Thanks Mandy, No kids (nor will there be) so we're OK with fully open plan - i appreciate it wouldn't work for everyone and I'm hoping the way we do it would make it fairly straight forward for someone to partition off the Living room again. We love cooking and spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen (I cook anyway!) and at the minute we've a lovely big farm house dining kitchen with an aga, and an also lovely seperate living room with wood burner, but we're also loathe to leave the kitchen on an evening after supper as it's where we like being but it doesn't have the space for sofa's etc. to make a lovely lounge area too which makes us want something fully open plan. We even have a second reception room that, in 12 months we've never, ever used - it doesn't even have furniture in/ We can't do anything with the under stairs bit unfortunately as it has stairs leading to (a very small, very low and not possible to convert) cellar. The Garden isn't great and therefore I'm not too worries about where the utility and WC is - behind that there are sheds too. Great getting so many ideas and thoughts though as it's good for me to question my plans etc! It's a bit daunting as without being able to work this kind of lay out the house won't work for us but we really think it has the potential! Cheers

Depending on light/views plumbing etc... but I would want to do something like this. Keep the stairs at the front as it's so much more practical. Knock through and have a large kitchen diner at the back (remove stairs). Have the master with en suite at the back without staircase, then move the bedrooms plus make a bathroom upstairs too. I'd add a small utility and WC somewhere in the kitchen diner space too! Sounds like it's going to be a very tricky but amazing space if you get it right :) Is it a barn conversion? It would definitely be worth working with a good architect or designer/concept planner at an early stage to make sure you do! Good luck

Hi vaivadr, I think a simple solution would be to put a quarter turn on the steps and then move the WC further back. That will give you a much more spacious entrance. In a small place like this you need to minimise the amount of corridors so I would make the corridor smaller and give more space to the kitchen. I would move the kitchen to the other side because you have much better option on that side with the much longer wall. I would use the space where the kitchen is now as the dining area with bench seating to save space, providing seating for up to 6. This will now allow you to open up the entire back wall with bi fold doors. Filling the house with natural light. I would add a long island with bar stool seating in parallel to the kitchen rather than peninsular as that will add to the illusion of depth to the house making it feel more spacious. The remaining area would be the lounge. This layout gives you a more usable front entrance and gives you a lot of flexibility with regards to your kitchen size, for example if you prefer a bigger kitchen you could extend it further into the living area and vice versa. It also means you are free to remove the back wall and bring the outdoors in with a large bi fold door, producing a spacious light filled home.

hi Jamie For side return extension if that is your plan be ready with about 70k+VAT budget and another 10k in total for client supplied items. that means you still have another 36k£ to spend on your project. as i haven seen your windows on a front i can just guess but i would say with 1 external door and 5 windows assume about 5k+VAT incl installation. bathroom refurb can cost you around 5k+VAT and refurbish of the whole ground floor about 15k+VAT incl new door liners couple of studwalls new plastering new skirtings and architreves etc. for flooring and other stuff allocate about 8k+VAT and for profession fees another 4k+VAT. i would say in total a bit tight but you can have all your list to be done. just be sure you get more quotes in as builders are charging nowadays from a-z depends on there availability and flexibility. have a good luck.