It would help if you could tell us what about the flow in the house that you don't like. And why the bedroom needs to be more open--what do you need that to accomplish?

To be honest, looking at the floor plan, my first thought was not, "improve the flow," but rather,"Oh, dear, the kitchen!" so that would be where my main focus would be.

You may have already done this, but if you haven't, try sitting down and writing out the reasons you want to make changes to the floorplan.

Stuff like, "We need to make it easier to get from the front door to the back door." "There's no good wall in the living room for a TV." "We'd never use the dining room, so we want to use that space for a family room."

I guess I'm struggling with the fact that you want to use the bedroom as a guest room and home office, but still want to "open" it up to the rest of the house. It would seem to me that a guest room and/or home office would work best not opened up to the rest of the house, so I'll admit I'm puzzled as to what you want to achieve.

Thanks for your helpful questions- they are helping me clarify what I really want.

By "flow" I mean the ability to connect each room...to make it possible to walk in a circle through the first floor. I think I may be used to Colonials with a center hallway?

I am being contradictory- I would like to keep the privacy of the "bedroom," so that it can be used as a guest room, but also make it more a part of our daily life, perhaps by putting a door between it and the dining room. Right now it feels like we live on one side of the house- making the bedroom a proper study (and occasional guestroom) may remedy that! That side of the house also gets great light, so by "open it up" I mean allowing some of that light to get into the dining room and kitchen.

The current layout doesn't have any major problems like the ones you suggest. It just feels like we live on one side of the house.

The kitchen is first on our list. We definitely want to improve access/visibility to the yard, and will probably move the bathroom where the stove currently is. I just want to make sure I am not missing an opportunity by not exploring some moving of walls, deletion of walls or addition of doors!

Thanks for your interest!

Not sure I like the idea of opening up the bedroom.

If you moved the bathroom to where the stove is you could connect i to the bedroom, creating a path from the bedroom to the kitchen. The catch is bathrooms with two doors can be dangerous....when people think they are alone they forget to close one of the doors and then someone walks into the bedroom and...

You could put big glass French doors from the dining room to the bedroom to let light through...but do you want guest to see your unmade bed as they eat, or for early risers having breakfast to disturb late risers? If you do this, add a curtain. Or you could add high up frosted "half windows" to let light through without letting people see into the bedroom.

How big is the house--do you need the bedroom? You could play with the space a lot of you took back the bedroom space entirely, turning part of it into a bathroom (or mudroom? not sure where the door on the right leads?) and opening the rest to the kitchen.

We have a bedroom with a door off the dining room, though, and it's not something I'd create intentionally (and door off the kitchen is even worse, IMO--we avoided houses with that set up, and also with Jack and Jill bathrooms). I think you need to make a more fundamental decision about preserving the bedroom use of that space--if it's not critical for either your use or for home value, then you could create an office or study with a very different relationship to the kitchen/dining area than I would give a bedroom (and that, in turn, would influence where I'd move the bathroom). Agreed with camlan that my first reaction was to the kitchen layout, so I might start there and figure out what kinds of outside-the-box solutions would fix that and connect it to the backyard, and see where that leads you.

Thanks for clarifying what you mean by flow.

I'm not sure that in this house, being able to walk through all the rooms in a circle would be a plus.

You have the kitchen, dining and living rooms all opening off each other. They are the rooms comprise the main living area, and it makes sense that they all flow into one another.

A study/home office/guest room, on the other hand, isn't main living space. It tends to be a quiet space, where people concentrate on reading or working, or a guest is asleep.

To make a traffic analogy, the kitchen, living and dining rooms are like main streets, where people are coming and going--in your house, all these rooms have doors to the outside, and open onto two other rooms or one other room and the great outdoors. In contrast, the study should be like a cul-de-sac, an ending point, one that is a little quieter and less busy than a main street.

For your house, I'd consider closing the current bedroom door up and moving it to open into the dining room, if it will only be used as a study/guest room and not as a permanent bedroom. I thought of french doors, but the glass transmits a lot of sound, and doors that swing open limit furniture placement. I'd do pocket doors, double doors if there's enough room. They could be left open to get light into the dining room, and closed when someone needs to work in the study.

I would not want two doors into that room, because I would not want people to get used to using it as a shortcut--because when a guest is using it, I wouldn't want someone to forget and just walk in on them.

Then I'd rethink that whole little vestibule/mudroom off the living room. Do you need it? How often do you use that door?

If you don't really need that door to the outdoors, I'd close it up and put a window in its place. Then take down the closet and the walls and open that space up to the living and dining rooms.

Thanks all,

Your thought are confirming many of my ideas- we have had many visitors whose first thought is to "open up" the whole first floor (ie. open the kitchen, dining and bedroom to each other) but I hesitate because 1. it is an old house and I'd like to keep some of the original plan and 2. sometimes opening up a space makes it actually seem smaller- to me the private bedroom makes the house seem bigger.

The vestibule/mudroom leads to a cute side porch, overlooking the driveway but without stairs down to it. It has a closet which is great, but we currently use the space as a lego room :). So, we could do without!

I also do picture French doors, but privacy and sound would be a downside.

We are in need of a guest room for occasional visitors and really only have three bedrooms on the 2nd floor (the 2nd floor is basically the same floor plan as the first- one needs to walk through two bedrooms to get from the front one to the bath! That's another issue, and I'm not sure we can count on a remodel of the 2nd floor to give us the guest room we'd like).

Thanks all for your thoughts- it helps to cement my feelings about this space, knowing others have similar ones!

What if you closed off the "dark" side of the house and opened up the light side of the house? Something like this?

I just did something similar in my house, I moved the kitchen to the more open, lighter side and closed off the room the kitchen was in. I also had a circular floor plan and our house was very confusing to visitors. Now there's a clear traffic path along the sunny side, with a "back hallway" that has the powder, the laundry, and a little home office on the dark side.

Just for your interest, here's our old plan and new plan

Old:

New:

Old "open" kitchen:

New "closed" office/laundry

Old sunroom

New kitchen

Robo- Nice!

Just a quick idea...moving the kitchen and making the other room a den/office/guest, with fold out sofa. That's a TV across from it and shelves for books around the door.

Swapped the powder room (I didn't know if you needed the shower) and added a mudroom. Hope this helps :) {{!gwi}}From Kitchen plans

And range with windows on each side... {{gwi:1445040}}From Kitchen tables and vintage kitchens

This post was edited by lavender_lass on Sat, May 24, 14 at 1:06

Putting the guest room where the kitchen is now (as done above) makes it very awkward for anyone sleeping in that guest room. Privacy is pretty minimal as anyone wanting to go outside or use the bathroom would have to go through the guest room.

To open up the flow and make that room more useful on a daily basis, I think this plan would work better. I would hope the upstairs bathroom would work for family in the morning...and the guest would be up and out, before people plan to use the backyard.

However, my guests usually stay due to too much snow to safely drive back to town...not long term visitors. For longer stays, a sleeper sofa would not be very comfortable. The OP might want to have them stay upstairs :)

Of course, for long-term visits with parents/others, who may not be able to climb stairs, the earlier plan with full bath and shower would be a better fit.

My husband got ill (now recovering) but stairs are difficult. Luckily, our house is all on one floor. That being said...with two stairways, I could have easily put one of those chair/lifts on one set and solved the problem that way. It all depends on each person's situation...but that's one reason I kept this plan's powder room large enough to be handicap accessible.

This post was edited by lavender_lass on Sat, May 24, 14 at 13:54

Thanks all- I'm having computer troubles so can't check in lately. I'm grateful for all of the floor plan drawings! I'll look more closely...

Robotropolis- I've admired your new kitchen and the creativity it took to get there!

Lavender lass- thanks for more interesting ideas!

Everyone else, thanks for the input- I'll get thinking!

Leave it alone, or find a house that was built in 1990 instead of 1890. Old houses have a logic to them that may not be apparent to you at first when you move in with your modern mindset. Oft quoted advice is to NOT do anything the first year you are in a house.

I agree...we are not looking for a new house :) we do like this one, and love its location in a town of old homes. just trying to weigh possibilities that might be simple, but make a big difference in how we use the space. We've put the remodel on hold, as we live in the space and try to decide what changes to make. It is great advice to live in the space awhile...but you should see the state of our kitchen! :)

A bit off topic, but what did you use to make/draw the floor plans?

Thanks