting the kitchen where the leftmost bedroom is...

Yowsers, my whole remodel only cost a little more than that, including having the stairs moved. Guess I should be thankful for my contractor, who did a beautiful job on our stairs.

Guess I should be thankful for my contractor, who did a beautiful job on our stairs.

It wasn't your contractor it was your floor joists. You might get lucky and it is nothing too complicated or expensive. I had an old house that needed a second set of stairs in the back instead of a weird maid's quarters off the kitchen, upon opening up the ceiling we found that it had previously been stairs and we only had to pay for new stairs.

You might also have to reconstruct entire portions of your floor down to adding new footers.

since its going to a lower level, how about a spiral stairs? this assumes both levels have doors to the outside, so you'd never have to move furniture up and down it.

I'll bump out that kitchen and remodel it completely or reconfigure the stairs for the same price. You pick.

Unrealistic to the max for a flip. Must be your first. HGTV lies. You will not make money doing renovations. Only cosmetic changes.

Who said anything about a flip?

It's a "fixer upper" but that doesn't mean they are looking to flip it.

This is definitely not a "flip" we are looking to fix it up for us to raise our family in. It's 2 doors down from my parents so we basically want it just for that reason alone. We are just trying to figure out a way to make the layout better for us to enjoy.

Plan an addition for a later time. Moving stairs opens a can of worms. You will have enough expenses buying and moving into the place to plan anything for right now.

Consult a structural engineer and let him tell you what's possible and will work the best. It's really better than us guessing based on very little information.

Kelly - talk to someone who can actually look at your house and tell you if moving the stairs is feasible, or if there is an option that is better than another so you're not chasing an idea that might not work. We bought our fixer-upper knowing that the stairs WOULD be moved, but had not yet decided where to put them. Working with our contractor, we figured out an option that works great for us, and did not cost an arm and a leg. You don't know what's possible until you talk it through with an expert, and the negative comments here come with no substantiation.

Looking at your plan, it seems the stairs may work along one of the walls of your living room. Your joists and basement supports will decide what might be feasible. You also need to think about from which side they will start. We put a pony wall on the main floor rather than a full wall because we wanted to maintain an open feel. You might decide to do a full wall for furniture arrangement purposes. Think about all the options, but definitely talk to an expert who can lay eyes on your space.

Instead of moving the stairs, do you think it would be better to make the kitchen where the dining room is and make like half of the garage a living room?

Or as someone else mentioned, use the two bedrooms as kitchen/dining space. You would essentially have an open floorplan with kitchen and dining/great room. Make the master bedroom bigger while you're at it.

Wall up the current stair opening and move it to the great room side. Use the existing kitchen for a powder room and laundry room.

Connect the two bathrooms into one ensuite with access only from the bedroom.

Kids have plenty of room downstairs.

No one can tell you this without knowing the structure of the house.

Sometimes, moving stairs really isn't expensive. $2000-3000 can do it, depending on the final desired finish IF the move is the right one for the structure of the house. Sometimes, it would cost $5000-10k in structural work before you even start on the stairs.

Kelly,

I'm late to this discussion but that was going to be my suggestion; put the kitchen where the LR is and vice-versa. At least look into it. Consult a design professional or contractor.

One of my friends looked into moving the stairs (to her basement) to enlarge the kitchen before selling this year, the cost was $30,000, not cheap.

Summer, that could be a "go away" quote. Some contractors do that!

Oh, thanks for the info. She just sold her house without moving the stairs.

30k could also be totally reasonable for what needs to be done. The only way to know for sure is to get multiple quotes and see what the norm is.

You may get some 'go away' quotes. And you may get some low-ball quotes where once they get the job and start, they start tacking on a bunch of 'extras' and in the end they end up at the real price (or even way above). Or just do a crappy job.

Spending time choosing the right contractor with the right price is extremely important and it's a step that lots of people rush through and get burned.

3K isn’t even gonna cover converting existing carpeted stairs to new wood treads. Not unless all of the labor is DIY. It would barely cover making a cheap pressure treated stair to a tall deck, outside.

30K is a beginning ballpark for the structural alterations needed. Because the rise and the run will need to be increased, so the stairs will take up a lot more room. They will also require more headroom than the existing stairs, which means a bigger hole in your structural framing. Even if the joists run the right way, the hole had to be wider than their spacing, so joists will need to be cut, and new engineering has to happen to support those cut joists that support your house. That support has to carry through to a proper foundation below those stairs. At a meeting minim, a new point load pier has to happen. That means a post with a proper foundation carried down into undisturbed soil directly below. If the joists run the wrong way, and a half dozen joists need to be cut...now you’re well over budget.

Good grief. You can't say that without knowing the structure. By your estimates, no house could ever be built under $250 a square foot.

I've had a contractor put in stairs for less than $3k. That included everything but painting balusters. A pony wall they could have finished for the same price, but I wanted something nicer. Carpet was another $600--because I wasn't going to rebuild all the flights, just one floor.

I did do the wall painting, too, though.

"I've had a contractor put in stairs for less than $3k.

How much did reconstructing half the house to install those stairs cost?

Maybe an uninsured jack leg would do stair work for 3K. There isn’t one single fully licensed and insured contractor that would even do a home visit for stair work if you told them your budget was 3K. That is completely ludicrous, even here in the dirt cheap sticks. Much less the more expensive urban city 50 miles away. But I can find all kind of unskilled bubbas willing to do all kinds of work that they are in no way qualified to do.

It’s why my neighbor’s grandsons car won’t work. She only wants to pay jackleg labor rates to a “mobile mechanic” that is no such thing. She refuses to have it towed to a real shop. So she keeps getting taken advantage of and has paid way more than she would have if she’d just taken it to the real shop when it first started having a problem. At least it was mobile then. Now it’s just driveway art.