Good day! My husband and I (and two young kids) are in the final stages of deciding if we should move from our 1920 home that’s been redone and is totally updated to a 1906 four square that hasn’t been touched since the 1970s. We purchased our current home based on the fact that it worked really well for our family; right number of rooms, home office, lots of light, playroom, lots of bathrooms. It’s a home we could grow with. The potential new fixer doesn’t work as well for our family in terms of designated spaces but it has CHARM. So much incredible wood work, in our dream neighborhood and the capability to make it entirely our own.

The scope of work for the fixer would be as follows and wouldn’t all need to be done at once:
Finish attic
Add master bathroom
Re do powder room and upstairs bathroom
Landscape
HVAC
Electrical
Partially finish basement
Get rid of lots of wallpaper and carpet
And finally... THE KITCHEN, which is where all my headaches start.

The kitchen, is small, about 11x11. It’s in the back corner of the house and not open to anything which I actually prefer to open concept. What I’m struggling with is how to remodel the kitchen. Do we
A) add onto the back of the house and make the kitchen bigger that way
B) relocate the main floor powder room and expand kitchen with existing footprint
C) leave kitchen as is and embrace the size; get creative

Money is a factor, so if we expanded out we would have considerably less to do other work right off the bat with. My dream is to expand it and have an eat in area and really make this the hub of the house, opening to the backyard and garage. Oh, and there is currently a small room off the back of the house . I’m not sure what to call it, we’re in Denver and most old homes have a wood addition on the back that houses shoes and maybe a laundry room. They’re all a little rickety and it’s basically a porch that’s been insulated and windows added. The addition would need to be two stories as there’s a fantastic stained glass door on the second level that exists out on the existing two story covered porch.

Ok, so after all this long winded-ness I guess I just want to talk out old home renovations, ROI and the pros and cons of doing an addition OR some amazing creative solutions for redoing the kitchen as is, small and closed off. The fact that we have two little kids who are only getting bigger plays into our decision making as well. The current kitchen is rough and I’d want to do that first so we can refinance if need be with that part done, and I’m just very confused.

Thanks to anyone who read this far and hopefully we can connect!