Topic 1: Good for you, for including furniture layout in your proposed plans. That helps us understand some of your intent, and it also helps identify spaces that are impractical.

One example: The sitting room area with 4 large chairs. They are grouped so that people passing through the room must walk right through the conversational group. That's inconvenient for both the passer-through and the people seated. Try to redo this room so that you can create a seating group where traffic naturally passes AROUND it. Also identify whether you need reading lights here, and if so, where they will be placed and where plugged in. You will see that even this simple seating area needs a lot more thought.

Topic 2: On the ratio of dining places vs. sofa/lounge chair places: As others have noted, you can seat ~22 for dining simultaneously, and just ~8 for sofa/lounging. Perhaps this makes total sense, as 10 of the people eating are kids who then run off to the playroom, and the remaining 4 are sure to be adults who never sit down or adore lying on the rug. It may be PERFECT for your way of life. However, we don't know that, and do know that in the absence of other info, it's good to have dining and lounge seating at rough parity.

Topic 3: The existing coat closet should be fixed to have full-width doors in the front.

The above is certainly not comprehensive.

I wonder if you have truly identified the things that are a priority, such as the bathrooms. I understand they are existing, but this is the perfect time to really consider whether they work for you and are comfortable and pleasant.

Thank you marilyncb for your comments. I'm not sure why the huge negativity to the proposal. I do get the concept that there could be more seating. Thank you qam999 and others who pointed that out. The proposal where we take over one bedroom to expand the kitchen and utilize the back of the house as a great room effectively seems like a good flow. But I would appreciate others who expressed more negative sentiments (VRBO, Mark etc.) if there could some more color provided. The existing dining room and den can remain as separate rooms or combined either now or down the line (the goal of THIS project is the kitchen and to do that best we'd like to nail down the first floor layout). Maintaining the first floor master with an office right next to it seems good for both today (4 kids upstairs in 3 bedrooms one being large for 2) and for resale.

Moving to another home is not so simple with low mortgage rate locked in vs. high current rates and lack of market inventory.

Also, we've had a structural engineer here.

Thanks

A dining room should be adjacent to a kitchen. Do you want to port food through that sitting room to the dining room all the time? Or clean up that way in reverse?

Food can go through and be set up in the butler’s pantry. I’m just worried that most often, people would crowd into the nook table.

Unless you have a butler, a butler's pantry is usually a waste of space. Normally food is prepared in the kitchen in the most efficient manner possible, and delivered to the adjacent dining area. If your normal food preparation is to start the food preparation in the kitchen, then transport it to another space to be finished, then deliver to another space to be eaten, a butler's pantry might work. Many time things that are thought to be good ideas on paper, becomes tiresome and gets old quick. The dining room is a long way from the kitchen. This may be a compromise because of existing conditions, but we are not there and we can only assume.

If you eliminate the butler's pantry, you can apply that money to the labor and materials for the beams needed to replace the bearing walls.

Negative comments - my thoughts are two - in today's building world, in most of the US, getting things done is really hard and costs more and takes longer than originally estimated. So doing a large scale reno while living in a house with 4 kids (some of which use toys still) gives anyone experienced in either (and I only have 1 kid) crushing chest pain. The potential pain is quite large and I think everyone is just interested in your mental health planning such a thing in 2022. The kitchen is the hardest reno to live with.

Next, this is a building forum where nice plans are made from scratch. So the plans look terrible in so many ways that it is hard to know where to begin. Planning a renovation and trying to keep some elements from an older house is really hard to make a decent plan. In this case, in some opinions, it is impossible.

I am just seeing this for the first time and I imagine walking into this house to buy. I am having to come up with a Manhattan or oceanfront locale to justify considering making an offer. Something would have to be so spectacular about the house to make me ignore the shortcomings of the floorplan and I don't even know the ceiling heights....

One can't predict the future but the current state of housing market will change. You will go through a good amount of pain and may be disappointed in the outcome compared to waiting on a better house. You may wait forever of course. But might want to factor in marriage counseling, divorce attorneys, mental health expenses in the overall financial risk.

I also would think few would undergo such a reno and consider living in the house in a LCOLA area, so the assumption is HCOLA and $500k sounds about right.

In what world is Foyer spelt Foyar?

"Foyar" is Pirate for a small entrance hall.

hm

Have you tried to budget out the materials alone, ie kitchen cabinets? That might help get an idea for price. When you remove the walls, what will you do about the flooring?

This project could easily go to 500k and above, but I think a lot of it will depend on the materials chosen. Her plan is actually a pretty innovative use of existing spaces. She’s not moving or adding bathrooms. The bedroom and playroom are existing. If she keeps the materials budget low, then she might get a much more reasonable price. Plumbing and electrical will be expensive though. I don’t know if prices will come down, but my pool contractor told me to wait a year, because he thinks they will. I’m not so sure about materal prices, with gas prices likely to go up, so I’m buying materials sooner than later.

I think it’s good to draw up plans yourself because it helps you to think through how the layouts will work for you and what things are important. You could also engage an architect, but be careful that he doesnt start moving things around too much, because that could really impact the construction pice.

I think you could camp out upstairs while the construction is being done, but it will be tough. You will need to plastic the stairs off to keep the demo dust from comng into the rooms. You won’t have a kitchen for months. Sometimes the water will be turned off. There will be no privacy, but when the workers are there, progress is being made. I’ve been through this, but I didn’t have kids, so I don’t have that perspective.

I like the more open floor plan, but I think the kitchen table is in the way of the flow from the living room to the kitchen.

Here is an alternate proposed layout. This creates a closer connection between kitchen and dining room. It also creates what are essentially two sides of the home. The right L (dining, sitting, library) being formal / clean space. And the left L (kitchen, family, playroom/bedroom) being the informal side. This required beam is roughly equal in size.

I like it

Louis, I am not sure what alternative plan you are recommending. Thanks for your thoughts. A large expansion? Surely the home can be improved.

Renovating right now is neither easy nor cheap. We are going into week 5 of what was to have been a six week master bath renovation - quoted at $75k in a LCOL area. We'll be lucky to finish by Thanksgiving and who knows what the final bill will be.

It took the electrical inspector a full week to get here for the rough-in inspection, and now he is requiring us to install a brand new fire detection system in the whole house, even though those areas weren't touched.

We don't want the system because the blinking lights keep me awake. Even our old one was set off by the self-cleaning oven. So after the final inspection we will have to hire someone else to come in and disable it.

Then there are the building hiccups. Our plumber out his foot through our kitchen ceiling! I can't imagine doing this with four small children in the house.

What do you actually like about this house? It doesn’t seem like much, if you are wanting to spend hundreds of thousands to ”fix” a lot of things that do not need to be fixed.

Really??? None of us knows what the original looks like, what dt516’s finances are, or what it would actually cost in his/her area.

Emily I believe this is the original layout.

That’s about it, but I mean we have no idea about the layout or condition of the original kitchen, for those who claim that there wouldn’t be enough of an improvement.

Thansk emily. The entire house has not been updated in probably 30-40 years. The intent on purchase was to ultimately fix it up.

So in our renovation we made the house better than it was but not perfect. We knew we would eventually move and we did. I don’t regret any of it but our project cost $150k all in so it was an easy decision.

I think your most recent plan is better than the first one. As a family of five it would have worked great for us. Most of our time would have been on the family side and for bigger events we would have spilled into the other side. In this new plan the cost of changing the kitchen and moving it is the big dealbreaker. I would find out what that will cost.

I don’t understand some of the responses. The OP clearly stated she wants a private dining room for entertaiing. I am going to guess she also doesnt like the multitude of rooms and closed spaces.

In her drawings, she is ONLY moving the kitchen over and removing some walls, some of which may be load bearing. She is otherwise reappropriating existing spaces. That’s all. She is not changing the bathrooms, the play area, garage, mud room, foyer, front door. She is not messing with the upstairs. She is not adding windows. She is merely trying to improve that end of her house. I see nothing wrong with this. This is clearly a large house and she wants to make it better. People renovate to improve their homes all the time! That’s the point of these forums.

Last year, I moved a kitchen forward, by about 15 feet. Some windows changed, the space the kitchen formerly inhabited became new mud, walk in closet, laundry. There was ONE load bearing wall, most of it is gone but we do have a support post I had to design around. The expense to be rid of it wasn't worth it.

We did one very small master bath. ...........

The "kaching"? about 400k with all the flooring, cabinets apps, lighting, counters, and allllll included.

The ugly little 400 k house is now going to command about 850k, due to great location for empty nesters and fabulous kitchen.

You will never just spend what you think YOU WILL SPEND.

AND...... we did this with no homeowner living there. No kids, no dog.......all ours. It took sixteen very WELL planned weeks, and it took another nine to get the refrigerator.

Don't live in a dream world of $$$$.

I like the new layout lots better! kitchen could use tweaking - i’d want a prep sink in island so you have a better work triangle, and i don’t love the oven location. but i like that it has room for a full table not banquet, and connected family area. formal dining is also much closer, and i don’t understand the butlers pantry so happy to see it go.

i think we can safely assume that OP has done due diligence on cost and worth it for her. While one could spend 500k on this you certainly don’t have to… at least in my vhcol area 600k will buy you a second story. i could not imagine paying 500k for the above plan (assuming not super high end finishings of course).

I have only gone through two "forever" homes so far, and I am not in one now.

All these floor plan alternative would most likely be easier to evaluate if each one had a realistic construction cost estimate attached to it.

To Verbo those who are asking about / speculating about costs:

- Cabinets are 30K - 45K. These were priced in the various layouts and across a multitude and range of suppliers from the 'lower end' to the highest end fully custom. Oh, except the stupid custom that was $169K. Yes, $169K.

- The beam, steel plated LVL is $3,000 including the required steel support columns.

- The tile is 600sqft X pick your #, but we intend to spend $4-6sqft.

- The sliding door we hope to install is $4,000.

- We own the subzeros, dishwashers, ovens, and faucets.

- The plumbing in the plan where the kitchen is closer to the dining room requires less plumbing as the sink is at the existing location - thougth we need to split for 2 sinks. So there will be some minor expense on that.

- The range of quoted pricing for the labor in the second suggested plan which was our original intent ranges from $62K - $109K across half a dozen local contractors. Probably the busiest and most reputable being the $62K estimate.

So, all in with countertops I'd expect the project to run to $125K give or take $10-20K. Will it be $150K, it's possible of course. If we renovate the rest of the first floor, it would then be mostly cosmetic vs. structural. An upstairs extension, down the line will likely cost $300-350K. So, all in probably $600K to redo the entire first floor and expand the upstairs in our high cost area.

We are locked into a 2.5% mortgage and current market rates are 7% which makes moving unlikely unless there is a steal of deal. Unlikey. Our block is one of the most desirable in the neighborhood.

So now the question becomes how to renovate in the best possible way. How to optimize the floor plan etc.

Materials are about 1/3 of the overall costs in a remodel. In a high change remodel, the materials are even less of a fraction of the labor. The materials quotes that you have gotten seem to be low compared to national averages, and standard industry guidelines. I wish you luck, but I don't think you have anyone experienced guiding the project specifications.

The materials quotes are direct from a plethora of suppliers and contractors. They are correct. Not included was some sheetrock, insulation, some wood for minor framing and paint.

125K is pretty optimistic for moving a whole kitchen. Just a plain kitchen remodel can easily spend that. Has your architect actually drawn up any real plans for this, to get hard numbers? You will need plans to file for the permits. If you are trying to crowd source this, instead of having a paid professional, that is going to backfire on you with impractical suggestions.

I absolutely think you can do this. I do think it will cost more it can be done. We hired a structural engineer but it was my lawyer husband who stood there with the engineer and suggested the solution that worked. It was my husband who drew up the plans and the engineer who said yes great idea. Maybe he was actually destined for another job! We did have a GC who managed the trades but we went and chose all the items and sourced everything successfully. I suspect your costs will be a bit higher but I could see it working. I don’t recall where you are located?

Crepe Myrtle - thanks for the thoughts. If we opt for the second plan which I think I will add to the original post, it is not actually moving the entire kitchen. The kitchen is in the same spot. There would be some additional electical and minor plumbing.

So, we reconfigured our plan and have now priced it out with a dozen contractors and have our engineering drawings in place etc. We think this is a good plan as it creates an open kitchen right by the playroom and leaves us with a generous formal dining room.

Anyhow, we currently have 12' sliding doors in the dinette room next to the kitchen. They need to be replaced. We like having the wall of glass. However, the aisles in the kitchen by the range and peninusla side are only 38" wide. If we push the kitchen a bit into the dinette and reduce the size of the doors to say 8' slider then we would have 4' aisles around the kitchen.

We are conflicted.

Island seems poorly placed.

Among the oddities, here, it is very strange to have the half bath serving the multi purpose room instead of the full bath, which is serving the hallway. The two should be swapped. The kitchen is not laid out well, and the island is a big obstacle to it's use. The dining room is one of the least used spaces in any home, yet it has some of the most space dedicated to it. It doesn't pull it's weight as a cost to create, or use.

There is too much "no" in that plan to ever move forward with. Are you working with an architect? Have you read, The Not So Big House? Both of those things should happen. The book before the pro.

Yes, I've read the Not So Big House. In fact, two in that series. This home follows in-line with that philosophy. We differ in that our formal dining room gets used weekly and we have lots of family and guests. We are happy with this size.

You are correct about the bathrooms. We intend to swap the shower bath into the multipurpose room for guests but we aren't tackling that expense at this point.

Thanks PPF, should have done that first.

Yes, we have an architect.

Thanks for the thoughts on island WestCoast Hopeful. We cut down the size to be more manageable for the space. Though in practice the kitchen could do without an island altogether, we like having it there for the landing from the fridge and various tasks. It also holds the microwave drawer. We have a similar island in our current kitchen and like it.

We also decided on a curved countertop most likely in order to avoid hitting the doors and will go for the 12' foot slider in the end. Not sure if that's a more date look, but it works.

What about making a longer island and no peninsula?

WestCoast Helpful.

That's good thinking. And we actually started off in that direction as you can see from the below attachement. But then we just took all those same cabinets and shifted them over to the peninsula. This enabled all the seating to be in the dinette area instead of either in front of the fridge or on the opposite side in the work zone.

Island is way better. Dining table doesn’t need to be same direction.

Is this for a kosher kitchen?

In your version with the small island you don't have enough room in the aisles for the island. I'm sorry but too much of it seems poor design and more like a remuddle versus improving the layout. :(

I understand you need the large dining room, but do you really want it off in a corner away from the main public rooms?

Also do you need seats at an island and a separate breakfast room?

And why are the two seating areas in the house smaller than the dining room?

WestCoast Hopeful - it's not that the seats need to be in the same direction, we just felt that the seats are better off outside the core kitchen area than inside of it.

cpartist - you get the prize. Yes it is. The dairy/breakfast sink is in the peninsula and the main workhorse/meat sink is under the window. Besides for your opinion about the aisles, what else strikes you as being problematic here?

Thanks

I suppose I’m biased because our island is also a major workspace but it’s great. I love kids at the island while I cook or friends relaxing while I putter away. Dining is nearby and we eat there daily.

WestCoast Hopeful, I hear you. We originally aimed for a similar setup - which is the more popular approach. But, my FIL has a similar U shaped kitchen with seating in this way and it's great for guests to be able to interact while the person is working in the kitchen.

I realized i was showing the wrong dimensions since the range was incorrect model and deeper. With the correct version the short end aisles are 40".

Person working constantly has back to guests.

I don't mind the U - it's just that there doesn't really seem to be room for an island with that set up. If you are planning on filling a 25' dining room it would seem that you need space for people to maneuver in the kitchen, so 4' aisles all around. The way you have it set up now it's going to be crowded. People will be sitting at the small island blocking the main pathway and opening of fridge. The new revision without seating is better, but aisles are still cramped? I think it would work best with a small kitchen cart type island in middle. I also like prepping in front of a window if there's no island, so I'd enlarge the window a bit and put the meat sink on the right half of it. Other sink you can prep on penninsula.

Peninsula should go. !! It's one or the other, and the whole plan is a bit weird.....

Here is another option. If we do a corner sink for the dairy side this puts some more space in the kitchen with 4' aisles all around and creates a long empty run of countertop on the peninsula. I understand some don't like corner sinks but I grew up with 2 and the workhorse sink is under the window.

Jan - not sure why you think that. Perhaps you might substantiate.

Corner sink is very bad. Just have one sink if you are set on the small island and peninsula

cpartist - you get the prize. Yes it is. The dairy/breakfast sink is in the peninsula and the main workhorse/meat sink is under the window. Besides for your opinion about the aisles, what else strikes you as being problematic here?

Thanks

Lol. That explains the large dining room and table, too. :D

So the meat sink requires more space for prep too?

Will you have others helping in the kitchen with prep, cleanup, etc?

Corner sink is very bad. Just have one sink if you are set on the small island and peninsula

In a kosher kitchen, two sinks are really needed. One for meat and one for dairy. It's also why the OP has two dishwashers.

Did you tell us why you can't move the kitchen to the upper right handside above the garage?

No corner sinks.

I'm still a bit confused. Which is the actual layout as it is now before doing anything? Post that with measurements and if you know, which are load bearing walls.

Missed the kosher part!

cpartist - here is the existing floor plan with arrows notating the bearing walls.

Moving the kitchen over to the den would entail a much greater expense. We also wanted a formal dining room which it wasn't clear where that would go. The garage would have worked (we don't really need it and many here have repurposed for living space). But that's another expense vs. repurposing existing space.

I would say yes the meat sink would require more space for prep. It's a one cook household but two probably for cleaning at times.

Thanks for your thoughts and help