ᐅ House from 1987 – Opinions on the Floor Plan and Potential Improvements

We have purchased a house from 1987, which we plan to renovate somewhat over the next few months. Soon there will be four of us—two adults and two children. Child 1 is 2.5 years old. In the long term, we will need three bedrooms. Since we both work from home, having an office is absolutely essential. The exterior dimensions of the house are 8 x 10.5 m (26 x 34.5 ft). The orientation is as shown in the picture (north is at the top).

Our plans and current challenges:

Ground Floor

• Remove the wall between the kitchen and living room. Interestingly, this wall was not part of the original building plans—it was probably added during construction or afterward. In the building permit / planning permission, the kitchen is designed to be open, without a door. This results in a kitchen size of about 3.00 m x 2.4 m (10 ft x 8 ft). The kitchen is therefore relatively small. My husband’s idea was to move the lower wall to gain about 50 cm (20 in). This would create an additional kitchen row, as otherwise, with a peninsula facing the living area, the passage into the kitchen would be too narrow. However, this would eliminate the niche for a coat rack, which I find important. Otherwise, I don’t see a suitable place for it.
• I would like to use the room on the lower side purely as a playroom for the kids since they are usually where the parents are. In the long term (more than 10 years), we could move our bedroom to the ground floor. The room is about 3.50 x 3 m (11.5 x 10 ft), so it should be adequate.

Upper Floor

• The bedrooms, including the children’s rooms, are basically fixed. As mentioned above, once the children have their own rooms, we would move down to the ground floor.
• We are not entirely agreed on the office space. My husband would prefer to make a walk-in closet here, as the available wall space in the bedroom is limited. Alternatively, the wardrobes would have to be placed as room dividers. He would move the office down to the playroom or the hobby room. The argument is also that two small children occupying two entire rooms would be very inefficient.

Basement

• We haven’t put much thought into this yet. It is clear that the wall next to the oil tanks needs to be removed to make space for technical equipment (heat pump, possibly photovoltaic system later).
• The hobby room, with a generous light well, could be used as an office, a mudroom, or a fitness room. So far, the hobby room has been heated. Since we are considering underfloor heating (milled), we would probably have to decide whether that makes sense here as well.
• A note that the passage to the garage is open.

How would you arrange the house? Do our ideas make sense? Or do you have completely different, crazy ideas?