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comparing different remodeling possibilities - which are best?

Pat
3 years ago

I purchased my first home earlier this year, and that has lead to countless "hmmm, how can I made this place better?" ruminations. It's a two family building, with one unit on 1st and another on the 2nd floor. Both units are 3 bedroom 1 bathroom. I'm on the 2nd floor and have thought of 4 potential improvement items, 2 of them being somewhat dependent on each other. I'm attaching a screenshot of the combined before/after floor plan, where before is on the left and after is on the right. Disregard the fact that icons for windows only appear on the "after" floor plan. Also, the bottom of the floor plan is the front of the house, with staircase against the left wall leading to the 2nd floor.





The four potential improvement ideas I have are:

1. increasing the size of the main living room area by getting rid of the secondary entry door that I rarely use - the secondary one is closest to the bathroom, and rarely used only because I find it more convenient to have a coat rack + small table near the entrance, and there's not enough space for that in the small hallway between the bathroom and living room.


2. increasing the size of the bathroom and rearranging where the shower/tub is (by using the space no longer needed for that second entrance) - dependent on the previous item being done - doing this would make the bathroom feel much bigger, as well as make it so that a window is no longer directly on the shower wall


3. tweaking the rear bedroom so that its entry door is on a new small diagonal wall, allowing for more light to reach the living room via kitchen window as well as the bedroom windows - this is only on the list because the two neighboring houses to mine are very close, just a couple feet away max, even less on the side opposite the bathroom (hence why there's that concave intrusion for two windows). During the afternoons, sunlight enters from the rear of the house, so both the kitchen and that bedroom get tons of light, but the living room barely does


4. making the 3rd (smallest) bedroom accessible via the living room, instead of only through the neighboring bedroom, by changing where the closets and entry doors are for both bedrooms. That smallest bedroom is in my opinion currently kind of limited in terms of its usefulness since the stairway leading to the 2nd floor doesn't have any sloping ceiling. Meaning the top of the stairway and the first few steps both share the same ceiling. If that were changed to a sloping one instead, the space above the lower part of it can be used as a closet for that bedroom. The right side of that new closet might not have any floor space, but could still be efficiently used for upper shelves.


Also regarding that last point #4, I swapped the adjacent bedroom's closet and entrance door, for two reasons: I think it would be weird to have 3 doors all next to each other, and 2nd reason being the whole right side of the house (at least from front bedroom to living room) contains baseboard radiator heating. Leading to the current undesirable situation where it passes through the bedroom closet (so wasteful!).


My end goal with these remodel ideas is to have them take place sometime next year whenever I find another place to live since I would then convert this floor into another rental unit. And have the construction begin as soon as the place is listed for rent (so the remodeling costs can be depreciated). The way I'd like to rank these 4 remodel ideas against each other isn't necessarily ROI, but more about which ones would attract the most tenants and keep vacancies down year over year, as well as lead to higher appraisal values down the road.


Does anyone see flaws with the 4 points I brought up that I might have overlooked, or see completely separate opportunities to improve the place? Final screenshot I'm attaching below is for indicating where the hydronic baseboard radiators are (blue lines), in case that would make a difference:




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