Dear Kiwi13, You have an architectural floor plan. Contact the architect or builder (if this was a spec home) and ask them which direction the ceiling framing runs in the Family Room and Living Room. In most cases the first floor ceiling framing will be run in the direction of the shortest span. In English your first floor ceiling framing probably runs from front to the back of your home.Meaning you should be able to remove either wall once you confirm the ceiling framing direction. If you are like the majority of home owners and not going to keep a formal living room, because you just never use it. You may want to consider reconfiguring that whole area of your new home. So you can get the family room and kitchen you truly want and expect, and that new, different, easier, better life you hope this new home will deliver for you. Tons of possibilities if you reconfigure the family room, kitchen/breakfast room, and living room area, you may not want to take out a wall as much as move one. Keep a family room and kitchen which you want. And add an informal dining room (breakfast area is a little tight), office, study, library whatever you need? The kitchen you have now I believe is just too small for the size of this home and awkward. Like it doesn't belong to this home. I can’t imagine that the realtors wouldn’t help you answer this simple question, especially if this is all it will take to sell this home. Hope this has been helpful. Joe Brandao Kitchen Design Company

Unfortunately your original layout is more functional than the proposed. How about putting the table in the former kitchen space? Then I’d make a built in hutch in that area bumped into the powder room. Can you move the door to the sunroom to the mudroom? Then you can get some decent wall space in the former dining room for a new kitchen.

@mama goose_gw zn6OH, thank you very much for the additional information! Thankfully my husband works for an HVAC (and plumbing/electrical) company so he will be in charge of the hood. We haven't gotten that far in the planning process but it'll be good to know to plan for it to overhang by 6". On the oven note, I'm really unsure how that will play out. I like the idea of having a range where everything is all together in my work zone. It just depends on what we can find that suits our needs and budget. If it ends up as a range, we can still plan on the microwave being there in some kind of cabinet configuration. @3onthetree, you've raised some excellent questions. The start of the new stairs will be inside the new addition. The middle section will go over what is currently just an open niche in our bedroom (which we will enclose as a small storage closet). A few of the stairs will locate in what is currently some built-in storage over the basement stairs, accessed from the storage niche in our bedroom. The location of the starting point of the stairs will be a balancing act between keeping enough head height where the support beam will run across the stairs and the distance the stairs extend out into the usable attic floor space. We need to maintain head clearance under the beam but we also want to maintain as much usable attic floor space as possible so we have as much floor space to work with as possible. We do plan to eventually put in a bedroom and a bathroom in the attic; we have consulted the IRC 2018 (which is what our local jurisdiction requires) to ensure that we're meeting the required minimum room areas and ceiling heights. As for the roof - I need to preface this with the fact that I'm not an architect - but this is the roof design that I've come up with so far. I'm going to pick my boss's brain (she's a licensed architect) to see if she thinks there are any better ways to design this. But it's what I've got so far as a starting point. Exterior modeling is not my forte so again, this is rudimentary. I would like to design some kind of "eyebrow" over the exterior door that will shelter from rain, even if slightly. Just haven't gotten that far yet. And yes, we're expecting we will need a laminated beam to run across where the exterior wall will be removed. We will be hiring a structural engineer to assist with analyzing everything and also to help determine what we need to do for our attic floor joists. We know that we will need to sister in bigger boards to beef everything up to support the finished space - just need to find out what will actually be required. To your earlier point (the stair design), once we've got an engineer on board and determine the size, height, and location of the structural beam, I can nail down exactly where the stairs should start. In regards to circulation, what is really funny is that you sketched in an opening exactly where one used to be in the original design of our home! Before we purchased our home, it was remodeled by a contractor who walled in an existing doorway into that hallway in order to make the kitchen more functional. I can't imagine just how tiny that original kitchen must have been with another doorway there! But, back to your point, with the size of our house, I really don't want to sacrifice usable space for additional circulation. I go on walks daily with the purpose to get extra steps in my life. A few in my house isn't going to hurt anything and those with far larger homes walk many more steps than we will. Not an issue for us but I really appreciate you steering me to think about the design from different perspectives! In regards to sizing things proportionately to the home, we have had LOTS of these kinds of discussions over the years. "Cozy" is a nice way to describe our house :) When first putting pen to paper, I was actually looking at a smaller addition. And then the contractor we spoke with said we might as well go a little bit bigger because there are so many costs associated with just getting people on the job that a few more feet in this size of addition/remodel won't make a huge cost difference, beyond just paying for the normal SF costs. Also, while I don't feel the need to deep dive into all of the personal aspects of our decision-making on here, we did spend a few years of our lives mulling over whether we wanted to stay in our home or get into a bigger, more expensive house. We "shopped" a lot during that timeframe. And, we ultimately decided to stay in our smaller home for a variety of reasons. Our personal attitude is a bit of a "YOLO" approach to our home; we have decided to make it the way we want it as we're planning to stay here for years. We feel like it's the right decision for us. So unless the bids come in astronomically high and just don't make sense, we're going to proceed with the project. A bonus for us is the fact that my husband is very experienced in MEP (and licensed on the HVAC side of it) so he can take care of a chunk of some of the expensive components of this kind of project himself, which will help bring down our project costs. What he can't complete, we will hire out through his employer, which will be at a discounted rate. So, that's how we ended up where we're at, in a nutshell. I really appreciate you asking questions that help us think through different aspects of our project. Thank you very much!

I don't know how deep the bay window well is (you said to ignore the measurements -- but the depth & length would be very helpful!) I will say that we did something similar -- we had a table space in front of a shallow bay window in the Kitchen that we grew out of very quickly. We replaced it with a counter-height bay window and ran cabinets across it but not in the bay itself. The counter did extend into the bay, but not the cabinets. We have approx 24" b/w the back of the sink and the window with an overall depth of 45" from the back of the bay window to the edge of the counter. I have long arms and cannot reach the back window to clean. I can barely reach where the counter meets the window. If yours is as deep or deeper, I recommend doing one of two things: Eliminate the bay window altogether & replace with a window similar to the other one in your Kitchen -- but at counter-height, not raised. Replace the bay with a box window that is no deeper than the side windows and straighten out the side windows (i.e., no angle) What is feasible and/or worth the cost will depend on the structure of your home. E.g., is the bay cantilevered past the rear wall of the house (ours is) or is the bay an integral part of the back wall? What is the exterior of your home where the bay window is -- brick, siding, etc.? Given the amount of changes you're talking about, I think you will be better off replacing the cabinets so you're not jury-rigging them to force them to fit where they were never meant to fit. BTW...if you have a full basement under the Kitchen (or even a crawl space), it usually doesn't cost all the much to move plumbing. Regarding the range -- if you plan to put it under a window, then you should switch to electric from gas. Check your local Code, but I'm not sure you're allowed to put a gas range in front of a window that opens and/or you may be required to have at least 12" b/w the window and the range. I'm not an expert and no one can tell you for certain what is/is not Code in your locality without knowing where you live (country, state, county, and, sometimes, town). I recommend you research whether there are any restrictions in your area. It's also possible there is no Code to prevent it -- but that doesn't mean it's a good idea! E.g., with gas, an open window could blow out the flame while the gas continues to flow; the flame could be "distorted" by a breeze coming in, which would affect cooking; if you keep the wood trim around the window, it could be a fire hazard. Definitely no curtains or other flammable item too close by! Also think about cleaning -- grease splatters, etc., on the window. Have you considered moving the range to the bay window area instead of the sink? It would allow you to have plenty of space b/w the window and the range and give you space for the range hood that you'll need. Just don't have an operable bay window If you would like more help, a fully-measured layout is needed. The one you posted only has a few of the necessary measurements. Here's an example of what we need: Also see the "New to Kitchens? Read Me First!" thread.