Help with floorplan / laundry & kitchen
We've lived in our house for almost seven years and love the neighborhood, etc -- except our floorplan is terrible, and we're really feeling the pain with two young kids. It's an early 90's Colonial.
We are looking to:
1) Move the laundry out of the hallway from the garage -- but where could it go? I would love it upstairs, but I'm not sure if that's possible without exorbitant costs. We really need a mudroom/drop zone off the garage b/c we park both cars in there. All the shoes and backpacks end up right in the middle of the kitchen, or I walk over to the dining room and drop stuff there.
2) Renovate the kitchen eventually. Since we imagine this will be super costly, we're hoping we can deal with the laundry now and at least gain some functionality. We are not attached to having a formal dining room, as long as we can sometimes fit 6 people in the kitchen. (For now, we've done paint, light fixtures and hardware).
We could spend about $30k on the laundry now and about $100k on the kitchen later. Or, if you tell me that's not nearly enough, we can wait longer on the kitchen. We plan to stay here as long as possible. We're in a medium cost of living area with a hot real estate market.
We've loved living here, but I think the builder/architect was perhaps drinking when they designed this place. Please help, and let me know if you need more photos or info! Thanks in advance.
Edited to say that the kitchen is no longer green, at least -- updated pics below :)
Comments (9)
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Comments (14)I love your idea photos! Your list looks a lot like mine did, minus the basement and the 4-season porch, which sounds lovely. I looked everywhere for floor plans, and I couldn't find anything in that square footage with 4 bedrooms upstairs and the kind of downstairs you are talking about (den/office nook, mudroom, walk in pantry,etc.). We can't do basements easily here, so that wasn't an option, but even breaking up the square footage between 2 floors, vs. 3 - all the plans I found were much larger than you are hoping to back into. It was so frustrating. I'm fine giving up space in certain spaces to allocate it where I want it, but things like a walk in pantry & mud room take up as much or more room than a bedroom can... so in essence you'll have a 5+ bedroom house, with an office nook and a large island kitchen (our house designer explained that the island alone was like adding another bedroom because of the aisle space required :)). So...You will be hard pressed to find that in a standard plan around 4000 sf. without a basement. We have 3 children as well, and all our family is out of town & will be staying in our home for holidays... so your basement I'm sure will be well used even for daily visits! Maybe you can have a smaller basement and add some square footage to the main floors since you use that more often? Maybe there is some plan out there, but I haven't seen it. Ron Brenner homes are super cute though. Going with a 1 1/2 story will give you a more cottagey look to your exterior. A pure 2 story plan stacked perfectly will look like a box or a rectangle ( found this out the hard way). It limits light and just isn't as appealing visually imo. But the problem with a 1 1/2 story and your list is that you want 4 bedrooms upstairs with bathrooms/closets & that will be tricky to get in 800-1200 sf. If you hire an architect though, and are willing to give up space elsewhere kitchen, living rooms, fewer bathrooms, small closets, small bedrooms, few hallways... it might be doable. Allison Ramsey has some really great plans though that utilize space better than any pre-designed plans I've seen before. I wish I'd found her site before we had our house designed! You might be able to glean some space-saving ideas from your upstairs areas especially. http://www.allisonramseyarchitect.com We are almost done with our build and it has been 2.5 years in the making. Maybe it's not too early to start planning? The pantry & mudroom areas are some of my favorite spots! Also the big island in the kitchen. Be prepared to have everyone try and talk you our of that island. But it functions as another table/workspace for so many things without eating in to my perimeter.counter space. And the porch. Don't give up on the porch. :)...See MoreNeed Help On FloorPlan Renovation
Comments (9)Dear Jennifer, I see you’re not getting any traction…Here is a partial floor plan based upon your field dimension supplied. It doesn’t look like your sketch…exactly. Your drawings don’t need to be pretty but you’ll need to supply all the information if you want to get others input. If you correct the dimensions shown you can get an accurate floor plan to work from. Then you should start to receive input. Once you have your floor plan you should space plan every possible layout option you can think of (like shown here) that meets or exceeds your needs established to make your home improvement project as successful as possible for as long as possible. Your home improvement project should retain its value and continue to pay you dividends long after you complete it. Demand Better Performance Joe Brandao Kitchen Performance Consultant...See MoreNeed help with kitchen/mudroom floorplan
Comments (11)Hi all. Thanks for all the responses so far. I'll try to respond as well as I can to all of them. mamagoose: - Thanks for the suggestions. The peninsula was my architect's idea and honestly I'm not a huge fan of it and would take it out. The idea of extending the wall between the laundry and kitchen is an interesting one. Buehl: - The layout I've posted is the current proposed layout for the complete gut renovation + addition we'd like to do. My original home's footprint are the dotted lines that are probably hard to see in the pic. - The total width of the kitchen + laundry room (including exterior walls) is 20' 3.5" - Length of the exterior laundry room wall is 11' 11" - Length of the exterior kitchen wall is approx 15' (sorry, don't have an exact measurement) - I'm willing to expand the kitchen as far into the middle area as necessary to optimize the layout - Sorry, when I said not to change the exterior walls, what I meant to say was that changing the actual footprint is not really an option (with the exception of perhaps the front porch area). However, all the windows and sliding doors can be reconfigured to whatever makes the most sense. If you have any ideas on how to "stack" the kitchen and mudroom, I'd be interesting in hearing them. lefty47: - interesting suggestion. I'll need to think about whether swapping the kitchen and dining room makes more sense. - I have no problem staring at my fridge. lol. - I will be hiring an interior designer. I just wanted to get some crowdsourced thoughts to chew on beforehand....See MoreSketchup Floor-plan & Initial Interior Design Sketch
Comments (39)Allison, just saw your thread as I haven't been here in a while but I think if you're four years out, wait until your about one year out as you said. Lot of talk here about "forever houses" and how most really aren't because life circumstances change, same is true here. Mrs. ARG and I have GC'ed three houses over 40 years and those worked out but we bought two other lots with the intention of building but for a variety of reaons, sold them. But that doesn't mean you can't be getting ready and learning about residential design, especially the intangible aspects of it. Here's a link on some good books to read https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3281434/book-suggestions Probably "Patterens of Home" is one of the better ones. And a thread on what makes for good house design https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3285825/what-makes-a-house-have-good-design As far as the arguement of "floorplan or no floor plan for the architect", every architect is different of course, but when that happens to me, it doesn't limit me as I'm looking at a floor plan more in DIAGRAMMITIC terms as oppposed to actual physical terms and asking question like "What do you like about this?". And then once I learn that, ask "Have you thought about this.....?" as I begin to freehand ideas. But if you have a plan, don't get too "stuck" on it and be open to other ideas. I've had clients that have said "But we've spent MONTHS on this", like the task is akin to washing a car with the more time spent on it, the better the result. Design doesn't work that way. As an example, here's an example of a client working diligently on a design(s) and what we (and I say "we" because it's always a participatory process) came up with. Client plans: And what we came up with: But of course, Mark and Jen (the owners) were great listeners and for this to work that's what you and your aerospace engineer husband needs to be. FWIW, here's his thread: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/5401415/stuck-with-floor-plan But the best of luck in your build. Exciting times ahead!!...See More
mph1322
11 months agolast modified: 11 months agoThank you for these comments! To answer a few questions/comments:
--There is indeed a powder room downstairs; it's under the staircase
--I do think kid 1's closet is sitting roughly above the current washer & dryer. Annoyingly, there's a column in the back corner of the closet that's about 17"x11". I believe it's some sort of HVAC return.
--We did paint, hardware and lighting in the kitchen several years ago. The green walls were from the previous owner and just awful :) Pics of current state below -- sorry, should've included these above.
cpartist
11 months agomph1322
11 months agosarahsaccount24
11 months agoWe have a relatively similar setup although the pantry doesn’t eat up most of our kitchen. We did move a W/D upstairs (converted a closet) and it was not super expensive at the time and very worth it. Our garage is not as deep of yours and it was previously built out as a laundry space. We moved the door all the way down and converted it to a mudroom. The garage is a little shallow but fits our minivan fine. Can you consider taking that? I am not sure you could get more than a one wall mudroom but if it flowed it should add function! pictures below.
We have a second W/D that we stacked here as well. You could stack yours and get a little space back.
mph1322 thanked sarahsaccount24sarahsaccount24
11 months agolast modified: 11 months agoHere is the layout. The bottom edge runs almost the entire length of the garage (there is a half bath on thr right of the door that spans the depth of the mudroom). So if you can park your cars in a shallower space you might be able to work something similar.
The rest of our first floor layout is nearly identical and this flows well from mudroom.
mph1322 thanked sarahsaccount24mph1322
11 months ago
la_la Girl