Oops forgot to add pics :-)

Excuse the mess it's the middle of the day here and I'm in the middle of cleaning out the freezer.

One thing I'm not sure on partly due to cost & partly because the hubby said no that will look stupid when I mentioned it, I'm thinking if we can afford & if possible to put in some sort of floating floors throughout the whole room, from one end to the other, getting rid of the carpet in the lounge. It makes sense to me because the carpet gets really yuck with kids & dogs and also we don't know what the quality of the floor boards will be (or if there even are floor boards) under the kitchen when it gets pulled out. Opinions please?

Just wondering what is happening on the lower right side on the floor plan and how do one access the family room.

Oops haha the silly program I have been using likes to delete my doors sometimes

Also the wardrobes in the rooms have door too but for some reason the programme won't let me out them on on one of he rooms. So I'm working with what I can. ;-)

Sorry I just saw all my typos. I rush a bit when I get the chance to get on here. ;-)
You can see in the photos the family room/toy room has a double door sized opening, we want to put in bi-folds so we can close off the kids room when needed

Dytecture- are you asking about where the room get wider? The squarish area? That's our lounge room.

Please ignore the measurement on my plan because they are not correct, I haven't measured every room in my house I am just going from how it looks.

Leecy, I want to suggest that you concentrate your resources on areas other than moving the kitchen. Here's why - moving the kitchen will be terribly expensive because you have to move plumbing, venting and power. It is really very difficult to do well without professional help because of the integration of appliances and cabinetry. You might want to consult with a kitchen designer in your area, because I can see some of your additional freezer / appliances are now stored adjacent and you may need to make an alteration or expand it rather than move it altogether. Your windows in the adjacent areas are not the right height for kitchen cabinets and it is rare that windows can be taken out and reused / swapped around.

This layout actually supports two separate living and dining or living and home office spaces, something that becomes more and more critical as your children get older. The french doors into the garden across from the family room are lovely. If I were in your shoes, I would focus more on adding the doors to the playroom, pulling out the lounge carpet and adding wood there, flanking your roman shades with drapery panels, investing in bookcases and storage, area carpets, sectionals and paint to make these spaces as charming as they can be. Your windows and doors are wonderful and the wood stove would make the area with the desk a wonderful dining area.

Please consult a local professional before you go too far down this course. For less than you would spend on moving the kitchen, your entire place could be organized, well-appointed and lovely - and you'ld be able to take all those things with you if you guys do move somewhere larger. For an open concept, which is what people love today, the kitchen in the center is like the hub in a spoke of a family wheel - altogether practical and welcoming.

Thanks for your opinion. The desk has now been moved back to the study/office. We were using the study as a nursery for the last 3years but moved the 18month old into her own room at the end of the house next to her sisters room, so the desk is now gone and the table is moved back over near the windows. Now we have a big open area in front of the fire in between the kitchen and dining table. We have consulted a professional kitchen planer and had a builder come out to take a look. We are on stumps and weather board, so it's easy to move plumbing and windows around or at least that is the impression we have got from the builder.
I have done some more playing around with the house plans I drew up because they were missing a few things.
My main up issue with the house is we have a lot of wasted space, and then not enough space is areas that we actually use. We have a wide hallway that goes to a front door which does not get used, the single door in between out fire and kitchen is the main entrance to the house. Or driveway and car park faces that door. In the 6 years we have been here the front door at the end of the hall has never been used! It's a big waste of space! Anyway I'll show you the plans I have been playing with that gives a better idea, I hope. :-/

Here I have done a more detailed plan of the house as it is, again. Pathetic sizing of the rooms aren't completely accurate but a good guesstimate. ;/)

Pathetic? Why the!? Sorry for my typos. ;-)

Now this is rough, I'm just working with what I have here on my iPad. ;-P

Ok now I have no room in my kitchen for a dishwasher, so my dishwasher is on the lounge room side of the kitchen bench along with the freezer. The fridge is in an awkward spot, especially since it opens away from the kitchen, & if the pantry door is open you can't get to the fridge, also our kitchen is a walkway. So forget trying to stop kids & dogs coming in while cooking. The hallway with the door that never gets used is wide and at the moment filled with stuff, clutter and bookcases. Also we have no bath & 2little girls who would love a bath, if we can change the layout of our main bathroom we can easily fit a bath. When the house was built things weren't installed properly so as it is I had to get floor replaced in our office from the shower in the next room leaking, and at that stage we had no kids and the shower was lucky to be used every couple of months. It stinks when I have to get down to wash the kids which tells me we probably have to pull out walls in the bathrooms anyway so why not make them better while we are at it? As for our bathroom, a larger shower would be a luxury, it then again if we have to pull walls & everything out why not make the most of it and make it something really special? Those are just a few of my issues.

It looks a lot better since moving the desk so I took some more pics to give a better idea of the space. Please excuse the table clutter, I am still sorting through all the clutter that came from the desk. I won't take anymore photos while my house is a mess because I am sick and had a sick baby all Easter weekend so nothing got done apart from moving furniture from the nursery/ office to the new room and then the desk back to the office.

I agree that the current layout is odd and the kitchen could use redesigning..I could see a flow problems the way it is laid out right now...Question...are u staying here a long time?

Jayme, yes we plan to stay here a while. We have been here 6 years now & not done a thing apart from paint a couple of rooms, we now have toddlers. We live on acreage & we imagine our kids growing up here, with the opportunity for pony's, farm animals, motor bikes etc. We see our kids going to the small school down the road. It's a good little comunity, not something you would sell or give up easily. The house itself isn't small, not for where we live anyway, compared to some American houses we see then yeah our house seems small but for the typical Australian family home we are doing well for size. The amount of wasted space is what is most frustrating, and lack of storage, especially now since we moved our youngest into the spare room and claimed office back we have nowhere to put all the extra "stuff" that we were storing in the spare room. We feel that if we change the layout of the kitchen and dining room we can utilise a lot of the wasted space. I might consider keeping the French doors, while doing the plan I realised if we get rid of the French doors we need to put in a double or a one & a half door as the main entrance because we wont be able to get our furniture in the house through a single door, also I don't know if its weird or not to only have two exit/entry doors in the whole house?

Your place sounds great!! I agree your kitchen seems in the wrong place...Not sure I would put a fireplace where the kitchen was, if I understood correctly..It would be hard to arrange around it and to use for a focal point...This seems like a big job and that it will turn into a lot more than meets the eye. Even a consult with a designer would be a good idea to prevent problems.

It sounds like a lovely place to live. And also that you want to make a lot of changes to your house. I’m just an average homeowner, not a pro, but here are my observations:
1. Do you have a budget?
2. Are you thinking about doing renovations over a long period? Such as the kitchen first, and then the bathrooms at some later time?
3. Are you a DIYer, or do you have time even if you are?
4. Have you consulted with a professional designer or architect yet?
5. If you haven’t and want to provide that pro with some of your ideas/wishes/etc., draw your floor plan to scale, ensuring that you have depicted your existing layout accurately so that you can brainstorm better.
6. If it’s feasible, both physically and financially, to move your kitchen as you mentioned above, would it fit in the current lounge area to the right of the French doors? And then have your dining and lounge area to the left of those French doors. This does seem like an awfully expensive alternative, but there are no doors to work around!
7. Keep the front door for safety reasons.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I want as many opinions as possible in case the is something e haven't thought of. We have had a builder come through & offer good suggestions, he said moving the kitchen is easy, we are on stumps with sodden floors and weatherboard, we also had a kitchen designer come through and design a kitchen for the space where the dining table currently is using the was test hallway space as a walk in pantry. My hubby has also has a meeting with a design company and we haven't signed anything yet we just got a quote for doing some proper plans. We want to have our ideas/plans pretty accurate before we get them professionally done because the less changes they have to make the better, from my understanding every time you have to change things on the plan it will cost us more time & money.
Every time I go into my design app I tweak my plans a little more and it gets better each time (more accurate).
Erno, when you say to keep the front door, do you mean the one at the end of the hallway that never gets used? I could take a photo to show you what I mean but I'm sure you will all cringe. We have no spare room or storage in our house and I have a lot of stuff to get rid of so for now it's all piled up in the hall, so the door is useless, even when it wasn't crammed with stuff it never got used because it doesn't go anywhere.

Ok so this is what I have got so far, this is the house as it is now.

Ad this is what we are thinking of doing.
Tell me if you want more. ;-)

IKD, but that office room has some space that could be livingroom space/especially if u choose to have a fireplace in that narrow spot. How wide would the livingroom area be where u have planned to move the fireplace?

I just measured that space and it was just under 3 metres/ 10ft wide.
I also measured my office and its about 3.5metres long and 2.58 wide.
What are you suggesting for the office? I don't see how that can be a living area?

Ok just took a closer look at my plan I drew & the measurements in the office are exactly what they are in real life!

just tapped into your discussion - trying to sort thru your design process and ideas. metres? where is this home?

if you're going to bump out the master bath, you might as well bump out the master bedroom even with the master bath...it would give you another 3ft or so...

Leecy: Yes, I was saying to keep the front door. (The one with your stuff in front of it now!) I would want to have that in case you are ever unable to exit your house through the doors near your kitchen/dining area.

To others: This house is in Australia.

If it were an emergency that would be the last place we would try getting out, ;-) the windows are all easy to climb out if it was an emergency situation. Also we have the laundry door.
Yes we are in Australia, Victoria.
1 meter is 3.28 ft or 39.3 inches. Does that help? :-/

Have u considered putting a fireplace in the larger area of your living room? Putting it in the area that is only 10 feet could get cramped. I was thinking with the den: if the wall were removed and several feet of that room were added to the narrow 10 foot area, it would make for a nicer sized living room.

What part do you mean by den?

Sorry..is it family room?

Also putting a fire place in the lounge area wouldn't work either, if that's what you mean by the larger part of the living area. It's probably hard to see in the photos but I have tried to do the layout of furniture and everything as it is in the house now, that wider area at the end of the house with the couches is a carpeted area and there is no suitable area that I can tell would be good for a fire.

Do u use the fireplace and sit around it much? In our home, the gas fireplace is in the living room on the largest wall. I guess whatever works for your family is the way to go.

Oh the family room, that's currently the kids toy/playroom. It's a good size for what it is used for and it will continue to be for the kids as they get older, that why I want to out bifold doors on there so we can close it off when need be. I'm not sure what you were suggesting we do now? ;-)

We would like to be able to enjoy our fireplace but it is currently next to our front door and its not really pretty to look at.

Have not read the entire thread, but has anyone suggested that you find professional advice locally?

For my family, the 10 foot area you are planning to use for living space would be to narrow for us to enjoy our fireplace...it is nice having our fireplace in our livingroom where we enjoyit and still have enough space for our furniture. Maybe I am misunderstanding how you are going to use the space...or maybe that narrow will work for you. I was suggesting to make the toyroom smaller and gain several more feet of space for living space, (while retaining your toy room) & then gaining more area around your new fireplace to use and enjoy.

@karen Paul..Yes, it has been mentioned.

Thanks Jayme, I get what you mean, it's just not really practical for our house & will make the renovation a lot more difficult & expensive if we start moving walls like the to gain an extra couple of feet. It's possibly a load bearing wall too. But that area which is currently our kitchen where we are thinking of putting the fire place isn't the main living area, it's basically the centre of our living area which is a long room from one end of the house to the other, so we were thinking having the fire there will warm the house better being that it will have the kitchen & dining table one side of it & the lounge the other side. I think we could it a couple of cozy arm chairs & a small coffee table or we could just put a love seat up against the section of wall opposite the fire?

Yes, a loveseat or a bench with cushion against the wall so that you have a walkway going from the lounge to dining room to kitchen. In the kitchen, do you have enough space between the peninsula and the refrigerator (or cabinet or whatever) along the opposite wall?

I did mentioning my original post that we had a kitchen plan drawn up & we are getting a proper plan draw up, these are by professionals in our local area! I think I mentioned it again today that is what we are doing. Also our builder is doing up the house next door & will eventually living next door to us, so very local.
;-)

I have mentioned it in my original post and other posts that we have had a professional kitchen designer design our kitchen, we are going to get a professional designer to draw out our plans, they will come out and look at the house before they do this, these are local professionals and we have a builder who is currently fixing up the house next door and will soon be living in the house next door to us. All professionals. I'm just wanting ideas form others on here.

Oops I thought that didn't post the first time so I wrote it again. Oh well, they won't miss it now! ;-)

The space between the fridge and the bench will be fine, it might not look it in my pic but this is just a mock up and it's not exactly accurate I just wanted to get an idea of how it will look. I'm sure our kitchen designer out of given us enough room. Thanks. We are going to have the fountain effect on the end of the bench with the cease stone bench tops too.

Glad u have the help of some pros...definitely a good idea! Hope it turns out great! Good luck.

Get an architect to at least do a Concept Design for you. Money well spent

old post - wonder how leecy is doing . .