I'm a minimalist. New flooring, less carpet. Get rid of the weird wood pillars. Take off mantel from FP and paint the fp surround black (I am for some reason not a brass fan, never was). I actually LOVE the kitchen, I love those old fashioned REAL wood cabinets, even painted. And I like white kitchens. I might redo the counter, floor and backsplash to something less drab and more fun. You could enlarge the kitchen space into the family room and add an island. Paint walls colors I like that go with my furniture. The main thing I would try and do is paint the shelving around the fireplace to a color more complimentary of the brick. I love that room, might even spring for wood floors in there . . . and matching wood between the rafters or cover the rafters in real wood . . . depends on how long I was planning on living there . . . depending on zone I might convert the fireplace to gas or electric if it hasn't been done already. I would really dislike a bedroom opening into a kitchen so I'd redo that entry and maybe incorporate the bath if possible to make a master suite. You could make a different entry from the side yard into the kitchen with a walk alongside the garage if there isn't one already. That would be the only downside of incorporating the bath into the bedroom, you'd loose the direct entry from the house to the garage.

With a 300K budget you could add another story . . . then there are all sorts of possibilities for the downstairs rooms. Depends on how much room you need. In CA, I'd spend extra money on the outside unless I had a big family.

Update the systems - plumbing, electrical, HVAC. Move the laundry inside. How many bedrooms and baths do you want to have? Do you need to consider resale value or is this your forever house?

Thanks Ipink and Fun2b, yes to everything you said so far. Plus, new roof and stucco/siding. Except two story.

It’s just the two of us, but would like to keep 3 bedrooms. We are both in our 60’s, so most likely last house before senior living :)

We were thinking along the same. Move kitchen forward into FR, move laundry inside. Then we could make that bedroom near the kitchen a MB. Just curious if anyone saw different alternatives.

Thanks!

You mentioned a healthy budget so … this would take a healthy budget. Basic idea is take family room for a primary bedroom with walk in and ensuite. Take the dining area and add it to the kitchen. Make kitchen open to living.

Make the powder room area a walk through laundry from garage. Make the third bedroom (which seems awfully dark) - a dining room.

Add some windows wherever you can.
This would require carefully thinking out furniture placement in the living. I’d try to make sure I could fit a good size entertainment centre along the right wall. I’d put a 1/2 wall between dining room and living to facilitate more furniture placement.

Continued …. The issue I see as drawn is the living room is only 13 feet wide and needs to contain a traffic path to the primary bedroom. You might be able to to a sectional, one chair, and tv furniture. Or you could keep one of the spare bedrooms as a tv den and furnish the room more formally with a couch facing two chairs.

Robo, thanks for drawing that out. We considered turning the FR into the MB, but like you, wasn’t sure about furniture placement in the LR. It looks alittle confining?

I was also thinking, even if we bumped the kitchen out into the FR the FR would still feel spacious with the high ceiling. Thanks for your thoughts!

It’s funny, I was so focused on how to work around that darn door to the garage. It didn't occur to me to bring the laundry area inside 😊 If we do that we don't need to keep that access door.

That's why I like to get other's input, I sometimes miss the obvious!

Thanks again!

If we do that we don't need to keep that access door.

I would definitely want to keep the door from the garage into the house.

Hi Bunny, I know keeping the access would be important to some homeowners.

Our current home has a detached garage in the backyard, so it’s not something we would miss.

Thank you!

Have you thought about including the current covered porch into the current floor plan somehow? I dont know what the roofline could accommodate, but perhaps you could gain indoor space for part of the living area and still add a covered patio beyond the existing one.

I like the idea of putting a MBR suite where the current family room is located. And if you dont need that half bath it seems like a perfect place to incorporate an indoor laundry room. Then in the garage you would have an inset area for storage shelving, etc where the existing laundry setup is located.

I don't see anyway to keep the 2 brs and enlarge the bathroom. Sometimes you just have to embrace that small is beautiful.

But the primary thing for you is to figure out what functions you want to do in the house...do you need a reading room? Do you watch lots of TV? Do you need entertaining space? Place to overnight guests? The whole point of a house is that it's like a "factory" that provides the capacity you need to perform the functions you want. If you never cook, then a bigger kitchen may not be important. If you never have overnight guests then maybe the bedrooms can be altered....

I would add this post to the remodeling section/forum here... You may get additional comments of use.

Is the layout plan the current one or your proposed? Because it doesn't seem to match the pics. Renovating inside before moving in is tempting but wanting to improve a house's flow without living in it first would be quite difficult for me. I echo @Annie Deighnaugh' suggestion: "But the primary thing for you is to figure out what functions you want to do in the house." That is key. A larger kitchen and bathrooms is actually a vague "must-have". You need to pin down the reasons for these changes to ensure you don't miss your mark. Updating the systems as @Fun2BHere suggested is another fantastic idea that would improve quality of daily life. It's unfortunate that such changes take a fair chunk of a reno budget yet don't pack the visual punch of sexy new finishes. Good luck!

Oh yes, knowing it is retirement place just for you and hubs changes the dynamic. It also depends on if you will have kids visiting and grandkids too. My husband is the "princess and the pea" of sleep. Any little thing bothers him, so he would not only want to have the master bedroom in the quietest part of the house, he would want it well away from any visitors. His son snores so loud that hubs cannot sleep anywhere near him. Same with the kids, we need a lot of room for them (3 rambunctious girls and one boy). YMMV. Hubs family never comes to visit us, so most of what we plan for them is purely theoretical. They can't manage the time or expense or logistics of transporting such a large brood of "his, hers and ours" kids across country. It kind of bothers me that even though they live in hubs house, they made no attempt to create a quiet space for hubs to sleep when he has his visits, let alone the two of us. It's OK, I can live with it, but if you spend a lot of time with friends or extended family, you might want to consider the layout from a guest and entertaining friends perspective.

All throughout my life I've had to schlep laundry around so if I was designing my "ideal" retirement home I would not want the laundry in the garage or in any other inconvenient part of the house. At my parents condo they had the laundry in a closet with a ventilated door, so that it had a low visual profile, so it could be easy to scoot a small washer and dryer into various spaces inside the house. My folks had a stacked set up, it worked very well. Again, YMMV. I grew up with a washer and dryer in the kitchen and it was fine, the kitchen was HUGE and eat in so the washer and dryer fit under the cupboards with a low profile. Mom didn't want to drag the laundry down yet another flight of stairs to the ratty old basement which was the other potential spot.

But Robo adding a nice big laundry room with a bedroom in the back part of the house would be ideal for me in so many ways. I would not mind at all a small kitchen if it had a lot of counter space and made efficient use of space. Another option which I might consider given what I said about few visits from grandkids, is turning the back bedroom into the master, (what do I care if it isn't an ensuite, although I would want to make it as nice as possible), and then using the bedroom off the kitchen as a craft and storage area. Hubs and I do a lot of fixing up things and for us, storage space is in short supply so I'd put bunks in there for visiting grandkids and then use the rest for laundry, sewing, crafting and pantry supplies. The other guest bedroom would double as a study and quiet room where I could go to get away from hubs loud mega tv. Don't know if that's an issue for you, but separate TV viewing areas is a must for hubs and I to cohabitate happily and was the same for my folks. Is often the situation with visiting grandkids too, particularly if they're into gaming like mine are . . .

This is along the lines of the questions AD posed. I gave my considerations but yours may be different. Another example of an issue, is that in our house, where you have your laundry now is hubs messy noisy tool and workshop area with what is known as a "slop sink" where we wash big messy things by hand. A lot of homes have a workshop area in a corner of the garage. Again, YMMV if no one does that kind of thing. Alternately, it could become a garden potting area. If it were me, an entire garden workshop area, a "She Shed" would be erected with your kind of budget, out in the yard and incorporated into a landscape plant that would include water storage (cistern) and irrigation, in CA. If there was room for some solar applications, CA would be the place to include them.

Turning the FR into a master seems to be the popular opinion!

I haven’t been in the house in 14 years. It’s been rented by the same tenants the entire time. I don’t remember the LR feeling too small, so I can see where taking out that bedroom by the garage and making it the kitchen and then the kitchen for dining area might give the most o pen feel, which is most important to me. I like open concept. I’ll need to work on furniture arrangements.

Ipink, we don’t have kids or entertain alot. Just a few family gatherings a year. We need separate bedrooms, I’m the one that snores, haha!

I don’t need a huge kitchen, but adequate cabinet space and counters. TV room will be the most used room. The home we live in now is smaller than this one. So, we’re use to embracing small.

It takes awhile typing out responses on here. So, if you’re having the same problem, thanks for hanging in there!

If you guys need separate bedrooms, then the rooms on the right are the "master suite". There's not a lot of room to change it up, but you can certainly upgrade the finishes. What's nice is that there are closets to act as noise barriers for when someone is in the bathroom late at night.

That frees up the space on the left to be whatever other space you might want. Maybe keep it a family room/tv room, but make it smaller so you have space to create a utility space close to the garage and slide the rest of the space toward the FR and make that a little smaller....use it as a TV room with the possibility of sleeper sofas to turn it into a sleeping space for overnight guests.

Tartan, your response just showed up to me. So sorry!

Yes, this is the current floorplan. The LR pic was taken standing b ythe kitchen doorway instead of the front entry. Maybe thats whats throwing things off.

Thanks!

You have the budget, but do you have the capability legal/zoning/etc. wise to expand the footprint?

Annie, thats something we would have to check into. I know it‘s difficult to build up. The area has protecte d c ity light views.

I did mention to DH about adding onto the back bedroom. Then we could add the closet space to the bathroom making it a little bigger. He thinks we should expand the bathroom into the closet i nthe front bedroom. Thinking that we might not use as a bedroom.

He’s the one wanting a larger bathroom. But, we each need our own. I don’t like clutter and he has too much stuff!

Thanks!

One thing I like about putting the kitchen where the single br is, is that it would allow you to open up the front foyer area which seems tight right now...instead, you'd walk into this open space which would be much more welcoming.

I'm not sure about the configuration, but if you and hubs need separate bathrooms (I get it, hubs and I have separate ones and my parents did too) then no need really for that front bathroom off the kitchen and that would allow you to expand the kitchen in that direction and add a posh laundry space. And yes, opening up and expanding the entrance would be great.