The Floor Plan Changes We are Planning For The New House

We are still holding off on taking you on a full virtual tour of our soon-to-be new home (you know, until the deal is 100% done and we in fact live there). But we thought we’d give you a sense of what we are gonna be working with thanks to this rough floor plan that we threw together with the use of floorplanner.com (it is a free service, btw). Everything is approximate since we are borrowing from the measurements that we took during the inspection and copied from the sales flier, but here is what we have (the washer & dryer are stacked in the small mudroom off of the carport):

*There are not measurements for the smaller spaces like the bathrooms or hallways, but the total square footage for this house is around 2,500 square feet

The funny thing is that if you look at our current house’s floor plan it might seem a bit familiar. We consistently said if we built onto our house we’d enjoy to add a pleasant bedroom with a true en-suite bath (since our current casa only has one full bath in the whole house and nothing attached to a bedroom at all) and we would not mind somehow creating a larger family/living room (we have consistently longed for a casual and comfy sectional but our current house simply would not accommodate one thanks to the long narrow family and living room layouts). Sherry has also consistently had serious island envy and lo and behold, the new house could in fact support one of those as well. In other words, simply talking about it gets us all geeked out and excited since it is kind of like a combination of our current house and a few more things we have consistently hoped.

We are simply so thankful that after some fairly rigorous searching we at last found this baby. In fact it has nearly everything going for it when it comes to our parameters (strong school, strong location near family, a lush and lovely yard for Burger & The Bean, within our budget, etc) except that it is admittedly a tad bigger than we had targeted.

We like living modestly, making spaces multitask, and most of all not having to clean a large house. But at around 2,500 square feet it is nothing too crazy, and we are sure we can grow into it and take the entertaining brunt off of John’s poor sister (who right now has a 3,000 square foot house so the whole crew consistently ends up over there- and as lively as that is, we’d enjoy to be a place where the family gathers as well). We figure a bit of extra space could not hurt in that regard, since the average get-together for us is around 10-16 people (and we can right now seat simply 6 people at our dining table that sits in the corner of our living room). Plus there are more Hands-on projects to take on. Ha.

But anyway, here is how we envision adapting the floor plan to make the house work best for our family (we have highlighted the descriptions that have changed in green, but we will break things down a bit more below the floor plan for ya):

You will notice that we are thinking about:

• converting the carport into a garage (thanks to a sweet credit the sellers gave us)
• turning the modestly sized dining room into an office, and even adding fairly french doors to separate that area
• converting the formal front living room into an entryway with a casual dining room slash library
• adding a large doorway leading into the kitchen from the new dining room/library
• making one bedroom into a playroom/future nursery for child number two in a few years (we are waiting a while), making the second one into Clara’s bedroom, and turning the third one into a guest room for family & friends since they stay with us fairly frequently (upgrade: they’ll now have their own small bathroom to use, instead of having to share one shower with all of us).
• adding an island in the kitchen and widening the doorway that leads to the former family room…
• …which will become our one and only living room- we have learned that three rooms with sofas in this current house (the living room, den, and sunroom) are not necessary for the way we live, and the formal living room simply does not get used. So creating a pleasant large casual living space with a sectional and plenty of room will hopefully make our house into a place where everyone gathers, which is a large goal of ours. And the more spacious kitchen that is centrally located (which is soon to be open on all four sides) will certainly assist create that airy, welcoming, accommodating feeling for large groups like our large crazy family.
• creating an remarkable double sided fireplace since the back of the fireplace in the kitchen can hopefully be blown out so there is also access to it from the living room.

Update: One change we chose to make after posting this but before moving in was to use Bedroom #1 (the smallest closest bedroom) as Clara’s room and turn Bedroom #2 (the larger middle one) into a playroom/second kids bedroom. Bedroom #2 will likely end up being Clara’s big girl room and our second child will move into the nursery (Bedroom #1) in a few years when he or she exists.

Of course we will not do any major work (knocking down walls, building an island, fully gutting and renovating the bathrooms, blowing out that fireplace, etc) before we live there a little while and we are sure it all makes sense for the way we in fact end up using the house. We have never subscribed to the knock-down-walls-and-refinish-everything-before-moving-in way of life since we never would have come up with the close-off-a-door-to-gain-a-bedroom-and-a-whole-wall-of-cabinetry-in-the-kitchen plan that dawned on us only after living in our house for about six months. But we will jump right in with things like painting the walls, kitchen cabinets, trim, and doors along with switching out light fixtures, other hardware, and beginning to slowly but steadily furnish the place in a casual, affordable, and kid-friendly way. It is honestly all I think about these days. I have about 500 tear sheets, notes, and other inspiration piles surrounding me at all times. Is it mid-December yet?