Well, the real thing that would fix the isolation of the room the left from those on the right is moving your stairs. Without knowing your upstairs layout, it would be difficult to provide serious alternative options, but, for example, if you were to move them towards the front of the house and run them along the left wall of the foyer like this:

{{gwi:2142056}}

Boom, all the living areas would be connected. I would suggest putting the office in the bottom right corner, the kitchen in the top left so you can walk into directly from the garage in to the kitchen with groceries, put the dining where the stairs are now, and the living in the top right corner.

Where does your best light come from? You'd probably want it in your kitchen rather than your office. So consider that.

I should have been more explicit. We are open to moving things around except the stairs and living room. =( Both would be too cost prohibitive. The living room has no plumbing around it at all, so it would require significant work to run plumbing there.

Here's the layout of our current original floor plan:
{{gwi:2142057}}

The elevation differences between our front entrance and ground floor poses a challenge. Same for the back door. Our backyard (top of layout) faces south, so we get lots of sunshine from that direction. Our front door's on the north side and is very shaded.

Key drivers for our reno are:

- to open up our kitchen / dining area so we can all be in the same space without running into each other while we cook. Right now we are stepping over toys and maneuvering around kids in our kitchen.
- add much needed counter space to our kitchen
- get rid of the narrow hallway leading to kitchen (it's a waste of much needed space right now)
- being able to host family dinners with seating for 10-12

For the flow between spaces and outside, I would prefer the den/kid office in the front of the house. It could be open or closed off with pocket doors. I would then flip the kitchen so you have the kitchen on the left closer to the living room. You can maybe then keep the location of your current slider in the new dining area. Here is what I mean - first with a closed off den and you can also add a pantry in this scenario:

{{gwi:2142058}}

Or if you wanted the den area more open:

{{gwi:2142059}}

I assume in the previous thread you explained why you're doing this much renovation rather than a move.

Anyway, I don't see how you will ever have any kind of a flow with the LR so distant from the DR, and the LR door opening into the side of a staircase.

So, I would take aokat's last plan a step further.

Make the entire right side of the house one big open space. No powder room. No coat closet. Just the stair wall and maybe give yourself a short entry wall. Now you have room to put together all the rooms that should flow into each other: kitchen, dining, living room. It's what everybody normally understands by open concept.

Now, put the powder room where the piano is in the current LR diagram. You are already adding a powder room, so I don't see how that increases cost. In the lower right of that room, add a closet or storage unit the length of the new powder room wall. This is to make a clean symmetrical passage into the remaining LR space, which is now, ta da, your den/office.

The den/office is the only room whose function does not need to flow from any other main room, yet all your plans plunk it right in the middle of the action while trying vainly to wall it off.

What's the point of that tiny office? Do you really need or want it? Unless you have a spouse who needs to work from home (and wants the office right there by all the noise of the family level?!?) and you really know you'd use that dedicated office space, I'd rip it out and dedicate that "office" space to the family spaces, along the lines of your Option 3. With kids your kids' ages, you have a mighty lot of years left with kids under foot and noisy 24/7, especially in the kitchen and family room areas, so I would not want my home office near there! If you just need a desk nook for bill paying or whatever, then do that, but don't dedicate all that square footage to it.

I, personally, would take Option 3 and play around with it. I'd not do a large built in desk in that family/couch area. If you want the desk in there, just put in a real desk. Unless you want a desk right near your kitchen and so want the continuity of having matching cabinetry, then leaving the desk out and making all that space more functional for the kitchen and/or living spaces. Versatility is good.

oooh, I like aokat's ideas.

How about take aokat's idea but rotate the island 90 degrees so that the seating area faces the front door? That'd eliminate the back-to-back seating and provide a more social "flow" for people wandering to the kitchen from the front door/living/den areas to wander up to the seating at the island.

FWIW, I hate french doors because you never open both of them (not with bugs, kids, and dogs), so I don't like to give up all that floor space and potential counter space for double doors. I went with 36" doors instead, but added lots of windows for light. :)

szruns, I do work from home sometimes. Plan is to convert our guestroom upstairs to our adult office. We hardly ever have guests staying over, so we'd actually be putting the room into regular use as our office.

The office/den on the main floor is more a space for the kids to do their homework, crafts, store their toys. I should have called this the kids work/play room in our floorplan instead. Our current dining room is essentially being used as the kids room. Our dining table is covered with their crafts & "work". We've also got a train set, dump truck, ... you get the picture.

I'm hoping a kids den with pocket doors will enable them to still hang out nearby and enable me to supervise their homework while I cook / clean up. Pocket doors allow us to contain and hide their mess when we've got company for dinner.

Unless I'm missing something I don't think we have the space to rotate the kitchen island and still have the dining table at 90 degrees. I've made a note of your point re: french doors. I definitely want a bug screen so I can keep the door open for ventilation if needed.

I also like Hydragea's point about more light in the kitchen vs. den.

aokat, I'm going through the measurements for your layout suggestion to see if we can fit everything in within our space. We've only considered kitchen along the exterior walls so that our rangehood can vent out to an exterior wall. But your suggestion of moving it beside the stairs may actually result in better layout of that whole section. I'll need to ponder over this one a bit.

marcolo, we're in an area we love and don't want to deal with moving to another house, hence the reno. Agree with your logic that an office can be set off from the rest of the living areas. Your suggestion would be perfect if we needed a functioning office on the main floor. I failed to be clear that the main floor office/den is really meant to be a kids play / work area. A space for them to hang out in, close enough for me to supervise yet keep them out of my way. Idea for small couch was for us to cozy up and read books. Pocket doors so I can contain and hide their mess when needed.

FWIW, I have bar chairs backing up to dining chairs . . and I am pretty sure I allowed 52+ inches between the bar and the table. You need a lot of clearance for chairs back to back! 60+ inches would be better.

i personally like layout 3. with small kids they could be chillin on the sofa and you can be basically in the room with them. plus the dining table across from the island makes sense to me and it feels open.
with the dining table right there you can always choose to forgo stools at the island if space feels tight so that gives you options.

aokat15's first. While kids are small, the study area is a playroom, later it could be a two child study or a tv room. I also like the kitchen layout and the position of the kitchen in the house a whole lot better.

I like aokats recommendation as having counter stools and the dining table close by will allow you to ditch the stools when you decide you need more walkway space. His plans dispense with the office though...
It appears that there is no entry directly from the garage into the house, even if it looked like a hidden panel in the entry hall I would prefer not to have to walk outside every time I came home with the groceries. If the garage is on a higher or lower elevation I would consider a dumbwaiter for the groceries.
I think that you can integrate all of the downstairs but that you will need to carefully consider the use of the materials around the staircase. If you build the staircase with solid walls all the way around and solid risers in the steps then the living room will be isolated. If it's possible, I would try to add glass walls around the staircase and either no risers or clear risers on the stairs that way the light will travel all the way across the downstairs area and even though physically separate you'll be able to see the rooms-they will be visually integrated.

Okay, so I did hear you about the cost of moving stairs, but as I looked at your goals more, doing that one very expensive thing really does give you everything else you wanted.

It makes me wonder if, for all that moving stairs is expensive, in this particular case, it would be worth it. So I sat down and tried to figure out how to make up that money (or enough of it to make moving the stairs feasible) by changing as little else as possible. You were moving so many walls in other plans, creating doors, etc., I wonder if simplifying your other efforts so you can put the money you were going to spend on those changes towards moving the stairs isn't more the answer.

I kept the kitchen in the same place (easier/cheaper for plumbing efforts, the window is already the right height be over the counter, the left wall needs only to be shortened, not moved), I left the living room (the top left room) virtually untouched, I left the bottom right room virtually untouched, I left the two big walls around the closet area untouched, and though I included a natural space for a half bath to be added later or by a future buyer, I didn't add it now.

{{gwi:2142060}}

The counter is meant to die into the pantry like this:

1) This plan opens up your kitchen/dining area so you can be in the same space without running into each other. Also the kitchen aisle is so wide that you will all be able to easily pass each other.

2) The kitchen naturally gains counter when it no longer has to house the seating (due to the dining room being so open and accessible right there).

3) It gets rid of the narrow hallway.

4) It gives you such a large dining room (larger than any of the options without moving the stairs) that you can seat 10 easily, 12 with a bit of squishing.

5) In general, the rooms you end up with are so much larger and more open to each other, and all your main living spaces are taking advantage of the nice light in the back of the house.

I really think this will add more value to the house (and appeal to more buyers) than having a tightly-spaced open layout on one side of the house and a lone large space isolated on the other side of the house. That would appeal to neither the open layout appreciatists or the traditional closed layout appreciatists, and it's just sort of weird?

I would really be interested to see quotes for stairs-not-moved-but-everything-else-is vs. stairs-moved-but-little-else-is.

This post was edited by Jillius on Tue, Dec 9, 14 at 13:53

Could you post pictures of your stairs as they are now? Perhaps a modification -- a turn at the bottom or converting them to floating stairs could make the walk from the kitchen to living room a bit more direct.

Thank you for all the feedback!!!

Jillius, I love your suggestions (I've visited homes with stairs in the front exactly as you have laid it out). It would make our home awesome. Unfortunately, I doubt our budget would enable us to move the stairs as you've suggested. It would require moving 2 sets of stairs (we have a basement as well), reconfiguring our 2nd floor (our master bedroom closet & ensuite are above the area of the new stairs location) and relocating two bathrooms & plumbing. Our house is actually raised, meaning our main floor is two steps higher than the porch areas right upon entering our house from either the front or back doors. Too many curveballs to deal with!

Regardless, I'm going to put your design in front of our GC to get an approximation of doable or not.

In preparation that ideal home layout will not be possible on our budget, I've taken into consideration the many fantastic suggestions and pointers from you fine gardenwebbers, and come up with this:

{{gwi:2142061}}

Jillius, I've taken elements from your design:

- keeping the kitchen location and making it U-shaped
- counter die into pantry idea

Szruns, based on this new layout, I should have 66" between counter edge and table edge (this is when I leave 24" between stair wall and table). Worst case, I can ditch the island stools as ardcp and practigal has pointed out.

Bmorepanic, I left the kitchen on the right so my hood can vent directly out on an exterior wall and so I can have more counterspace. =)

Practigal, you're right, we don't have a garage entrance to the home and have gotten used to not having it in the five years we've been living here. The stair wall currently has plumbing running up it to the kids' bath. We considered open riser staircase but it seems like a luxury we can forgo for other more essential things (better windows & doors, improved insulation).

My remaining uncertainties on our latest design:

1) Should we forgo the extra counterspace and put double pocket doors for the kids den? In our current layout, I won't be able to "see" them when they're in there working/playing

2) Should we layout the kitchen so that the range is aligned with the middle of the island? I've currently laid it out such that I won't need to move my existing window

3) Would you still recommend I put in a prep sink in current layout? If so, where along the counter should I put it?

4) The whole right wall of the kitchen doesn't feel right to me, but I can't pinpoint exactly what it is. Any suggestions/pointers on what I'm missing here?

Oof, yeah, moving two bathrooms is going to be a killer. Could you maybe post a floor plan of the second floor? Perhaps I can come up with a less disruptive (read: less expensive) location for the stairs.

Is the basement finished? If so, a layout for that would help too.

The prep sink in your new design should be in the counter between the cooktop and the pantry. There should be 4+ feet of counter between the cooktop and the prep sink (so you have enough room to do some real work), and there should be at least a foot (2 feet is better) between the prep sink so you can comfortably pull things out of the pantry and on to the counter there.

The reason for this prep sink existence/placement is that the counter between the cooktop and pantry is a good long stretch of counter -- room for lots of work, and it has a window to look out of! It would be a lovely place to prep.

However, think about how you work on a kitchen counter.

1) First you get food from either the pantry or the fridge and place the food on a stretch of counter that is roomy enough to work on. The counter can be as little as 30" to be useful as a work space, but mostly people aim for 4-5'.

2) Then you wash and chop/mix/blend/measure the food. Or even if the food doesn't need washing (I find this is common when I bake), your knives/measuring tools/bowls/fingers, etc. will need rinsing as you chop/blend/scrape/whisk etc.

So in general, your life is better if this mythical stretch of counter you have dropped all your food on has a sink to one side. Otherwise, you will have to pick up all your food again, carry it to a sink, and then either stay at a counter next to the sink (leaving the counter you started at unused for prepping and fairly pointless), or you wash everything at the sink and carry it back to your original counter while your washed food drips all over the floor and while you run into everybody else in the kitchen.

So you make sure you have a sink right there at the big counter where you want to work. No moving, no dripping, no traffic jams.

3) After you have finished chopping/blending/mixing up your food, you cook it using the cooktop or oven (or the microwave). So in general, your life would be EVEN better if your mythical stretch of counter has, in addition to the sink on one side, a stove on the other side.

Because if you have both a sink and cooktop flanking your roomy counter, from the time you drop your food on that one mythical roomy counter, you never have to move again till it's done cooking. You can prep the food using the sink and then cook on the stove all from right there. You never have to pick up all your stuff and move to a different counter elsewhere that has an amenity you don't have at yours. You have it all at yours!

Your not needing to move from your one stretch of counter also means that you will not be crossing the paths of anybody else using the kitchen, provided they have their own work station set-up like your perfect counter from which they also never have to move.

You already have a perfectly appointed counter like this between the big main sink and the cooktop. But even though the cook working there will never have to move, any other cook would have to enter that work zone to use the sink.

By adding a prep sink on the other side of stove, now you have two perfectly appointed counters for two people to work entirely separately without crossing paths and bugging each other. Voila!

You need an architect.

How about swapping the range and the sink? Put the range on that back wall "out of the way" and the sink in that long wall. That'd make the sink more accessible to all your work areas and fridge. If you did that, you could get away without a prep sink, I think. I do have one, though, and I really wanted one, but my kitchen is a bit larger.

FWIW, IME, architects suck at kitchen design. I paid two architects and a kitchen designer, and I still ended up coming up with 90% of the ideas and making 100% of the tough decisions. And, due to the waste of time with the first architect, I still ended up with a design people here roundly criticized. So, choose carefully if you use a pro . . .

Marcolo, I'd have to agree with Szruns. We paid an architect to come up with several designs, none of which proved useful. We recognize that some of it was our naivete in planning large scale renos. We didn't consult with a KD before finalizing plans. We also found out that there are more cost-effective alternatives to what architect suggested and the kitchen layout he suggested was actually not practical at all. We've come to terms that it was an unnecessary waste of our time & money.

So far, I've found gardenweb to be my most useful source of advice/feedback. (if gardenweb pops up on any of my search results, it's the first one I read). I think it's because gardenwebbers are people who have/are truly living the experience and sharing their knowledge based on it. And it comes across in the feedback given.

KD's often have visionary ideas. With a limited budget, I need to know what's truly necessary, what are nice to have, etc. I've just found the gardenweb feedback to consistently deliver good, if not better, results / feedback than from a KD or architect.

Jillius, here's our original (current) layout of basement:
{{gwi:2142063}}

And our 2nd floor:
{{gwi:2142064}}

Szruns, I'd really like a prep sink so we can have separate prep and clean up areas. I'll try adding a prep sink along counter between fridge and range as Jillius suggested.

You're not designing a kitchen. You're redesigning an entire floor of your house.

Deleted

This post was edited by Jillius on Wed, Dec 10, 14 at 15:10

If you go with the linear powder room, you need a pocket door, or the door to swing into your "hall" not into the PR.

But, I think I'd want my hall closet closer to the front door. I'd try to get the closet and PR swapped. I see you have a window you are working around, but I still think it is important to get the closet closer to the front door.

My favorite of these though, is the one that flops your kitchen against the stairs...

I keep going back to your original plan because the dining room seemed more open. I think the hall closet gets in the way and I removed it. I saw on one plan that you put it in the garage? I enlarged your bathroom and you could fit a small closet there unless you want the dining room more open to the hall. I removed pantry cabs in the dining room, opting instead for display/storage cabs. Then your dining room table can be centered on the front window. I am wondering if your table could be rotated 90 degrees. Then you could do a narrow buffet between the display cabs. You could widen and shorten the island, maybe 48 wide by 54 long and put two seats on the two sides.
I actually cut the playroom down to 6 feet wide and took out shelving on the side wall, added shelves to the wall opposite the window. You could do a small desk with shelves above, but I suspect as your children get older, they will study in their own rooms. Then you could use the playroom as a large pantry with a small desk with file cabs under window for everyday mail and bills.
That is a small entry table on the hall wall.
If you open the bathroom to the front hall, you could do a full closet along the side bathroom wall.

This post was edited by Karenseb on Wed, Dec 10, 14 at 13:29

I think karemseb's last layout looks great. As far as the separation of the living room, I'm one who appreciates some division of living spaces. I have a family room, then kitchen, then living room all in a row. I like being able to be in one of the living spaces and not hearing everything going o in the other. Completely wide-open floor plans don't do it for evone.

Looking your second floor, it actually seems as if the stairs right where I put them originally would work beautifully? It empties out right into the existing upstairs hallway, and you're only really moving some minor framing around (moving a closet and two doorways) to make it work, which is relatively cheap.

It leaves you with a big space upstairs where the stairs currently are -- the cheapest thing to do with that is just frame out some closets, so that's what I put. That would also work well in terms of needing to match the original floor when you fill in the floor in that area. It's less dire if there is a floor patch in a closet. But it's a lot of space -- you could other things with it if you were so inclined. One thing that would be REALLY nice and highly desirable to buyers is putting a laundry room there -- you already have plumbing there from the adjacent bathroom.

Where I put the stairs on the main floor:

{{gwi:2142066}}

Where it appears that would come up in the second floor:

{{gwi:2142068}}

In the basement, if that staircase was just directly under the one on the first floor, you'd be coming out into the cold room. But if you are okay with losing the cold room, that dumps you right out into a hallway too!

This post was edited by Jillius on Wed, Dec 10, 14 at 16:25

I think you plan to have the half bath under the master bath. Though it'll be more cost effective, since I hate my bath (window) near our patio, I thought I'd move it to the other corner and came up with 2 alternatives.

In both, coat closet is where you have it in your 1st and 2nd versions. There's a small closet in the bath hall. Play room has no walls, but a storage bench for the kids and a window seat for you. In the 2nd layout I have a banquet. So I guess, toys can go in those seat storage.

The first one

{{gwi:2142069}}

{{gwi:2142070}}

The other

{{gwi:2142071}}

{{gwi:2142072}}

The pantry looks a bit wierd, but I think by reworking the bath+pantry area something better may come out.

I'm not too sure of your dimensions, so not sure if everything works. But, maybe you can use an idea or two.

Hi all,

A quick update, I presented Jillius' stair-moving design to our GC yesterday. Initial estimate from him just to make openings, move two staircases, close up floors in old location was $25K min. Plus the rest of kitchen, bath, renos on top. And we'd still need to put in a new hidden support beams (I-beam) so our ceilings are flush through out the main floor. I'd been hoping we could forgo the I-beam and put those costs towards stair relocation. Moving the stairs is now out of question due to our budget. =(

We then moved to discussing a more do-able plan with GC. It looks like we're going to have to put in engineered support beams that can run 21ft (vs. initial plan of 16ft) in order to have the wide entrance into kitchen/dining/den area without a column placed in the middle of the area:

{{gwi:2142073}}

A few options we are considering:

A) Building a closet room into our garage. Our garage is at a lower elevation, so we'd still be able to park a sedan on the right side of garage underneath the closet. If we put in a garage entrace into house, we definitely won't be able to park two car in the garage anymore.

B) GC also suggested putting powder room into the garage area as well. This would give us a big open square for kitchen/dining/den however, we're unsure if that provides us much benefit unless we move the kitchen along the front of the house. Something I'm told is not ideal since kitchen should have quick access to backyard for summer BBQs, etc.

sena01, we'd prefer to keep our powder room and closet close to our front door because a frequent routine of ours involves: A. everyone goes pee before we put on jackets and leave the house, and B. wash your hands when you get home. I am looking at both your suggestions for the completely open square room option that GC has presented.

If the 21ft. beam ends up costing too much, we'll go back to Karenseb layout where we'll have a wall to "hide" a support column in.

Kirkhall, good point on flopping the powder room and closet so closet is closer to front door. Will definitely keep it in mind should put both powder room and closet into garage.

Renovations are EXHAUSTING! ... and we haven't even started the actual reno. I'm so very looking forward to the end result, whatever it ends up being!

AnW, compared to the major issues, my question is tiny. Why is the refrigerator so far from the sink? It was like that in my house and the first thing we did was move the fridge. If you are comfortable with a stretched out "work triangle" then it may not be an issue, but thought I'd mention it.

Thanks for taking the time to mention, Colorcrazy. We are planning to put a prep sink along the counter between the fridge and the range (Jullius' suggestion). I see that it didn't show up clearly in the layout rendering. It'll be right in front of the window along right wall of house.

I debated a long time whether to put the fridge on the outside or the oven & microwave cabinetry. In the end I went with microwave and oven on the inside so there's a counter right beside to place hot items on.

If we manage to control the reno budget well, I hope to have a steam oven on top of the microwave. Regardless, I'll still build the cabinets to house a 30" steam oven in preparation for whenever it may come.

Good idea to move the kids' study area/play area to the front of the house. Even with the stairs between the LR and kitchen/DR areas, this gives a better sense of connection than the plans I proposed earlier (Plan A above).

You could opt to open up parts of the staircase walls, like windows without glass, to connect these spaces even more. That way you won't have to move plumbing lines.

I made a tweak to your plan:
{{gwi:2142074}}

I opted for an L, not a U, eliminating one corner cabinet (never the best use of storage). That allowed me to lengthen the island and put a prep sink in it.

IIRC, your fridge is standard depth. That's why I'm suggesting a 30" depth along this wall: the fridge will look more built-in. Here's how to handle the extra depth either along the whole wall or just behind the range.

[

[Traditional Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by Sarasota Architects & Building Designers Clifford M. Scholz Architects Inc.

Moving the fridge and pantry also made room for the doors to the kid area to be centered on that wall, allowing a better flow of light between these two spaces. (IIRC, you said that the front of your house was fairly dark. Nnorth facing?)

The other plus is that in the blink-and-it's-here future when your kids are older and crave more privacy, they can move their zone to a basement rec room and you can tear down the walls separating this space from the kitchen/DR area and make it a larger gathering spot for family and friends.

The other tweak I made was to the powder room. I lengthened it and added an angled wall for the door. That increases storage and make the powder room seem as if it's opening into the foyer and not into the kitchen/DR. And maybe it will make it less likely that the toilet will be visible when the door is left partly open.

I got a bit confused about your measurement for the width of the kitchen/DR so I went back to the measurements you provided when I first worked on your plan.

Oops, I just saw that the column I thought was a pantry is an oven/steam oven column. That can be swapped although I'm not crazy about the lack of convenient landing space near these appliances. That may be why you did a U lay-out. Oh, well, perhaps my stab will spark additional ideas for you.