Floor plan changes in existing property

Hello dear forum,

this is my first post here and I hope to get some input on the topic of floor plan changes in an existing property.

I did not fill out the pinned questionnaire because it is probably more intended for new construction projects (?) and I will nevertheless try to provide all relevant information.

The house was built in 1998 and is in well-maintained original condition. Theoretically, one could move into the property as is (also regarding the floor plan), but we want a little more comfort here and there than currently available and are therefore currently creating a small renovation plan with the help of an architect and energy consultant. In the course of this, the question arose whether and which floor plan changes one would like/could make, and at this point I am very much looking forward to your input.

The house was built as a two-family house and was also used as such in a multi-generation household. We are a household of 6 people (37y, 32y, 8y, 5y, 1y plus au pair for the next few years) and want to use the house as a single-family home. In this context, we want to convert the kitchen on the upper floor into another bedroom to have enough rooms. That would give us on the upper floor 3 children's rooms, a master bedroom, a family bathroom, and a storage/laundry room and on the ground floor cooking/dining/living, au pair room (guest), study, 2nd bathroom, guest WC, as well as a technical room. The house is not basemented.

I have color-coded our intended changes in the floor plan and also attached the originals. However, this "original" floor plan does not exactly correspond to our property as it was mirrored and also the location on the plot is not correct (perhaps a standard house from the general contractor, which was then adapted to the actual building plot?). For better understanding, I have included the actual site plan. You can see, for example, that the window of the guest WC on the ground floor was omitted at the expense of the adjacent garage. Also, there is no roof window in the children's room on the upper floor, but a dormer. Everything else matches as is.

Here are our thoughts on the floor plan:

Ground floor:

1) Cooking/dining/living: I am a fan of the "one dining table solution," therefore I would like to remove the wall between kitchen and living to create one large, open living-dining-cooking area. In addition, I would enlarge the room at the expense of the hallway by extending the wall between the living room and study. What do you think about that? How would you furnish the room most cleverly? Kitchen presumably like currently drawn with the L-shape. The dining table probably centrally located between the currently drawn dining spaces, i.e., between the two south-facing windows and thus in the center under the steel beam that will replace the missing wall. Do you have other ideas?

2) The bathroom on the ground floor is actually too large for us, since it should only be a shower bath (guest bath). Somehow a luxury problem, but how do you furnish a room that is too large and actually only should contain shower, sink, and toilet? I am currently tending to house the washing machine and dryer there, but actually find this solution suboptimal. I would prefer it in the adjacent utility room, which probably does not offer enough space for that. This room contains all the house technology, i.e., electrical panel, heating (prospectively heat pump, currently in clarification). What would be your solution? And if washing machine/dryer in the bathroom, where exactly?

3) Where to put a coat rack for 6 people?

Upper floor:

4) The kitchen will become a bedroom. To create closet depth behind the door, I want to move the wall between kitchen (yellow) and living (green) so that the living room becomes smaller. For this, one of the two windows would have to be bricked up (of course rather unsightly), but this would allow me to adjust the room sizes and generate closet depth in both rooms. "Living" would probably get an additional roof window on the west as compensation for the bricked-up window. Do you have a better solution? What I also find charming about this variant is that the hallway becomes more square in shape at this point.

5) The bathroom is planned as a family bathroom and should include tub, shower, double sink, and toilet. I want to enlarge it at the expense of the small storage room, so that instead of the small storage room there will be a large (masonry) walk-in shower, which is currently (necessarily due to the sloping roof) located in the center of the bathroom. I find the existing window quite favorable in this regard. I would then extend the wall between the bathroom and the adjacent utility room at the expense of the hallway. What do you think about that?

6) From which room would you make the master bedroom on the upper floor?

Don't laugh, some of the attachments were photographed from the laptop because unfortunately I cannot do it otherwise right now...

Hmm.. did I do something wrong or is the topic just not interesting enough?

Maybe it's because you have inserted all the floor plans and views arbitrarily aligned, maximized one after the other in your post. A uniform alignment of all drawings, for example, always having north on the right side of the plan, is important.

Then it would be good if the respective drawing is inserted as a preview image next to the appropriate text.

And then maybe in the drawing with the colorful sections, also write kitchen ==> bedroom accordingly.

Thank you very much for the feedback. Very understandable feedback. I will try again from home this evening, but I was already glad to have been able to upload image files at all. If it should fail because of that, then so be it.

Yes, I also have to say:

However, this "original" floor plan does not exactly correspond to our property, because it was mirrored and the location on the plot is also not correct

mirrored, all photos rotated differently.. as a reader you don’t even know what is fact.
Otherwise, you posted on the warmest September day, when everyone was doing something other than entertaining themselves in front of the screen.
The long text without visible photos is then hardly comprehensible.

photographed from the laptop because unfortunately I can’t do it any other way right now...

Screenshot? SnippingTool? And then it can just as well be mirrored cheerfully.

From which room upstairs would you make the master bedroom?

With three children and an au pair, I would probably keep the bedroom downstairs and leave the upstairs to the children and the au pair. This also has the advantage of having a small, well-maintained master shower bathroom on the ground floor, which is also suitable for guests. However, a switch might also be an option if two children initially share a room. You have to see where the technology is in the utility room. You could possibly assign the rest of the bathroom to the utility room and then partition off a wardrobe.