Room Tetris! What would you do?

10 months ago

Hi everyone, We’re thinking about buying this house that needs reconfiguring. It’s got lots of space, currently used so badly.

We’d like a large open-plan kitchen/diner/living room, playroom and study downstairs (maybe knock down the + between existing kitchen/living room/diner/breakfast room).

Upstairs is trickier… we’d like to add an ensuite to the master bedroom, and a larger family bathroom. We dont need a central ’dressing room’ aka dead space, whoever thought that was a good idea!

What

do you think?

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Comments (4)

Dee
10 months ago
If you can relocate the stairs to the middle/ central part of the house. This will open up better configuration options. For example if landing was now where the dressing room currently is.
PRO
i-architect
10 months ago
Hi Sarah!

It's definitely a decent sized house with plenty of space to play with. It looks like it may originally have been a smaller 3-bed semi that's had a wrap around extension built. Sadly it's quite typical to see this done not so well. But it can definitely be improved.

The upstairs can be altered by adding in circulation or moving the stairs, depending on how many and what size bedrooms and other rooms you want to have. Essentially it looks like the large dressing room acts as an upstairs hall space for circulation really.

My recommendation if you are to buy it is to live in it for a few months, ideal 6-12 months, before starting your redesign. This will really help you to identify all the things you want to change about it and help you get it right for you.

You'll find my free Design Your Home Vision Checklist useful, and you can get that here: https://www.i-architect.co.uk/dyhvchecklist.html

Best wishes for your new home!

Jane

award winning chartered architect

eco-home and conservation area specialist

www.i-architect.co.uk

Join Jane live on facebook for home design tips and expert Q&A. Midday Mondays: https://fb.me/e/fXBDxgZ3x
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I still think that you can embrace bolder colours and should consider bold coloured walls a frame for your furniture and art. I hope that the enclosed pictures illustrate that if the dark colour represents less than 50% of the total surfaces in the room the room still feels bright. In fact I think that contrast has the crisp modern feel you wanted. So in your middle room that has reasonable light if you painted the walls a bold colour, the wood work and coving a shade of white and then the ceiling and the wall above the picture rail a pale grey on balance the room will have more light than dark (especially when you add in curtains and furniture and cover some of the wall with pictures and mirrors). Likewise if you painted your whole kitchen a deep colour a lot of it would be covered with cabinets and the deep colour will frame the furniture. So I think that you should have courage to paint your island and canopy a dark shade and a mid tone colour for at least one wall in the kitchen. You hallway is the least light space. You can play safe with a pale colour but in my opinion painting a room white doesn’t increase the light. Consider a mid tone colour confident that there will be well balanced as most hallways have lots of doors and other woodwork that you can paint in the white of your choice.
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Lisa D
10 months ago
I think you can use bed 4, study and current bathroom to create a bigger bathroom and en-suite so the plumbing stays together. Then some of your dressing room becomes the landing and you rejig the walls as you wish to create the bedrooms off it.
Jonathan
10 months ago
One option

Room Tetris! What would you do?

Comments (4)

Dee

i-architect

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Jonathan

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