Don't laugh, housing in CA is expensive, and I know my existing house is tiny. The proposed Master Bedroom, Dining room, and Bedroom 2 is currently occupied by dying grass in my backyard. I drafted up this drawing and we figure to add about 720 sq/ft of living area, and wanted some feedback on whether or not the layout is strange...doors/entrances/etc.

 

Wahtever works! Looks fine to me.

 

the only thind i dont like is that the bedrooms are seperated and the you have to enter them via a living room/family room. if you could sumhow put the bedrooms in a row and put the living room/ family room together with a nice archway in between the two it would be better. i hope this isnt confusing

 

Wheres the movie theater and bowling alley?

 

Bedroom 2 will be more of like a play room/bonus room/poker room/pool table type of room. The family room is our home theater room. We plan on having 2 kids max, and we have a < 10 plan for this current house. We figure that worse case scenario, the office will be a temporary baby room, and as small children, they can bunk up in the Bedroom 1.

 

I like the seperation of the bedrooms, gives more privacy to those in the family who don't want to hear the parents playing crockpot spoon man.

 

As long as the dining room has stools with worms in them I think you'll be ok

 

I am not happy with the laundry room behind the dining room. I am also not happy about a shower being by the living room.

Can you provide a drawing for the way it looks now?

 

shower in the living room? or, are you referring to the 3/4BA in the family room? this room was actually a bedroom that we converted into an Home Theater/Family room.

we would have no other place to put the laundry room. and, the current layout can be "visualized" if you remove the master, dining, and bedroom 2. the space between the kitchen, dining, and office is our current laundry room. we plan on opening up that space and extending the kitchen's cabinetry and countertop.

 

oh, and there is currently an entrance way (no door) joining the kitchen and the hallway leading to the full bath, office, and bedroom 1. we plan on walling that up.

 

If you don't need the office I suggest putting the laundry there. At least it would be near two bedrooms. It would be odd for me to have to drag stinky underwear through the area I plan on having Thanksgiving dinner.

Yes, I was referring to the 3/4 bath. You really don't want to have to walk naked with a towel threw a home theater to get dressed.

I'm just looking at this as a view from a potential buyer if you ever put the place up for sale. It may work for you but you have to consider what others might think.

For instance I saw a house a few weeks ago. They completely remodeled the kitchen. It was really nice, granite counter tops, sub zero, etc. But I was looking at it and said "something isn't right in here.......ah....where is the oven?" They had a range but no oven. I was like, "don't they cook?" Then the best part, I walk around the corner and there is a oven in the hallway all by itself? All they had to do to fix this was take that oven out, put cabinets in its place and where the range was, put a full range/oven.

 

Why not add a second floor? i.e. Turn your bungalo into a 2 story.

 

understood, but you have to understand, that 3/4 bath is existing. i'm not putting it in there as part of the additions, and i'm surely not going to spend money to pull it out.

i want the office there, and will share time as the nursery or "in-between" room until my kid(s) get old enough to sleep or share their own bedroom. personally, i'd hate to have a laundry room sharing a direct wall with my bedroom. we tend to do laundry late at night, and let the dry cycle run while we sleep and prepare for the next day's grind.

 

we're trying to minimize expenses while increasing value. since we don't plan on staying here beyond 10 years, we don't want to spend much more than needed. plus, we're not in the upper class or even mid class area, so we don't want to 1) stand out too much, 2) make our house worth too much more relative to the surrounding neighborhood.

 

one thing i'm thinking about, as i look at this drawing, is rather than creating a direct entrance/door from the dining to the family room...create a half-hallway running between the family and bedroom 2, and an separate entrance from each. this would allow access to bedroom 2 without going through the family room.

downside would be that it decreases the dimensions of each room.

 

I would try to make each bedroom have an entrance without going through another room. I would also swap the kitchen and the dining room. Your master bath is bigger than your kitchen as it is now. If you swap them you will have an area for an informal kitchen table which will be much better for younger kids.

I tried playing with it in MS Paint. I opened the wall from the dining room into the family room. Angle the wall at the corner where Bedroom 2, Family room and Dining room meet and put the door there. I would probably close off the external door in the living room as well, and make the one above the living room your formal front door.

You might need to take a small chunk out of the master bedroom to remake the closet for the office and add a door.

Just some thoughts, I was trying to open up the floor plan a little and make the whole thing flow a little more smoothly. I am in the process of designing a house myself that hopefully will get built in the next year or so.

Couldn't get the pic to show here, so click the link.

http://www.acurainspired.com/gallery...=437&pid=39677

 

dont make rooms leading into other rooms, thats what hallways are for.

 

thanks for the drawing...it actually looks really good. couple things that would make it difficult for us...

keep in mind that we are adding on, not remodelling. limiting expenses is a huge priority, so we're working with the existing structure. i would love to have a larger kitchen, but we want to make due with what is already existing. the 8' x 8' nook between the kitchen and family room is where the informal dining or breakfast table will be. the family room is actually a home theater room with a projector, so ambient light needs to be controlled. a direct opening from the kitchen to that area...not going to work well.

i agree on each room having its own entrance, hence the hallway notion for bedroom 2. but, if you look at bedroom 1 and the master, they will have it's own entrance. plus, i like the notion of locking the door leading from the living room to bedroom 1, and locking the door leading from the kitchen/dining transition to the office/master. this will allow free flow between our kid's rooms and our master, and more general privacy from the rest of the house.

the master bath is pretty big right now, i'm thinking about shrinking it and the walk-in closets a bit, and have a slightly larger master.

 

Yea, budget has a way of controlling things. We have had to cut back quite a bit on our design as reality sets in on how much stuff really costs. It's also easier to start from scratch than to modify an existing structure.

Good luck, I hope it all works out.

 

Oh, and once you have 2 kids in there, with all their toys, that home theater room isn't going to last long.

 

i wish we could just knock down the entire house, and build from scratch...but, alas.

 

tell me about it...i've already got 1 kid, and my wife is screaming bloody murder about the HT room. that's what bedroom 2 will be...storage.

 

ok...looks like this will be it (rooms in red are the additions):



removed the door between the family room and dining room, it will be just an entrance, and shortened the master bath/lengthening the master bd. damn, forgot to add a closet for bedroom 2. oh well, i'll leave that to the professional drafters.

 

Moving to new Home & Garden forum...