Our 1948 house had some quirks and also didn't have one bit of architectural elements (well, unless you consider the cedar shingled ceiling an element.) Since our homes are similar in age, I look forward to what others suggest; the talent here amazes me.

Do you like having the laundry near the kitchen? Have you considered creating a laundry closet near the bathrooms/bedroom instead?

Nope. Don't like the flow one bit. Take down the wall between the kitchen and family room so that you face in to prep and hang the view. Most city kitchens don't get a view and don't have the possibilities that this one does.

Why would you not extend the kitchen into the laundry room and wither incorporate the laundry or flip it in?

There is a beautiful example of a similar layout linked below. Her kitchen was already where your laundry room is, but you can see the amazing effect of taking down one wall.

You could hide your laundry in a deep closet along the current pantry (interior ) wall of your kitchen and then use the rest of the space to expand your kitchen.

You could add an entry alcove outside the back door if you live in a cold climate.

Here is a link that might be useful: cwalen's kitchen at the back of the house

I don't think that you would really gain much by moving the kitchen to the front of the house, at least not enough to justify the expense. I agree that combining the kitchen and laundry areas would give you a better kitchen. Knocking down the wall between the living room and kitchen would give you a more open feel, if that is something you like. If you are willing to consider a stackable front-loading washer/dryer arrangement, you would gain a bit more space as well.

Benjesbride, I have considered doing exactly that. The most logical place to move the w/d is to the location where the heating unit is currently located. To move the heating unit into the attic I've been quoted $6,000 and since the unit is not new, each contractor recommends a new unit with a new warranty and they are all quoting around $13,000...because the heater works just fine and I only use the heater about two months out of the year and because of the way many of the new washing machines work, I am also reluctant to put the washer so far away from the hot water heater. Also moving the w/d to this location would require a stack configuration which will be vigorously opposed by DH. However it still makes the most sense to me as I really dislike having the laundry in the kitchen area) especially taking up the prime real estate in the kitchen area). Even though costly it still might be the smartest thing to do.

Hollysprings I did not have a family room marked-did you mean removing the wall between the kitchen and the living room or the kitchen and the dining room? I am not sure what you meant by "face in to prep".

Scrappy25, that is likely the way I'm going to go. Thank you for the beautiful inspirational pictures! She made really excellent choices.

Cstr, thank you. It seems that the reviewers so far are in agreement that there is not much to be gained by moving the location of the kitchen-I really wanted to think through that possibility before foreclosing it.

I think Hollysprings might have meant that you could face into the living room while prepping so you can be part of whatever action is going on there instead of having your back to it. Easier for visiting and such. That is, if you decide to remove that wall.

How about putting w/d in the smaller closet, closest to the master bath, in the master bedroom? You have showers back there a fair distance away from the hot water tank. Don't know why you need to keep w/d close to it?

I agree that just removing the wall to the laundry room and incorporating that area into your new kitchen would be a great change and you won't have to deal with moving plumbing and electrical. Put that money toward the wall removal. You could even utilize the plumbing where the w/d is now for your sink lessening the cost of sink moving if you want and keep the stove in its current location. Then you could have more to spend on lovely cabinets and floors!

My immediate thought was that, if the laundry room is so quiet, the combined space of the laundry room + kitchen is then better suited to being a bedroom.

And the big office/bedroom in the front of the house (a larger space and a noisy area) is then better suited to being a kitchen. Especially since its long wall is what borders the living room. Can the wall between the big office/bedroom and the living room come down?

Here are some rough layouts that would be possible if that happened:

Since you do not want to remove any load bearing walls (opening kitchen to dining room) then I would 'embrace' that and put the laundry/pantry between the dining room and kitchen.

Sink under window (looking out over backyard) with range on the right and door to back on the left. The door opens against the fridge and you can use the space next to it as a pantry. The window overlooking the fence is now in the laundry room/pantry. Hope this helps :) {{!gwi}}From Kitchen plans

I edited my favorite of the layouts I made slightly -- I just added living room furniture so you can see how it'd all work together.

1) This layout creates a lot of privacy for the bedrooms. Now each has its own bathroom, none of the bedrooms share walls, and two of the three bedrooms are in the quieter back of the house where no one walking on the street can look in the window.

2) This layout would appeal to buyers. Since you said you might sell, that is definitely something keep in mind. The one-bath-per-bedroom thing is becoming a new standard, and we all know open layouts with big kitchen islands with seating is the thing now.

3) The open layout is also particularly nice here because it makes the quieter back of the house with the wall of windows the real focus. You can enjoy that view from the kitchen, dining, and living room now.

4) I didn't move any windows or any of the identified structural walls. I am just crossing my fingers that the big wall I did remove isn't structural.

5) You also gain a large front hall closet -- large enough that you can keep broom closet stuff in there as well.

6) What is the reason that you are considering moving the water heater? The location seems fine now - you'd just have to run new lines to it. Is that not less expensive than installing a new one?

An office near the front door makes sense if one has an at-home business, but the idea to move the kitchen to the office and kind of create almost a master suite/ split bedroom floor plan is really clever. Swapping the laundry and kitchen is probably a lot less expensive, though.

In our little 1100 sq ft house, finding a place to put the washer and dryer was our greatest challenge. I know it won't be to everyone's taste, but I'm attaching a picture of our main bathroom layout in case it spurs any other ideas for your laundry room (we decided to put the shower/tub combo in the master bath and there's a pocket door to separate the shower/toilet from the rest of the room...

Jill- You have some great ideas!

Just remember, most sofas are at least 36" deep (sometimes more). Your most recent plan might work better with a corner banquette, so you have more room for the living area.

I believe there is a door to the back left bedroom, in the bottom right corner of the room. It seems to 'back up' against the patio door, when open.

Why is your DH against stackables? If you washer has a built in heater I don't think the distance to the hot water tank is an issue.

Thank you. I actually had been estimating for a 3 ft. deep couch. My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of people tend to like sitting 6-8 feet from the TV. If the front of this couch is six feet from the wall, the back would be nine feet from the wall, placing the sitter's eyes right in the sweet spot in terms of distance from a TV hung on the wall. That leaves room for a five foot walkway behind the couch (the recommended width for a walkway behind dining room chairs), a three-foot-wide table, and a three-foot walkway between the table and the wall (where no walkway behind the chairs is needed).

9+5+3+3= the 20 ft. width of the room. It should work. Unless practical prefers sitting quite far from the TV. If that were the case, I think I'd reconfigure rather than do a banquette there. That far outside the kitchen, formal dining furniture makes more sense.

Okay. I still think that is too tight (especially with the sectional shown in the picture) and I would want to be at least 8' from the TV. This leaves space for a coffee table or ottoman and room to walk around it.

I was just pointing out that your sectional is about 18" deep as drawn. Then of course, there's the whole question of whether to have a sofa table for lamps, end tables or more can lights. I don't like can lights, so I would end up with a sofa table...using even more space.

It's interesting to see how people decorate their living rooms. It's so difficult to know how much space is a good 'general rule' :)

Ah. The sectional I drew was very very very rough and not to scale. When I draw furniture, it is almost exclusively done to help other people visualize the space and to satisfy my own concerns about walkways and traffic patterns to and from and past the kitchen. Furniture layout is something way better done in person and highly affected by what furniture is already owned by the family (the details of which are never included in theae posts), so I don't get that specific about it. The distance from the TV, for instance, is highly dependent on the size of the TV. Practigal may not even have a TV!

For my part, I was just satisfying myself that a horizontal plane where the short side of the sectional is and another horizontal plane where the south end of the table would create a natural, if not straight, walkway across the house. I was worried about how the entrances to the hallways on the opposite sides of the house do not line up, and I wanted to make sure it was possible to make sense of that. The furniture could be arranged dozens of ways to create those key planes. I just showed one way to do it.

I like the w/d location, benjesbride. As long as the w/d is nearer the bedrooms and main bathrooms where most laundry originates, that makes me happy. We had that arrangement in our last house and current home and it's so much easier.

I love Jillian's ideas but think it's just a tad too cramped for my taste. Especially because of there being so few windows in the living areas. It will be interested to see what practigal thinks about it.

Wow! Jillius you are amazing. I love the idea of a completely separate bed and bath not having a nice private guest room has been a big inconvenience and Benje's Bride bath with laundry is a really attractive idea as is being able to work in the kitchen and face the action as Funkycamper described is great I dislike being isolated in the kitchen while everyone else is participating in an event.

I like moving the kitchen to the front of the house. The current office is much larger than I would want the kitchen to be, so using some of the office space for something other than the kitchen is wonderful...but the wall between the living room and the current office is load bearing...I could put a door in it at some additional cost but removing it is not in my budget....which makes Lavender Lass's really direct advice/idea attractive.

Lavender, I have to confess that I have been trying to "embrace" the laundry for years now and it just such a demanding "lover."

DH's insistence on keeping the-have not needed a repair in 20-30 years-side-by-side Maytags, while understandable makes me slightly bonkers- it is not reasonable to design around these older machines. (Even if they do end up outliving us.) On some level I know that the week after all the work is done these hard working machines will have a spectacular fail. That aside, his insistence on having side by side w/d has to do with his three back surgeries so I really want to accommodate his request, and it is the only request he has made.

It is interesting to watch you furnish the living room-that is a really good idea- to figure out where that furniture will go, now, before I do anything. The walk-through nature of the rooms makes furniture size and placement tricky.

With all of your load-bearing walls, have you ascertained if the entire wall must stay or if only part of it is load-bearing? Often these walls can be reduced to just a section or a column (or a few sections), and that would give us more options.

Jillius My understanding is that I could (with some engineering work and more header beam) put a regular size door in the wall. My County's permit department is not known for consistent standards consistently applied, so I won't know for certain until I submit plans...

I think it will be worth it to hire a structural engineer. That's the first thing we did once we got a basic idea of the floor plan we wanted.

In my experience, though, it's best to draw what you want and ask them how to make it happen. Our engineer didn't really want to hash out the "what about this?" "what about that?" He's an engineer, not a designer.

You could draw up your two favorite plans (e.g. kitchen to the office and open the kitchen to the living room), he will crunch numbers on the structural requirements and with that info you can get some bids to best understand the price differences between the two plans.

Our drawings (that were permit-approved today, yay!) were reviewed by our structural engineer and and he 'put his stamp on them' before they were submitted to the county.

I'm sure the process is different everywhere, but I would be surprised if the structural requirements are up to the county to figure out.

All told, I think we've paid the engineer $250; we live in Portland, Oregon and our original structure was a MESS.

I agree very much with benjesbride -- our structural engineer cost about the same to identify the load-bearing stuff in our condo and to certify that the walls we wanted to move/take down were not structural.

For your project, in addition to the office wall, I'd also be interest how and in what ways the walls around the current kitchen and dining room could be reduced. Even if both rooms stayed in the same place, I can see several ways to easily incorporate washing machines among the bathrooms on the other side of the house, so if the kitchen could be opened up even just somewhat more to the dining and/or at all to the living room, then you wouldn't feel so isolated from the party in your kitchen. That would be a fine improvement as well.

Also, I find it a little suspect that every single interior wall on the right two thirds of your floor plan is load bearing. That is very very very unusual, and if it were my house, I'd want a professional to confirm that before I resigned myself to it.

Literally any of those walls coming down would something awesome -- opening the kitchen to the living room or the kitchen to the dining room or the office to the living room. The least exciting thing would be finding out you could take the foyer wall down, but even that would allow you install a hall closet where it was.

Surely ONE of these things must be a possibility.

In our experience, installing a beam to replace a load bearing wall was not nearly as expensive as we feared. Moving plumbing and waste lines ended up costing us more than our beam. The LVL to span a 12.5 ft. distance cost about $2,000 in materials. I know that steel beams for brick-on-block structures can cost a bit more, but I think that steel is only needed if there is a 2nd or 3rd level being supported. For an ordinary single level structure simply supporting a shingle roof, an LVL will do.

An engineer told me that it was load bearing and that I ought to be able to add a door without too much trouble. For wall removal I was quoted $20,000 to $30,000 which makes no sense as I was also told that it would take one expensive beam and two men two days to do it...same with the plumbing, even though it may be a one day job for two men-they are charging $5000 for the job= a time and materials rate of $500 per hour or easy 200% profit. My city has a corrupt building department and it seems like they require extra work just to see if you'll pay them off instead.. so their engineering requirements as published may or may not be what you finally end up delivering. The local paper writes about this and the "illegal" McMansions a lot but all I see is that the houses are getting bigger and bigger. Rant over. I will have to hire someone to do plans and engineering but I need to firm up my ideas before doing so. Many thanks for the ideas as they are great!

Wow, that is insane. Removing a load-bearing wall is usually more like $10,000.

I think those rates sound insanely high. Even the $10,000. Maybe this is regional but we have never paid anywhere near those rates for plumbing or wall removal. I would certainly get three estimates to get a true idea of costs before deciding how to proceed.

We bought two 12-foot LVLs at the local building supply place for $350 (yes, three-hundred-fifty). Took contractor (with my husband as a helper) about half a day to put it up and connect all the joists. Contractor had already spent a few hours prepping to get it ready to accept the beam. All told, I think taking out the wall cost under a couple grand. Totally worth it.

Are you sure these are all load bearing? The wall between dining room and kitchen and the wall between kitchen and living room?

I am NO expert, but isn't it usually one or the other...unless there was an addition and the dining room was added later?

Anyway...here is a possibility, if you can take out that wall. I was trying to create enough space for a closet in the entry and tucking in the laundry at the front of the house.

The kitchen is a bit of a walk through (not enough room for an island and seating at less than 12') but it does put sink and range on one side, with fridge and microwave (snack area) on the other.

Just another idea...and lots of light and backyard access through the dining room :) {{!gwi}}From Kitchen plans

Quoted from crcolling: "We bought two 12-foot LVLs at the local building supply place for $350 (yes, three-hundred-fifty). Took contractor (with my husband as a helper) about half a day to put it up and connect all the joists. Contractor had already spent a few hours prepping to get it ready to accept the beam. All told, I think taking out the wall cost under a couple grand. Totally worth it."

Thanks for that post. We did our wall removals DIY with help from a couple friends for some of the heavier lifting and I was thinking we only spent something like $400-500 extra for each of the wall removals. But everybody else was quoting so high, I thought I may be remembering wrong. Your prices ring true to me.

We've also done it with only about $50 or so in expenses in places where leaving a small partial wall and a small part of the upper wall, about 4-6" each, more like a big archway than a total wall removal, so the only cost was for the 2x4's needed to frame it in and any finishing work needed.

Thank you so much. Armed with a better concept of the kinds of prices that really ought to be paid will be very helpful. Now I just have to think through all of the advice that has been given to me and it's great advice. Thank you so much!

I just found something that might be helpful for you, practigal. It's detailed instructions in how to remove a load-bearing wall and how to replace it with a beam. It's considered a very do-able DIY project. Hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: How to install a Beam for a Load Bearing Wall

Thank you Funkycamper we'll be looking at this over the weekend!