We’re planning some big changes around here at our Little House On The Corner. The house is very slowly starting to take shape – the living room is about 85% finished (read more about it here and here),
our bedroom is about 75% done (read about it here and here)
and most importantly we finally managed to finish our epic staircase restoration a few weeks ago. You can read about the result here.
We’re pretty sure you’ve all already noticed that we seem to be working our way from the front of the house through to the back, so now that the front is starting to take shape, we couldn’t resist sharing some of our plans for the back of the house with you.
This is what the layout of the ground floor is like at the moment.
It all works fine for us, but with a few simple major structural changes it could be so much better! The kitchen is a bit of a weird shape at the moment and although it’s fairly large, the layout means that it’s actually difficult for more than one person to work in there at a time.
You’ve probably already heard us have a good moan about the state of the kitchen, too. It may not look too bad on the pictures, but in real life it’s falling to pieces. None of the cupboard close properly (and they can’t be adjusted), some of the appliances don’t work and everything is so worn, that it’s just beyond saving.
It’s not much better in the dining room.
We’ve added our furniture, our built-in shelves and some colourful artwork, but that’s about as far as it goes. The carpet is stained all over and just really disgusting, the windows and door could do with being replaced and we’d eventually like to also install a wood burning stove.
You can see where we’re going with this…
We’re going to be knocking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room!
This is what the room should look like then.
It makes the space so much more usable, light and airy. The kitchen layout in the drawing is the same as it currently is. It’s more of a placeholder, as we’ll be completely replacing the kitchen, too!
If it was up to me, I’d be hammering away at the wall right now! Annoyingly the wall is load bearing, so we’ll have to have a structural engineer do some calculations for us before we can start any work. Out of all the work we’ve done in the house so far, we’re probably most excited about this, as it will probably completely change the way we use the house.
This is only phase one of our planned works to the kitchen and dining room – there is a lot more to come!
Have you ever knocked down any walls? Do you prefer open plan living like we do, or would you prefer to keep two separate rooms?
I LOVE knocking down walls and open plan. I am Australian so its pretty much the norm for any renovations here LOL. I think your plans will really make your house a home – you can do whatever you want with that space; so exciting. I noted your plans say phase 1, I wonder if phase 2 includes bigger glass exterior doors from the dining area opening onto a deck or conservatory or similar???? Planning is such fun, cheers
So do we! Australian houses seem to be so much larger than here in the UK. Hopefully knocking down the wall will make our space seem a bit bigger than it is.
You’re right about phase two, it includes a deck, some large glass door and something a lot more major! We’ll let you know more as soon as we have planning permission!
Cx
I knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the dining-room, which are two very small rooms, so that it’s more airy and also a lot more practical. I kept the living-room wall, though, so it’s only a half-open space, kind of like you’ll do according to your drawing. It’s going to change your life, believe me!
I’m so excited and can’t wait! We’ll probably use the back of the house so much more.
Cx
We just knocked down a (non-load-bearing) wall yesterday, but to expand closet access rather than put two rooms together: http://www.dohiy.com/2013/03/28/demolition-man/ I love me some demolition! The concept for putting together your kitchen/dining room is great — we lived with a very similar floor plan in London a few years ago, but we were renting. Would have knocked that through if we could have done.
Found your blog through the recent AT feature (holy cow, talk about a weird set of comments there!), and wanted you to know that we are really enjoying it.
Yesterday, how exciting! We can’t wait to start knocking down our wall, we really think it will make a big difference to the way we live.
So glad you found your way over to us through AT. Yeah, the comments were slightly bizarre, but then you can never please everyone. Glad you like it though!
Cx