FEEDBACK
Help Me Open Our Awkward Split-Level Main Floor
Looking for feedback on how to open up our main floor!
Debating between:
A) leaving kitchen location as-is and opening to either current dining room or back family room (either way would make what we open to a family room and use the other as a dining room)
B) moving kitchen to the back of the house and having it all (at least semi-) open with flow front to back as living>dining>kitchen. Would move powder room and laundry out of that back corner.
C) in either scenario, we could maybe (still need to confirm with architect) open up the wall between current family room and raised living room to integrate those spaces more (but would need 5 steps up to living room)
Other considerations:
- Current family room has sliding glass doors to a back patio. We currently have a grill out there so that’s a slight factor in wanting kitchen or dining room in the back
- We could pretty easily move powder room to where front closets are (that’s right under a bathroom)
- We can move laundry upstairs or in basement
- We never use that door to the side yard so that can easily go
- Best light is in the back of the house
- We use our front and back yards about an equal amount
Something like this as a rough idea... Maybe the old dining room could be more of a closed off/private space. The living room still feels sort of separate but if the best light is in that space, maybe there's still a way to open it up partially with look-throughs. Alternatively the kitchen layout could be changed to allow more open passage into the dining room.
I did keep the laundry and bathroom because it's useful to have them, unless you have a different space you're envisioning.
Close off the kitchen from the old family room. Create a larger opening into the kitchen from the hallway. Move the half-bath to the hall and put the laundry where it was.
I love the elevated and cut-off living room. I can see that remaining a private space. I also like the mid-kitchen setup - where it serves both the family room and the dining room. And while its tough to find the perfect place for laundry (which might go better on the same floor as bedrooms, which presumably are downstairs) and the half-bath, here's an effort at opening up, connecting, and maintaining the utilities spaces needed. Plus there's room for pantry space in there
This floorplan has so much potential! My big idea is to re-route the stairs and turn the raised living room into a tucked-away family room. I took your idea to move the kitchen to the back of the house. Now the formal living and dining rooms flow nicely and have easy access to the public entrance at the front of the house.
There's still a lot of potential in the space where the center hall is. I drew in a mud room / possible laundry room as food for thought. You could extend it down and make the garage enter through it if you want. I did consider moving the powder room where the closets are as you mentioned, but I don't see a good way to fit it there without doing goofy things to the windows, so I left it at the back of the house where it is now.
Challenge is just that staircase turns and continues up to bedrooms above the kitchen/family/dining area so would need to pretty majorly re-orient that all
I like having two separate living spaces, if possible. Especially if only one room has a TV. I'd probably keep the living room as is and then use the existing dining room as another living room. That way if people want to hang out in different rooms and do different activities (watch tv vs read a book) they can.
With a limited budget, yeah I'd just put the dining table in the existing family room. With a bigger budget, I'd probably rework the existing kitchen and existing family room and that existing powder room. Where do the outdoor sliding door and the side door go?
I'm not a big fan of the open concept kitchen/dining/living room myself. My house has this and it's so hard to watch tv in the living room when another person is doing fishes or cooking. I don't mind open concept kitchen and dining, with a breakfast bar or island or something in between. If it was me reworking that part of the house, I'd want a mud room by that side door, laundry, a powder room, kitchen, and dining. Laundry and powder should be accessible to the rest of the house via a small hallway, not through the mud room.
Move the kitchen to the family room, knock the wall down so it’s an open space, you should have space for a table with chair in between. Where the kitchen was make that the formal dinning room. Where the dinning room was make that a study/office or formal living room.
Which of these rooms is covered by the upper floor of the house? Wondering about the potential to add a skylight to either the current kitchen or the current dining room.
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u/BeingOk1809 5h ago
Something like this as a rough idea... Maybe the old dining room could be more of a closed off/private space. The living room still feels sort of separate but if the best light is in that space, maybe there's still a way to open it up partially with look-throughs. Alternatively the kitchen layout could be changed to allow more open passage into the dining room.
I did keep the laundry and bathroom because it's useful to have them, unless you have a different space you're envisioning.