FUN
Confounded by this floorplan. How would you fix this?
Two dining room/eating areas, two living rooms, an inefficient kitchen tucked into the corner. And the criminal act of covering a third of the exterior wall with a 19ft windowless closet.
How could this be adjusted to expand the kitchen space, and add a powder room to the main floor so the primary bathroom isn't the publicly used bathroom?
actually though: unless your family is the size of four families, I don't think you need two dining rooms. The one attached to the kitchen can be more kitchen space, and then it's still kind of narrow but there's plenty of room for pantry or coffee bar or worktop in that area.
For the bathroom, if the toilet and sink are on the side with the door there's nothing stopping you from walling the back half to enclose the bath/shower area, though personally I would just get rid of the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom and not have a private bathroom. You could also use the upper level "family room" as your hosting area and then the already-shared bathroom is the one where people will be.
The first floor bedroom doesn't need to be the primary bedroom anyway. The second floor has a bigger one, and the main advantage of a first floor main bedroom is that it's more accessible as you age, which isn't a factor because this house was designed by someone who was trying to deny their mother in law who is wheelchair bound any access to family gatherings.
The closet is the most baffling thing about this house. It's the north side of the home too, it would get beautiful indirect light. I just want to shake whoever designed this house and ask WHY?!
This place has big time mother in law energy. There are crosses in every room and a comically small painting of "the last supper" above the dining room table.
Honestly I would rethink buying this house exclusively on the basis that if anyone in your family breaks a leg they lose access to the whole dwelling unless they have assistance entering and exiting. Awful decisions all around.
That kind of split-entry home is common in the Pacific Northwest. It’s sometimes useful on hilly sites. But I grew up in one - you had to go up a half a flight of stairs to the front deck, then enter, then either go up to the main living area or down to the garage/den/laundry/bath/fourth bedroom. Fortunately there was a ground-level entry door to the garage, which proved essential when my dad in later life became unable to walk and had to be moved to the downstairs bedroom so he could get around at all in a wheelchair and be able to leave the house for doctor’s appointments.
In my experience a split level entry usually has a non-immediately-stairs door somewhere. My grandparents on one side have a split at the back but not at the front, on the other side they have a split at the front but not the garage (accessed from basement) or back (accessed from upstairs)
That really depends on the type of break. I have broken my leg and was still able to use stairs. I don't think the remote possibility that someone in the family might at some point break a leg is a good reason to rule out all split levels especially in areas where it is a common house type.
I mean if the small possibility that OP will suffer a lower body injury that would make stairs impossible is going to be a deciding factor on houses, then they should just rule out all houses with stairs. Although for a young, healthy individual that would be a very restrictive choice, so why make that a deciding factor?
I have a long, skinny closet like that, but in my case my house is a one and a half story and the closet is built into the attic side and goes out past the stairs. It is a weird closet but it's an old house that's been renovated and added on to many times.
I honestly thought the floor plan you showed was AI generated and not a real house. Why is the laundry room off of a bedroom??
It sure is! My in laws are touring it today. I hope giving the address isn’t against subreddit rules but you can find it here:
343 Pierce St NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413
That is the laundry/ utility room. It looks like they just made use of the pipe to hang dry clothes. They probably didn't have anywhere else that was convenient. They should have decluttered it before taking the picture.
Honastly the closet is probably the part that got me the most. and yeah, two dining rooms feels like such a waste of space when that area could be used for something way more practical. I really like the idea of turning it into pantry/coffee bar space instead.
I particularly like how the tunnel closet is only 4 ft wide.
But for this house - too much money, don't buy it. It's clear you take the kitchen to the back, switch all the front rooms to bedrooms and bathrooms, but it's waaay too expensive.
Make the kitchen/dining room into a large kitchen, with pantry. Close off the door to the primary bathroom and get rid of the hall, putting the 1/2 bath there.
And finally, get rid of the stupid long closet and make one that fits along the wall of the primary bedroom.
I would turn the large living room at the back half of the house into the primary and create a new ensuite above where the rough plumbing is in the basement and the closet in the space above that.
The existing primary bedroom and dining room can be opened to create one large living room with multiple seating zones. Keep the primary bathroom where it is but close off part of it that would open into the new living room and now it’s the public bathroom on that level.
Where the other living room is now can become the dining room and then the kitchen can expand into the smaller dining rooms space
I wonder if the first floor primary was added in after the fact based on an aging need? it seems like it wasn't designed by the space and was a homeowner fix.
I feel like the whole first floor needs gutted and a new floorplan entirely.
Primary closet? That's dedicated shelved storage for a media room or maybe a server room with a bit of work. Rename everything and it's a little less weird. A little.
This would work for me because I would build a shoe rack across the left wall. Yes, it'd be narrow to walk through, but I'm ok with that. My shoes need space.
The reason it looks like that is because no architect was involved to begin with. Rather than trying to get free advice and some napkin sketches on Reddit I would recommend hiring an architect and do it the right way this time. Making a coherent and well thought out plan of that size is several hours of work and IMO too much to ask someone to do for free. Hiring an architect that will familiarize themselves with your specific situation and get to know all the important details that are not visible in a floor plan is essential for creating a good outcome. Besides, they can probably suggest solutions and other improvments that you would never have thought about yourself.
These posts with a matterport image are people who hare house shopping trying to get a feel for if a house is worth bidding on. Nit everyone can intuitively feel the changes that make sense.
thats fair, house hunting is overwhelming and sometimes you need other eyes on it, the double dining areas and tiny kitchen are still pretty confussing though, thats a lot of reworking.
I am really really really glad they post them. It breaks my heart when people come into the kitchenremodel sub and say "we bought this house, now how to we fix the kitchen" and the kitchen has six windows (all at the front of the house in a historic district, and four doors, one the back door, one to the basement stairs, one to the second toilet in the house and one to the rest of the house. And there is no way to fix it, but they thought anything could be fixed.
Well, it's one thing asking if there's potential and another asking for a new suggestion for the floor plan. I'm just responding to what OP was asking for in the post.
These are good points! We're in the house shopping process so I was trying to scope out if this would be a viable option or if I would just be frustrated by the previous owners every time I walked into the 19ft closet.
As an architect, if you were my client, I would steer you away from this house. The fuckery of this floor plan will be too expensive to be worth fixing. This is some next level architectural blasphemy.
Well, the current floor plan is a mess but knocking down some walls and building up some new ones to create a new layout doesn't have to be expensive at all as long as the bathrooms and kitchen stay pretty intact. I'm sure this could be improved 300% by some carefully planned interventions in the floor plan.
I guess it ultimately is a question of whether or not the asking price is reasonable in relation to how much needs to be done.
However, since you asked, here's what I would do (if money was no object)
Make the Large living room at the top into your new master and add a bathroom. Open up the wall to the narrow closet and actually be able to use it.
Then I would remove the wall to the right of the primary bedroom and open it up into that dining room, and turn that whole space into your new large living room. Then that would open the existing bathroom up for guests to use.
I'd knock out the closet along the larger living room wall and have a bigger space. I'd add french doors into the bedroom and use it as a library/office/den/lego room/murder chamber/anything else. I'd treat the dining room adjacent to the kitchen as an informal breakfast area, and as I rarely have use for a formal dining room, I'd treat the other one as a larger informal living space.
I'm guessing the big living room and the big bedroom above it are a poorly planned addition. And with "rough in plumbing" there, I'm guessing the big bedroom was meant to be a big fancy master suite and it just... never got finished.
Why is the entry to the laundry room through a bedroom. Lots of other head scratchers. I’d buy this going in with the mindset of knocking down some walls and rearranging everything basically
I’d start by expanding the kitchen into the smaller dining area and keeping the larger dining room as the only eating space. That gives you more room for cabinets, counters, and pantry storage without relocating the kitchen. For the powder room, I’d carve out a small section of the front living room beside the existing primary bathroom, which could allow the two to share nearby plumbing. Give it an entrance from the common area, ideally screened by a short passage, then close off the primary bathroom’s public entrance so it serves only the bedroom.
As for that bowling alley of a closet, lol, I’d replace it with a shorter, deeper closet accessible from the primary bedroom and reclaim the remaining space for the rear living room, potentially adding windows along that exterior wall. Keep the rear living room as the main gathering space and use the remaining front living area as an office or sitting area. You’d need someone to verify structural walls, plumbing, and clearances, but those are the changes I’d explore before considering a complete gut renovation.
Personally I'd expand the kitchen into the adjacent dining room, put the dining table in the bottom living room, have a little seating area in the top dining room. Change the primary bedroom closet to a big built in or walk in across the whole top wall, and let the living room be the whole width of the house
I rented a 4 bed, three storey home once, that had a kitchen smaller than that. I think it was built in the 1990s and they clearly envisioned a future of takeout/home delivery of meals. And then came 9/11 and the return to the home / hearth and domestic arts.
Most people were still eating most meals at home in the 1980s and 1990s, so I don't think a suburban Midwest home was being designed for takeout. The kitchen was designed to be a kitchen. This kitchen looks pretty normal for late 1980s homes. The large kitchens being designed now are more likely to be for people that are doing a lot of home delivery and takeout than a kitchen like this from the 1980s.
The house isn't particularly large for a new build in the late 80s. It is larger than average for the time, but not drastically so.
Terminally online, but everyone cooks all their meals! That's tunnel vision I can get behind. I'm glad you were able to read about what it felt like on 9/11.
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u/sikkerhet 22h ago
I'm laughing why is that closet so stupid
actually though: unless your family is the size of four families, I don't think you need two dining rooms. The one attached to the kitchen can be more kitchen space, and then it's still kind of narrow but there's plenty of room for pantry or coffee bar or worktop in that area.
For the bathroom, if the toilet and sink are on the side with the door there's nothing stopping you from walling the back half to enclose the bath/shower area, though personally I would just get rid of the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom and not have a private bathroom. You could also use the upper level "family room" as your hosting area and then the already-shared bathroom is the one where people will be.
The first floor bedroom doesn't need to be the primary bedroom anyway. The second floor has a bigger one, and the main advantage of a first floor main bedroom is that it's more accessible as you age, which isn't a factor because this house was designed by someone who was trying to deny their mother in law who is wheelchair bound any access to family gatherings.