I have grown to appreciate how the living room opens into the kitchen, the kitchen opens into the dining room, and the dining room opens into the living room. This allows my kids to ‘orbit’ the house – which is particularly important on cold winter days. Funny though, they always seem to orbit counter-clockwise.
Our existing first floor plan.
I’ve learned to enjoy this – at first I had visions of my footie-jammied little guy wiping out and cracking his head open as he rounded the corner a bit too fast. But he’s proven his resilience to me, and now I find myself rooting him on as my Claudia chases him around and around. The giggles, the dancing/skipping/jumping/running as my kiddos interact with their home, negotiating the dining room chairs and the ottoman in the living room – priceless.
Our existing second floor plan.
Eric and I have decided that we’re going to be staying in this home for awhile… at least until the kids are out of school. Right now, we have about ~1300 sq ft. The original part of the house is 22′ x 24′ on two floors and a ~20′ x 12′ den + bathroom was tacked on to the back of the place in the 1960′s. We have 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Claudia and Clayton share a room – which is cool for now – but we’d like to give them their own space at some point.
We’ve started the ball rolling on a pretty sizable addition that will give us a larger dining room, butler’s pantry, kitchen, a music room, an entryway, a ‘command central’ room, and a den/guest suite on the first floor, and a master suite on the second floor.
This is what the first floor will look like in a few years time.
Here's our plan for the second floor.
Thank you Bouril Design Studio!
A quick blurb about our new spaces…
New entry – right now, our coat closet is in the den… our boots and hats and gloves end up on the floor in the living room and dining room. Can’t wait to have a closet up front!
Music room – because I used to play the piano and want to do it again. I don’t actually have a piano – but I’m planning to ‘store’ one for a friend 
The music room will be where our current dining room is.
Command central – we plan to have a space behind the music room where we can build in a desk to house the family computer and the stereo and its peripherals.
Kitchen – Eric is our chef. I am a lucky woman. He needs a kitchen that he enjoys being in.
Butler’s pantry – we’ll have a pantry between the kitchen and dining room… we haven’t decided whether or not it’ll be plumbed for a sink or a dishwasher… might just be a dry pantry.
Dining room – This room will be our ‘formal’ dining room, whatever that means. We will eat there, formal or not. It’ll have some great windows along the front and side of the house.
Family room/guest suite – the current den or family room will double as a guest space. In fact, when we bought the house, the den was sold as a 3rd bedroom (has closet space and a bathroom). We desperately need it as a family space though. I think that anyone who were to sleep in there would be cryogenically preserved.
Master suite – need I say more?
Kids bathroom upstairs – right now, the kids use the bathroom off the den downstairs. It is certainly kid-sized… and works for now. But, when we have our guest suite down there, we’re planning to eliminate the tub. A new bathroom for the kids is in order.
Stairs – will be centrally located. You’ll see that our stairs are pushed up against the wall in the living room now. By moving the stairs to the middle of the house, we’ll have easier access to the kitchen and bathroom from anywhere in the place. Right now, IF we were able to park the car in the garage, we’d have to completely traverse the entire house to bring stuff up to the kitchen. In the future, it’ll make more sense with centrally located stairs (see below). Our current stairs to the basement are where the ‘built-ins’ are near the existing office.
Here's what our basement will look like someday.
Workshop – Eric has started to build a pretty nice collection of tools, and has proven himself to be a pretty decent carpenter. He plans to build the cabinetry and vanities in our addition, along with all of the finish work in each of the rooms. I’d like to encourage this sort of activity in our house A workshop will be an integral part of my diabolical plan.
Quarter bath in the basement – with a workshop and an office in the basement, it makes sense to incorporate a toilet into the mix down there.
We have zillions of ideas spinning around in our heads about finishes, paints, ceilings, lighting, trim, fixtures, floors, doors, textures, solar tubes, heated floors, cabinets, speakers, stairways, windows, transom windows, stained glass, pocket doors, doorknobs, heating registers, furnaces, fireplaces, landscaping, roofing, driveways, garage doors, patios, closets, clawfoot tubs, tiles, seamless glass…
My favorite thing to think about is the new orbiting potential of the first floor… maybe they’ll find a clockwise route.
New potential orbital patterns for our first floor...
Orbiting is in Claudia and Claytons blood as their mom and aunt did quite a lot of it in my house. Could this be genetic or just lots of fun? Fun I think!!
A path with no end… to good to be true!
Love this stuff. The counter-clockwise orbit is almost certainly engrained from visits to Farmer’s Markets. Very civilized!
I like the 2nd floor design, but the 1st floor is very problematic to my way of thinking.
For one thing, you have to cover a lot of ground to get from the front door to the kitchen, which is usually people’s first stop in the house and a place where they spend an enormous amount of time. You have to cover a lot of ground to get from the kitchen to the dining room, and from the kitchen to the family room, which is where it sounds like your family spends most of its time. The location/presence of both the den and the music room are curious and don’t seem to emerge organically from the program of the first floor: they feel like they’re where they are because that space was left over when the four corners of the first floor were claimed by other spaces.
This strikes me as being a good first pass at a design, one that draws out important issues (the question of “where will my piano live?” always turns out to be a much bigger issue than one would expect), but doesn’t solve them well.
I was raised in a house in which the formal living room (with fireplace) was never used. We congregated in the den to spend time together and watch TV. The den was one-third the size of the living room, served our needs perfectly, and was a place we loved. You could say that, from a design perspective, the layout of our first floor was a relative failure. (Come to think of it, the living room was also where the never-used piano lived.)
Dan –
The music room and the ‘den’ behind it were problems for us too. We could not figure out how to best utilize those spaces. The den will end up being an extension of the kitchen area – as well as a family desk area… I guess you hit the nail on the head – they are leftover spaces from the original house… a casualty of our desire to leave as much of the original structure in tact… It is great to have a piano space… and great to have the opportunity to create one!
So far, we’ve managed to use every room to the max… Our living room is more or less a quiet room to read or knit (or blog)… and the den is where the action is (Wii etc…). I like how you described your first floor layout as a ‘design failure’ due to under-utilized space. That gives me some perspective, something to think about as we work through our own design.
I thought the office in the basement was for blogging?
It sounds like an important design criteria is “a quiet space, within reach of the kids, where adults can get some work done.” Using the living room and family room to meet this requirement may be a good solution, but I wonder. I still think there’s a more creative solution on the first floor.
My strong sense here, though, is that there are better solutions to be had for $250,000. Where did that estimate come from?
It’s a ball park, arm-wavy estimate from the architect… When we are ready to commit to the next phase of the project, we’ll have a firm budget, and we’ll finalize the design and get contractors to bid it out. My brother-in-law might be able to help us out as a general contractor. I think that the finished square footage will be ~2100 or so, we currently have about 1300.
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Wow that looks like a great plan! That will be a huge renovation! Are you going to hire it all out or DIY? You live in the Madison area right? We’re just west of Madison. It’s always fun to meet other area bloggers.
Hi Robin… Thanks! We’re excited about the plan… crossing our fingers that we can get it done in +/- 2013. Our current plan is to hire my brother-in-law to serve as a GC… and do some of it ourselves. We’ll have to have people who know what they’re doing come in and do the demo of the garage, excavate around the house, and build the foundation… from there – it’ll depend on what my husband and his brother feel qualified to do… we’ll at least do all of the finish work around the house.
I live right in Madison near the arboretum. I’ll have to check out your blog too! Thanks for stopping by!