What’s The (Floor) Plan Stan?
We had so much fun showing you the ins and outs of our house’s exterior layout back in June, that we’re back to share Casa Petersik’s actual interior floor plan. We know it’s pretty hard to picture how rooms flow into one another when you’re looking at a series of photos (like the before & afters on our House Tour page), so here’s hoping this makes some sense out of the three bedroom, one and a half bathroom brick ranch that we call home…
Of course the house didn’t start out as a three bedroom (remember we moved our dining area into the living room and converted the formal dining room into a third bedroom by closing off the old door to the kitchen- which gained us a heckova lot more cabinet space?). Ah those were the days. Just for fun here’s the old dining room we inherited (see that doorway on the left that led into the old kitchen?)
And here’s the same room as a bedroom, with that doorway sealed off and drywalled (it already had a closet so it was practically begging to be converted):
And because we sealed off that doorway from the old dining room that led to the kitchen (see it there on the right in the picture below?) we were able to take an old room that looked like this…
… to an updated kitch with over 50% more counter space & storage now that the door on the right wall was replaced by an entire wall of cabinetry and appliances (including a dishwasher that the original floor plan never would have accommodated).
That’s one of the reasons we always encourage people to live in a space for a while before renovating, since it’s a solution we never would have thought of off the bat. Not in a million years. We also probably never would have had the guts to tear down the bifold doors and the wall in the laundry area to create a nice little exposed laundry nook that’s a lot less closed in (as you can see from the floor plan above, that hallway was a bit claustrophibic before we opened things up- just imagine a line where the bifold doors once were). Here are things mid-demo (so you can see where the old doors and upper wall were):
And here are things now, more open and functional (plus you can actually do laundry and have access to the back door which leads to the sunroom (back in the days of the bifold doors, if they were open they blocked access to the back door- frustrating, no?).
As you can see, a workable floor plan really does make all the difference. Not only can it make for a seamless feeling and effortless flow, but it can actually make day to day life easier and your entire house more functional for you and your family. And the glorious thing is that while others might consider a formal dining room a necessity or want to keep their washer and dryer behind closed doors, owning a home is all about personalizing it for the way you live so you love coming home to it every single day. So don’t be afraid to tailor your house to best meet your needs (unless you’re planning to sell, say, next week)… after all you’re the one paying the mortgage!
So what about you guys. Have you altered your floor plan in any way to accommodate something that the original layout was missing? Are you planning any restructuring to add functionality or just plain beauty to your home? Do tell.
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Comments
This is cute! I love floor plans – I used to do them all the time for my bedroom when I was a kid (I rearranged my room almost monthly). I wish we could switch up our floor plan right now but we’re renting :( Our kitchen is a tiny cubby of a space, and you can’t open the dishwasher, fridge, or oven at the same time, especially if you’re standing at the sink. We would love to rearrange it and add an open countertop that looks out into the living room, but alas – no can do! Can’t wait til we own our own space and can do that sort of thing!
We built a ranch in 1986 on our dream location; 2 acres close to a State Park so there is lots of wildlife and trees and not so many houses. Since then we have finished the basement and turned our screened porch/upper deck into a year round sunroom retreat. The house has gone from around 2400 sq ft of heated area to 4500 sq ft. Our next project is to add an elevator (for my crumbly knees) and greatly expand our master bathroom. One thing I would love to tackle is to widen the opening between the kitchen and sunroom. Right now it is just an exterior door and a window. Since that used to be an exterior wall, we would defenitely get an expert to do that – if I can convince my husband that the entire house won’t fall down around us that is!
We have a 1960s tri-level. It had no back door but two side doors 15 feet apart on the driveway side of the house. We have added French doors on the back of the house, off the dining room, and tore down the wall between the kitchen and the dining. It really opens up the space, and with 5 kids we really needed it. We have blocked off one of the side doors with furniture (in the den) and hope to close it up with bricks and a window one day. The other side door is the main entrance for kids when they come home from school so they can dump all their stuff in the mud room. I’m hoping to build them each a locker to store their stuff in.
Whoa… I totally had the guest room and master bedroom switched up in my mind! Wondering what your future plans are for the master bath reno…would you add on to the house off of the master bedroom or update the current full bath into a master???
As you know, we switched out a hall closet for a small mudroom after we lived in our home for a year and a half. It’s the BEST improvement we’ve done thus far bc we use that space on a daily basis now and it works for our family. We haven’t physically changed any other flow patterns (taking down walls, etc) but we totally use rooms as WE see fit, not as they are labeled in the builder plans. For example, our ‘formal living room’ is actually a combined entry, office, sitting and extra dining space room. Super functional. Our fourth ‘bedroom’ serves as a guest room/playroom/craft room. It made total sense to us bc I spend a lot more time sewing or crafting while watching my boys play than entertaining overnight guests. I love getting to use these rooms instead of just looking at them.
Thanks for the post and letting us see how you USE your home! The best of form AND function.
Thanks for the floor plan. It’s so cool to see where things are – there were a couple of things laid out differently than I thought! I love seeing where I was wrong! haha
Thanks for sharing it!
I would really like to see more before and afters and less layout of your house and halloween decorations. I don’t expect you to post this but I wanted to share it because I am a huge YHL fan.
yhlers-
thanks so much for sharing your floorplan and your supercute house!
would you mind sharing how many square feet you all are working with?
your place seems cozy and right-sized, but not huge. as a fellow small house owner i always appreciate your storage and organization tips (and covet your basement and garage…)
Hey Sherry-
I notice your use of bamboo blinds throughout the house and also in the laundry nook. I’m in the process of re-doing our windows to look larger by mimicking yours… where did you choose to buy your blinds and how much were they?
Thanks,
Stephanie
Hey Stephanie,
We got ours at Walmart (in store, no online) for something like $14-25 a pop. We’ve also heard Target and Home Depot have them very affordably as well (along with amazon.com). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Yes, ditto on wanting to know your approximate square footage. I love the look of cozy ranchers and cottages and I don’t believe bigger is necessarily better!
Hey Salley and Laura,
Our house is roughly 1250 square feet (probably a little less as the sunroom isn’t considered finished square footage since it’s not heated or cooled). It’s certainly enough house for us (I wouldn’t want to clean anything bigger!) and we love how flexible it has proven to be for us. Here’s hoping we stick around forever!
xo,
s
Your house is so cute!!! :) I have to admit, I pretty much already knew the layout. You see a little of one room in the corner of a photo and sooner or later it all comes together. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was whether your bedroom or the green-headboard guestroom was at the front of the house. Now I know :)
This little printout w/ accompanying drawings reminds me of something similar I did to see what furniture would fit in the new house. We even printed it and cut out little IKEA couches and chairs to scale to see what would work best. Did you all do that with any of your purchases? Especially couches? I’m a sucker for miniature rooms and furniture to scale :) Maybe a by product of my doll house days?
XO,
Jacci
I think you’ve done a great job making your house work for you–it’s true that you don’t need as much square footage if only you use your space wisely. We have a fairly large house now and although we use most rooms daily I always wonder about downsizing and improving efficiency! One change we made recently is we converted a downstairs laundry room to a mudroom (w/ cubbies, shelves, etc.) and moved the laundry to what used to be a large unfinished hall closet upstairs–it has double doors and a sink. Best thing we ever did!!
Our next project is finishing part of the attic to make an extra guest bedroom/exercise space….(so much for less square footage).
Hey Jacci,
We actually don’t usually make little cut outs of furniture with graph paper like some designers but we have been known to sketch out rooms for Design Dilemmas or in-person makeovers (like Carrie’s apartment) so we have a game plan going in. “To scale” isn’t always the goal since I’m more art than math, but it still helps me get a handle on most spaces since proportions of beds and couches are usually pretty straightforward. Plus John’s really good at space planning- scary good actually.
xo,
s
I am so jealous of that comforter in the third bedroom every time I see it!
I’m sure you’ve probably already thought of this… I could see carrying the theme of your kitchen cabinets to the laundry nook, in place of the bamboo blinds. And a rectangle piece of your kitchen’s granite above the W&D would look very sleek, as well (a DIY project if you could buy the granite pre-cut?). I realize that these suggestions aren’t cheap…. but, oh, the possibilities!
I remember the ‘paint colors’ floor plan, so I knew where the rooms were, but it’s fun to see the funiture on the new diagram.
So far, I haven’t moved any walls around, but I have thought about it. I may very well insulate and finish off a tiny back porch in order to add an eat in area to the galley kitchen in my bungalow. That’s pretty far down the list of house projects.
ahhhhhh now i get it. I had it so confused in my head. It is much clearer now with the floor plan. Just love the Kitchen redo. Makes such a huge difference.
ahhhhhh now i get it. I had it so confused in my head. It is much clearer now with the floor plan. Just love the Kitchen redo. Makes such a huge difference.
Sorry… forgot to say great post – can’t wait to read your next one!
First, your kitchen re-do is amazing.
Second, the counter you put over the washer/dryer is so smart and functional. What material is it, I couldn’t tell from the picture… is it plastic? I would like to try it on my washer/dryer. Your ideas are so smart and useful, thanks!
Thanks, Mary! The counter on the laundry area is just a simple piece of wood that we had cut to size by the woodcutting department at Lowe’s. Then we painted it white and then sealed it with a coat of polyurethane to help protect it. And it took keep it from slipping we bought some of those grippy drawer liners and placed them between the appliances and the wood. That way nothing shifts when the washer goes into super high spin mode!
Hope that helps,
John
Very nice! But…where is your office? e.g., computer, bills, papers, records. The office clutter! And where are the steps to the basement? Thanks for all you do!
Hey Janine,
Good question! The office is just a table in the corner of the den (it shares a wall with the half bathroom)- you can see a photo of it in this little roundup of after pictures. And the basement actually has a separate entry from the back of the house (it’s located directly under the sunroom) so here’s a post that shows the door and the stairwell more clearly. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Our current house has the BEST floor plan, partly b/c of some changes we made. Its a cape, with 2 bedrooms on the first floor, 2 bedrooms on the second floor. we only have 1 child (and aren’t having any more), so we got rid of one of the bedrooms on the 1st floor. we opened up the wall and now it flows into the living room, with the stair case that goes upstairs dividing the 2 rooms. :-) we use the now-open room for an office/craft room. also, our pellet stove is in there. Having the pellet stove in this open layout REALLY helps to heat the house better.
Good thing my hubby is really handy! it was a huge MESS pulling down the conecting wall, and fixing the stairway…but so worth it! I should send you a picture of the “before” and “afters”, VERY dramatic difference!
Also, I do agree with living in a place for a while (several months, even up to a year or more) before taking on huge projects like this. You really get to know the house better and see how you really use it over time.
My husband and I live in a townhouse built in the early 70s. We had a galley kitchen with a room in the front of the house and a room in the back of the house with a large deck attached. Our kitchen opened up to the back room, but the back room is much larger and works better as a living room. My husband knocked out a doorway from the solid kitchen wall into the front room, creating a second pass through. It makes our once small kitchen seem much more spacious now, and we can actually get from the kitchen to the dining room without walking all the way around the house!
I love what you’ve done with your spaces!
I love this layout you made! I used to draw house floorplans all the time when I was a kid for imaginary houses! (Yes, I admit, I’m a nerd!)
There are SO MANY things I want to do to my house! I just bought it, and I’ve began to do some small stuff but nothing major. (OK, refinishing hardwood floors isn’t really small stuff!) I took a room the former owners were using as a living room and am turning it into a dining room, and the room they used as a bedroom back into the original living room. I would absolutely love to move the doorway into the bathroom which would give me a lot more counter space in the kitchen and make the bathroom layout make a lot more sense! My house is a shotgun style house, so the second bedroom is a walk-through bedroom, and I would love to add a wall in the room and create an actual bedroom and a hallway that leads into my dining room. However, that would involve installing a window since the room wouldn’t have one at all, so we’ll see if that happens at all! One step at a time…
I’m jealous of your washer and dryer combo. I have front-loaders, but the detergent pours into the top so I can’t use that clever trick to turn the tops into a counter!
I stumbled onto this site a few weeks ago and have been enamoured ever since. Loving the design, getting re-inspired on my own pending projects. Our weddings were ever so similar in decor- lemons/limes, as well as my degree in fine art + husband John with a Communications degree< weird!!
Anyway awesome to see the floor plan, the house does have amazing flow. To realize how closing off the dining room connected that new bedroom to the 'wing' as the other beds is so nice. While the kitchen sometimes looks so narrow in photos, seeing in right in the middle of the home with very open access to bothing living and den is awesome.
Thanks y’all! Your post gave me the inspiration to go home an work on my floor plan.
We’ve got a similar layout (though I like yours better). Our 3 BR, 1.5 BA brick rancher used to have a dining room, but the previous owner closed off the door to the kitchen and made it a bedroom! I’m considering enlarging the opening between the kitchen and living room, but (following your example) I’m going to wait until we’ve lived here for a year.
Our house is actually two houses slammed together (in 1911). So upstairs, where they meet there was a bizarre triangle on the ceiling, and beneath that two doors (at a angle) each going into a 7×22′ bedroom. We just barely took that all out and took out the wall inbetween so that the bedrooms will be more like 7×12′ and then giving us a little sitting room at the front instead. The wall with the new doors has yet to be built (we’re thinking barn doors), but we’re on our way.
Do you have the dimensions of your rooms somewhere on the blog? I would love to know the size of your kitchen, so I can compare it to mine.
Hey Toby,
That’s totally on our list, but we haven’t gotten to sharing each of our room’s dimensions yet. Our kitchen is 13.5′ x 11′ though. Hope it helps!
xo,
s
It’s about 12 x 13′ (the walls behind and in front of the bed are the slightly shorter ones). Hope it helps!
xo,
s
Hey Lisa,
The basement actually has a separate entry from the back of the house (and is located directly under the sunroom) so here’s a post that shows the door and the stairwell more clearly. And there are certainly more details and photos to come! Hope it helps…
xo,
s