Making your house work-getting creative.

[rooster222]

Has anyone made creative changes to your floorplan to better suit your family?

Our house is large enough but after 8 years we're still trying to figure out how to make it function for our needs.  We don't want to move because we plan to leave the area when our youngest is done with HS (6 years).  Real estate has went up substantially and we've done a lot of work to our house and I mostly love how it looks at this point.  

Our biggest challenge is an area for our kids to hang out with friends.  We want our kids to have over friends and be comfortable entertaining here.  Right now our first floor office is their "hangout room" but it is way too small.  It has a small ikea sofa, a tv and some work-out equipment jammed in there.  They do hangout there and sometimes do sleep-overs in there but you can't really host more than 1 or 2 friends at a time. 

We have a dining/sitting room that isn't used a whole lot that we are considering converting.  Right now it's open to our entry (with a wide arched opening) and the other end has a small doorway into the kitchen.  My idea is to ditch the wide arch and do a normal wide opening with a barn door so it can be closed off and turned into a large rec room.  (The first floor office has french doors-would it look weird to have a barn door basically next to the french doors?  I'm not married to the barn door idea but we want to be able to open the space back up.)

So we'd have to do some drywall work, add some doors, add/change some lighting.  

We'd move dh's office down to the first floor office and make his current office the work-out, storage room (this is the bonus room over our garage which can only be accessed via the master).  

Not sure how this would look for re-sale.  We could probably re-stage it as a dining/sitting area but if we install some sort of door it will definitely make our floorplan a little more closed off.  Our house was built in 2000 so it doesn't have the SUPER open plan that a lot of the newer houses have.  

Any thoughts or ideas?  Any easier ways to close off the area (that's not paper thin) that's not a barn door? 

[penguingrrl]

You could look into pocket doors. I think that French doors and barn doors are very different looks and would be very much at odds with each other.

[bittybomb]

I have pocket windowed french doors that separate my living room from my dining room. We don't have any curtains on the doors, so you can see in either room, but when the doors are closed, the noise is cut down considerably. Before we had the windowed doors, we had solid wood pocket doors there, but I wanted windows for letting light in.

[rooster222]

penguingrrl, bittybomb,

Love the idea of pocket doors!

bittybomb-are yours fully or partially windowed?

[bittybomb]

We have similar to these, only pocket doors.

www.wayfair.com/Verona-Home-Design--Glass-French-Doors-Z009321BA-Z009322BA-L6477-K~VRON1102.html?refid=GX105610134562-VRON1102_15864699&device=c&ptid=332038996446&network=g&targetid=pla-332038996446&channel=GooglePLA&ireid=25122673&fdid=1817&PiID%5B%5D=15864699&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6Ivi99S_5gIViZOzCh3sVgNWEAQYBSABEgIVxvD_BwE

rooster222,

[bittybomb]

On the other side of the dining room we have a single glass door that matches the pocket doors that leads to a hallway. With both of those closed, you truly cannot hear anything that is happening from the other side of the house. The dining room also opens up to the kitchen on the side, and the kitchen entries are all open, and you still cannot hear anything. Our living room is in the front of the house, kitchen and dining in the middle (side by side) and then we have a back family room.

[rooster222]

Dec 18, 2019 11:55:54 GMT -5 bittybomb said:

We have similar to these, only pocket doors.

www.wayfair.com/Verona-Home-Design--Glass-French-Doors-Z009321BA-Z009322BA-L6477-K~VRON1102.html?refid=GX105610134562-VRON1102_15864699&device=c&ptid=332038996446&network=g&targetid=pla-332038996446&channel=GooglePLA&ireid=25122673&fdid=1817&PiID%5B%5D=15864699&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6Ivi99S_5gIViZOzCh3sVgNWEAQYBSABEgIVxvD_BwE

rooster222 ,

Those would match my french doors perfectly.  I measured and I don't think our space is wide enough to do the pocket doors the same size as my french doors.  The current opening is 9 ft but there is very little wall space on either side.  My french doors are 6 ft wide.  

Also looking at interior sliding doors that look like french doors and glass bifold doors (don't love this idea but exploring all options).  

I think we're going to go ahead and rearrange the furniture so we can do a test run of the space before we do any actual construction.  Dh loves rearrannging. 

[bittybomb]

Dec 18, 2019 12:04:39 GMT -5 rooster222 said:

Dec 18, 2019 11:55:54 GMT -5 bittybomb said:

We have similar to these, only pocket doors.

www.wayfair.com/Verona-Home-Design--Glass-French-Doors-Z009321BA-Z009322BA-L6477-K~VRON1102.html?refid=GX105610134562-VRON1102_15864699&device=c&ptid=332038996446&network=g&targetid=pla-332038996446&channel=GooglePLA&ireid=25122673&fdid=1817&PiID%5B%5D=15864699&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6Ivi99S_5gIViZOzCh3sVgNWEAQYBSABEgIVxvD_BwE

rooster222 ,

Those would match my french doors perfectly.  I measured and I don't think our space is wide enough to do the pocket doors the same size as my french doors.  The current opening is 9 ft but there is very little wall space on either side.  My french doors are 6 ft wide.  

Also looking at interior sliding doors that look like french doors and glass bifold doors (don't love this idea but exploring all options).  

I think we're going to go ahead and rearrange the furniture so we can do a test run of the space before we do any actual construction.  Dh loves rearrannging. 

We were lucky in that our house was built with pocket doors.  But I have friends who have regular french doors separating their dining rooms from their living room or hall, and they just keep them open, or close them when necessary.  Maybe something like that would work?

[rooster222]

Dec 18, 2019 12:08:43 GMT -5 bittybomb said:

Dec 18, 2019 12:04:39 GMT -5 rooster222 said:

Those would match my french doors perfectly.  I measured and I don't think our space is wide enough to do the pocket doors the same size as my french doors.  The current opening is 9 ft but there is very little wall space on either side.  My french doors are 6 ft wide.  

Also looking at interior sliding doors that look like french doors and glass bifold doors (don't love this idea but exploring all options).  

I think we're going to go ahead and rearrange the furniture so we can do a test run of the space before we do any actual construction.  Dh loves rearrannging. 

We were lucky in that our house was built with pocket doors.  But I have friends who have regular french doors separating their dining rooms from their living room or hall, and they just keep them open, or close them when necessary.  Maybe something like that would work?

I think it would work and it would look really nice.  My only reservation is the space it would take for them to open.  Not a deal breaker but would still prefer a sliding door of some kind.  

[mrsukyankee]

We used sliding doors that worked with our other doors in our last house. You can buy kits that will work with almost any door.