Other better minds than mine will be along but I don’t like the bathroom opening off the kitchen/dining nook. Can you adjust that so that the bathroom opens off the laundry?

do you have any good views, where is north. please describe your climate and keep in mind that removing whole walls could have structural implications so you need to get advice from a structural engineer to be sure what can be done...sometimes a doorway or wide opening is easier (and much cheaper) than attempting to remove whole walls and how many people will live in the house or stay overnight regularly, do you want to keep two kitchens and will you live mostly upstairs or down? ...some photos would help understand the space better and, attempting to reproduce your original plans i've found that some of the dimensions are not consistent (maybe different wall thicknesses?) so first task will be to double check all the measurements

Bigreader, it's a two way bathroom that one on the first floor. It would be quite a lot of work to put it off the laundry as the home is brick and that particular wall is brick.

Oklouise, north is diagonally off the corner of the area we are looking to convert to the butlers pantry. We don't really have any views to speak of. We are in Brisbane. Widening the opening upstairs does require some structural changes in the ceiling as it is a load bearing wall, but it is doable is what we've been advised so far. Oh and the wall downstairs we are moving for the garage isn't load bearing. Yes we will keep the two kitchens. Currently we (hubby, myself and our two children 12 & 9) live upstairs. At the moment we have a good friends 20 year old daughter living downstairs with us, meant to be a temporary measure whilst she gets back on her feet after a relationship breakup. Our plan for that space was to renovate it and would be for our family/friends to stay in, and we have even toyed with the idea of air bnb possibly once it's all done nicely, plus we utilise that living area downstairs as a second loungeroom. We're keeping it as an area that can be used separately as we figure down the track if we either stay on here, and the kids are adults, one of them could live down there indepedently, or if we left, then they could live here with respective partners, or if we sold it or rent it out, it has appeal to people who may need dual living areas, I believe with the cost of housing nowadays it's becoming more common for children to stay at home for a lot longer and this way everyone has their own space and is out of each other's hair. I'll pop in some photos perhaps of the kitchen upstairs and the weird second staircase room to start with and let me know if you'd like photos of any other rooms.

Upstairs kitchen - the current plan is to remove the wall on the right basically right up to where you see it change lines next to the dishwasher.

This is the weird staircase room next to the upstairs kitchen, I'll take another photo so you can see the stairs, but apologise in advance as it's a bit of a mess.

You'd want to measure , but it looks as though if you removed the stairs on the right , your garage would fit 2 standard cars -- you may have to get a concrete cutter to enlarge the doorway , frame it if an engineer remends it ( I assume it is brick , as you said most walls are ) , and add a wider door .

But that will give you back that room you have added to the garage ( was it WIP , was it laundry ? ) and the walkway/workshop shown too , that looks like about 4.2 x 4.2 , plus that 1x 3 metres upstairs .

Having said that , if you want to go BnB or similar , you're probably better to keep it and take out the other stairs , as you would want a physical barrier , and seperate entries .

I'd say until you actually work out what you want to do , any choice will be difficult .

Thanks Pottsy, the right angle dark line drawn in the garage is actually all brick, it could be load bearing. Definitely widening the garage door is on the agenda down the track and squaring off, at the moment it's a small arched one. The garage space at the moment is crammed with stuff, tools, motorbikes, etc not even room for a car, lol which is why we're looking at taking from the room behind it, which served basically as a dining area for the downstairs kitchen, the space is huge and still big without the dining area that would be sacrificed to the garage in our proposed plan. Doesn't help when your vehicles are a Prado and a falcon one tonner ute. We are looking at putting a carport off the front eventually, because currently our kamper is also sitting out the side of the house in the weather. So idea would be kamper and Prado park under carport, ute on the street (there's also another massive caged box trailer by the way that I keep at my work because it won't fit at home!) The garage will still be full of motorbikes, tools and other crap that hubs hoards, we've been married 20 years this year and nothing will change in this respect when it comes to tools and other bits and bobs he likes to keep. lol

We aren't that worried about separate access for upstairs and downstairs, plenty of air bnbs simply offer a room inside the main house, and our aim isn't to separate the two living spaces completely.

We just feel that the second set of stairs is taking up valuable space on the second level and could be put to better use as some other type of space given there is already the other stairs in the centre of the house.

some of the dimensions don't match up and once the stairs and walls are removed how would you use the leftover spaces after the new pantry is installed so my long term suggestions include a new kitchen location and using the old upstairs kitchen for a study nook, move bed 1 and add ens and wiw, kids bedroom share the upstairs bathroom, use bed 5 to extend the garage for a workshop and keep the old downstairs dining room as an extra bedroom for older kids or rental with a kitchen dining area to walk through to the laundry but if you really want a separate rental space a new laundry might be located in the garage under the new wiw and always add furniture to make the best choice of new door and walkways locations...but this arrangements has three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs with better use of kitchen space and the pantry and downstairs has a flexible two bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and living area for older kids or rental with old bed 5 for a study, guest room or extra garage space and optional extra laundry if you prefer not to share

Wow oklouise, lots to process here, thanks so much for investing your time into this. We will have to seek further advice around some of the other walls in our house in terms of load bearing. This would involve a lot more structural work than we originally intended to do but I take your point about the improved functionality, just not sure our budget nor the value of the house could sustain such a remodel.

Another rough idea, changing the floorplan, Ground floor creating an ensuite and adding a famiiy bathroom with access to the laundry and outdoors, swimming pool? adding a linen cupboard opposite the entry and creating private access to new bathroom and bedroom. Bed 5 becomes the kitchen using the available upstairs plumbing?

Upstairs, rearrange kitchen and create another bedroom/study

Keeping both sets of stairs, the garage will only ever be a single, is there room for a carport in front of it

so important to make a whole house plan so that what you change now will long term improve the whole house for all the ideas on your wish list even if you don't do all the work at once

the ceiling in the proposed area for wiw and ensuite rakes down and is quite low on the outside wall, the raking doesn't continue inside the main roof however, I was hopeful when we first bought the house as I thought opening up the ceilings for raked effect would be fantastic however alas it isn't built that way. the floor height in the 'storage' room is the same as the main house whereas the one in the area where the stairs is drops down.

I don't think you gain anything by removing the single staircase. years ago we helped a friend remove one of two large double staircases which allowed her to add an extra room on both levels. Her daughter lived in the upstairs level. As OKL said you need to do a whole house plan and work with that and progress when you can afford it, it's also a good thing to have for possible resale even if you don't complete it.

Also balancing off the investment made and ensuring not to over capitalise is key. I think we probably have roughly around $200k budget to play with in terms of top $ for a fully renovated house in our area based on what we paid three months ago, and whilst that sounds like a lot, it really isn't when it comes to renos, as things add up quickly esp when you throw in two kitchens, two bathrooms with the possibility of a third, a laundry, a carport out the front, potentially an outdoor area etc so we'll have to be careful and picky with what we spend our $'s on, and that's with us on the tools as much as possible, project managing jobs.

We have incidentally started the renovation on bed 3 over the weekend, it's our daugthers and we promised after the last renovation monstrosity that we would do her bedroom first. The last house really was hideous and she spent the majority of the time we were there with the gross bedroom she started with, only for us to renovate it in the final year before leaving so she was most upset. So thinking at this stage we will be leaving the upstairs bedrooms alone.

I was so keen on a wet bathroom, so your plan to move the toilet door and bathroom door around okl and sacrifice half the linen is deifnitely on the cards and will give us that little bit more space to play with in that bathroom, which is only 2400 x 1980 currently.

The most problematic space still then is the current upstairs kitchen, with the little dining nook, and storage area off the side and the room with the stairs in it, I'll try and take some more photos of the space. We could potentially leave the stairs in there sk and still build a wall and use as butlers pantry for the kitchen then still have to figure out how to incorporate the storage room and dining nook more seamlessly when redoing the kitchen.

Downstairs, I really like okl's suggestion of the bedroom. Not sure how we'll go moving the doorway to the bathroom though, downstairs is mostly brick with a lot less plaster walls than upstairs. It's funny you said about that front bedroom for the garage okl, we suspect in the 1970s when the house was built that's exactly how it was. It has an arch that looks like it's been closed in and had a window put in, that we think originally would have been a roller door and served most likely as a type of lawn locker/garden shed, and returing it to its original function would probably really suit us.

seeing photos is a big help, I would have thought that arch was part of a verandah?

As in just open supports SK? The front is just one big flat ugly 70s face though, otherwise you'd think the arches would have been on the side and on the front otherwise?

I think it's an old verandah being under the upstairs verandah, also having to get a car into it from the arch side would have been difficult. Have you checked with council for original plans

We haven't checked with council for plans at this stage, we'll go to our neighbourly brains trust first and come back to you, they've all been here since the 70s and have been a wealth of info so far, just love them it truly has been the best street to move into. :)

PS - don't think it was ever meant for a car, more like a lawn locker/garden shed btw. :)

That's great, it looks like you do have two driveways so who knows, has the block been sub divided

could it have been the front entrance into the house and not having to walk towards the back of the block to the current entrance, anything is possible. Grandmothers house had a similar thing done to it, now I want to know

Well from all accounts nope it definitely has never been a patio, it's always been built in and formed part of the garage. It wasn't for a car as it faces out the side of the house, more of a lawn locker type thing. And the main garage was more tandem, there was never the kitchen etc, so there you go! :)

You can always rely on the neighbours. The kitchen was my suggestion which would mean both kitchens at that end of the house

Thanks @Kate, we've thought about trying to put a front door where the window is downstairs in the 5th bedroom, but then we'd lose that bedroom. A while ago we considered putting in stairs at the front that would lead up to the front verandah and making an entrance that way, but we aren't really sure now if we want to do that or not.

@siriuskey that wall that would have to be taken out to relocate the kitchen to that space is brick. All those internal walls downstairs are all brick as they are holding up the top story of the house so a lot harder to change the layout on the ground level.