What would you change about your house layout if you could design it yourself?

Question

My husband and I are designing the layout for our new home now, and we have everything just about settled. If you designed your own home's layout, what would you have done differently... or even if you bought your own home, what would you change?
Thanks!

Answer 1

I would swap out the locations of the guest bedroom & the kitchen, so that I could build an pass through between the kitchen & dining room.

My house was built in the 20s, so the current layout is like this: living room encompasses the full length of the front of the house. this is fine. then you walk through the dining room into a "hallway." This is just an opening in the center of the house, off of which is doorways to the basement stairs (just past the dining room on the right), master bedroom (right rear), kitchen (left rear), bathroom (center left), guest room (between the bathroom & living room - on the other side of the wall from the dining room.

So it would be so nice to have the kitchen where the guest room is so I take out the walls between the kitchen, dining room & living so I could have more open floor plan. Of course, I'd then have to create a hallway from the back door, because you wouldn't want to walk into someone's bedroom from outside, unless of course it's french doors - that could be nice...

Answer 2

The dining room is too far from the kitchen. The living room and dining room are in the front of the house. Behind them is the nook, the kitchen and the family room. You have to schlep everything from the kitchen through the family room around a corner into the dining room. There is a little pantry in the hall between the family room and dining room which would be perfect to convert into a butler. Then I could have a warming drawer, dishwasher drawer, extra counter space and a mini-fridge and not have to do so much schleping.

Also, I would have installed double entry doors. Our steps from upstairs end in the foyer by the front door. We have had difficulty getting very large pieces of furniture through the front door and a double door would make that process much easier.

Finally, I would add warmers under the tile in the bathroom that were hard wired and on a timer. That way when you get out of the shower or bath, the tile is warm on your feet. (Our next home improvement project). Oh yeah, I would use frameless glass for the shower enclosure.

Answer 3

My kitchen is the biggest room in my house, and if I had the money and knowledge, I'd put an island in it, with a rack overhead.

The rest of my house is a maze! when you come in the front door, your in the front room, which never gets used. Then you can either take the door to the left, which runs past the bathroom and nook, and into the kitchen, or you can take the foor on the right, which goes into the living room, which is off of the other side of the kitchen. we also have two seperate utility rooms, I'd like to take out the middle wall and make them one big utility room because as it is, the placement of the washer and dryer makes walking through that room very awkward! And for some reason, my living room is split into two small but open spaces. I'd like to see that turned into one large open space.

And then new carpet, appliances, and linoleum, etc.

Answer 4

*lol* Aside from making everything about 200% bigger -I live in a very small bungalow:

*Have a foyer
*Not have the coat closet behind the main entry door
*Make sure coat closet can have a flat bottom (Mine is over the stairs so there is no room for shoes or boots)
*Counters in the laundry room (at least enough room for a laundry basket or two, and somewhere to put soap and whatnot)
*Have the washer and dryer in the right order so that when the dryer door is open it isn't between you and the washing machine.
*Under counter lighting in the kitchen -kitchen counters never get enough light. BUT make sure these lights don't give off much heat.

*lol* I'm sure there's more.

Answer 5

I currently have a very small house but when I build my dream home I'm going to make sure I don't have any bathrooms with two doors to remember to lock and unlock, lots of closet and storage space ( not just in the bedrooms) and if there are stairs, I want to utilize the space underneath them, and I'd like built -in shelving but not the kind that takes up entire walls.
Having so little storage now, I've come to appreciate space of any kind.

Answer 6

My kitchen is too big and I can't put an island or breakfast table because there are doors in two walls. On the other walls, the sink is 15' from the stove. I would reduce the open area in the middle and put closets & half-bath behind the new wall.
Cluster your workspaces and appliances.

Answer 7

This is a minor thing but something to think about if you have upstairs bath or bed rooms.

I would add a laundry chute to the downstairs laundry.

This would also hold if we had a laundry in the basement.

Answer 8

Yeah - like my house - need at least 5 acres to stick it on....not the measley 3/4 I have now!
Then, I can have a pony :)

Answer 9

BIG kitchen

Answer 10

i'd put it on a larger lot