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I posted this once before, but I didn’t get too much response. I really value the wisdom from here, so please offer any opinions.
I’m planning a renovation on a circa 1970 colonial. It has a spectacular view out back and too few rooms that take advantage of the view. Like many houses of this era, it has a too small family room, a too small kitchen and a living room that never gets used. It has a nice dining room, but it doesn’t take advantage of the view. Attached are two proposed renovation plans as well as the original floor plan. I’m interested in ANY opinions about the plusses and minuses of each plan. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
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...i like #2 better than existing and #1....
they're kinda hard to see.. for better comments...
*I like option one best. Only I would not move the fireplace, I'd get rid of the table and chairs in the family room, and not squeeze the office and laundry so much. If you must have eating surface in the family room, what about a small counter and some barstools ?I know it's nice to have two nice big gathering areas, but in real life, one is going to be used all the time, and one ignored. Why not put/leave all you real goodies in one large area, and make the other a bit less large. Use the space for the other imnportant things in life. Work and laundry. If you make the second area smaller, then it will seem all that more comfy for the times when it will be used. If you must have a fireplace in there, use a freestanding fireplace or something else that you don't have to devote so much space to.
*#2 is definitely better than #1... of course, this is excluding budgetary considerations...Two big reasons... # 2 keeps the utility functions of the house on one end, next to the garage. In #1 you would be parading through the family room with the groceries as you unload the car...also, the proximity of the laundry to the family room... you don't want to be hearing the washer and dryer running while you're trying to watch TV or relax.The other reason is that the kitchen in #2 is much more efficient. In #1 it is more of a hallway than a kitchen... lots of traffic, especially if you're entertaining... and the refrigerator, range, and sink are too far away from each other. Imagine lugging big pots full of hot water across that kitchen to drain the pasta.Looks like #2 might be simpler, also, at least from the aspect that it keeps the kitchen in the same place...less plumbing work to move all that stuff.
*Chuck -Is this your house? How do you live? (Or how does your client live?) Do you entertain? Do you serve formal dinners on the family china or do guests hang out in the kitchen to chat and watch the cook? Do you have Superbowl parties or cocktail parties? How many kids?#1 seems more appropriate for a casual, busy lifestyle. #2 seems more appropriate for a formal lifestyle.It would be hard for more than 2 people to use the kitchen at once in #2. And they would be more isolated from the rest of the house. Where could the kids sit to get help on their homework while mom or dad made dinner? Where would preschoolers eat their cereal (half of which ends up on the floor?) Even if the kids are grown, think resale value/grandkids. Maybe this could be addressed by pushing the kitchen wall back into the garage 2 or feet and then adding an "L" shaped bar across part of the kitchen? (An aside - would the laundry room door and the door to the garage hit each other?) I would find it difficult to seat very many people in the family room in #2. Would the entertainment center be against the outside wall? If not, where? If so, wouldn't you lose the view you're trying to take advantage of? What would the living rooom be used for? It's big - too big to be wasted space. And I do like the office(/guestroom) in #1. We use the office/guestroom in our home hourly.You could make the kitchen less of a walkway in #1 by putting a door between the kitchen and the dining room instead of an archway. The house I grew up in was laid out like that and it gave the dining room a nice formal feeling. Truthfully, though, we rarely used the dining room. We almost always ate at the kitchen bar, or at the table in the family room.I like Luka's ideas about #1. The counter with barstools would be great. The family room could be smaller and still be plenty big, giving you room for a bigger laundry room. Laundry rooms need counter space. Then maybe it could open to a hallway or something instead of opening into the family room.But Nick has a good point about moving all the kitchen plumbing/electrical, etc. Although I would think that the increased size of #2 would balance that cost increase out.
*Dang, Chuck, I seem to keep killing off your thread! OK everybody, I promise to keep quiet if others will offer Chuck their opinions on his floorplans.....Duct taping my fingers together,Lisa
*Lisa, You've raised some great questions. They'll hopefully spark some thought on my part that will help me make a choice. Here's some answers in the interest of getting more opinons from both you and others. It's my house. We entertain, sometimes formal, sometimes casual, but in either case, we've found it impossible to herd people from the kitchen to the living room. They just keep cramming into the kitchen even though it's small. Having them in there makes life hard for the cook. There's only room for a sofa in the family room, so that doesn't provide a place to herd people to even though it's right next to the kitchen. The existing family room is even a little small for my wife and I (it just us), but it's a 4 bedroom house and we're keenly consious about resale. A couple with three kids would want a larger family room. For what it's worth, we sort of lean toward option 2, except that it would be costly to build and seems to waste an awful lot of space. It leaves behind a huge living room (left side) and the mud room (between kitchen and garage on right side rear). These rooms have never found usefulness so far. I thought Nick made some good points about the proximity of the kitchen appliances to one another and the laundry adjacent to the family room (though I'd hoped some good insulation could mitigate that). Plumbing's not a biggie; it's all accessible from below and easily re-routed. Keep those thoughts coming!!!PS I don't think you're killing the thread, maybe there's just no holy grail here!
*chuck... from your last description.. i like #2 even more..you can circulate all around the center without going thru the kitchen.. yet the kitchen is convenient to the social areas..there are no dead ends.. any group trapped in one romm can go either clockwise or CCW for circulation...great for entertaining .. either formally or informally...also.. we live out of our cars.. sad to say.. but everything in your family life comes or goes thru that garage....the #2 access is better without dumping people into the formal areas...post some easier dwgs in .jpg if you want more comments...it's easier for people to view them...
*Chuck,I modified Option 2 a little. See if any of this helps or hinders. Moving that little bath helped open things up a bit (you did say you had access to and could move plumbing as needed) and having the laundry do double duty can't hurt, either. Never seems to be enough room for all the groceries and paper goods and what not that you need to run a household. Sticking all that stuff in the kitchen cabinets doesn't work well for many of my customers.The view as you enter the foyer now encompasses part of the family room and the dining room and the view out the back that you value so much. The foyer is sort of a welcome spot with a visual invitation to come on in to the rest of the house.I put the office from option 1 back into the picture, just off the foyer to the left. I can only speak from my experience with my own office, similarly situated. Easy access from the front door, especially if you have someone visit who doesn't really need to go through your home just to get to the office.Had to take some from the 'Living Room" to do that but there is still enough left to have a den which can be private or for intimate gatherings or meetings where you don't want or need the formality of the office or the wide open hominess of the family room. Still has a great view and a spill over area on the screened porch. An extra wide doorway, with your choice of doors (3'0" or even 4'0") or perhaps pocket doors, allow the den to be opened up to the family room for those larger gatherings of friends. You could still call it a formal "Living Room" if you want and furnish it appropriately.You can put various built-ins throughout the entire area for various reasons and functions without taking from the overall openness of the structure. Fireplaces and a wetbar as well as options to rearrange the entertainment center if needed could be planned. If you have the option of raising the ceiling height throughout the back portion of the house you might want to consider that. It would contribute to a more open feeling and you don't have to have much to do that.That divider between the kitchen and dining room could be wide enough to seat several, facing the kitchen, and could be single or split height along its length (wider, too). No upper cabinets there to block the view.Some designers are now minimizing the amount of upper cabinets in their kitchen offerings. This gives the room a more open feeling. Another reason to have a pantry.Just my 2 cents.
*...put the kitchen where the dining room is presently. If the windows on the front of the house are too low for cabinetry, then make that front part of the room a breakfast area--maybe put a bay window on the front of the house there. Is the wall between the old kitchen and dining room load bearing, or not? In either case, open it up as much as possible--maybe a kitchen island serving as the base for a colonnade would be a dressier way to visually separate these rooms. Then the family room and the old kitchen could be opened up and used as a larger, more flexible family/dining area.
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I posted this once before, but I didn't get too much response. I really value the wisdom from here, so please offer any opinions.
I'm planning a renovation on a circa 1970 colonial. It has a spectacular view out back and too few rooms that take advantage of the view. Like many houses of this era, it has a too small family room, a too small kitchen and a living room that never gets used. It has a nice dining room, but it doesn't take advantage of the view. Attached are two proposed renovation plans as well as the original floor plan. I'm interested in ANY opinions about the plusses and minuses of each plan. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.