This is an interesting discussion. We are currently toying with a kitchen renovation in our rowhouse and have similar questions about where to put the bathroom and also whether to do island/peninsula/or galley kitchen. Our designer wants us to do an island, but we have a small one already in our current narrow kitchen and I HATE it. I'm really leaning toward doing a galley, even though it's not best for entertaining.

One thing we did a few years ago is move the TV to the basement and so now we no longer have one on the first floor. It was one of the best things we've done for the house. We now have a sitting area that gets used plenty to listen to the radio/records/etc and for reading and for game playing (we have small kids). We do watch less tv overall but we're good with that.

Anonymous wrote:Geeze. How large is that skylight? Our kitchen has 3 smaller ones, and we have a ton of upper cabinets. The cabinets are up against the walls, so there's plenty of space for skylights in the middle.

FYI - if you can help it - don't get a custom skylight. My last place had one, and it was a big pain in the butt.

Thank you for the advice on the custom! I'll keep that in mind and try to get one not custom sized.

The skylight is not in the middle of the room, again maybe a diagram will help. There is a bay window on the second floor, so there is just a very little bit of roof on top of the first floor (i.e. the second floor is not exactly the same size/layout as the first floor). That is the only location a skylight could be placed because otherwise the second floor totally covers the first floor. So as you can see, that really impedes upper cabinets if the kitchen were in the middle portion of the house.

So here is the second floor (the skylight is that rectangle labeled 20):



And here is the first floor (the skylight is that dashed rectangle):

Geeze. How large is that skylight? Our kitchen has 3 smaller ones, and we have a ton of upper cabinets. The cabinets are up against the walls, so there's plenty of space for skylights in the middle.

FYI - if you can help it - don't get a custom skylight. My last place had one, and it was a big pain in the butt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I might have missed this in the previous posts but have you thought about switching the living room and kitchen and making the kitchen more centrallly located in the plan? It looks like you’d be able to get a large island there, a window for the sink and the living room would be the room that opens up to the back yard.

Thanks! That is the other floor plan that I have thought about. There are a few things that make me think it is better in the back, do any of these factors affect your opinion?

1. If the living room is in the middle, there can be a skylight in the living room. If the kitchen is in the middle, the skylight is not possible (because it would be blocked by upper cabinets). Light is at such a premium in rowhouses, that having a skylight seems like a pretty big pro.

2. There will be a small porch off the back french doors, where a grill is kept (so you'd have to walk through the living room with anything grilled). The porch is VERY small though, no room for seating. It is literally just to hold the grill and for stairs down to the backyard.

3. The backyard is small. There is basically space for the stairs to walk down from the first floor and up from the basement. A very small concrete patio and then parking for two cars. The living room will not really "open up" to a nice large back yard area. You'll mostly see our cars. To be outdoors, we will go up to the third floor roof deck where there will be a couch and a dining table.

4. This particular block has alley house. So across the alley from my backyard is someone's house (i.e. a front door, their second floor has windows looking at my first floor). So they have a pretty good view into the back of the house. Would it be better to have the living room in the middle for privacy?

Here is plan of the backyard in case it helps visually:

Yes. I see your points. How tall are your ceilings? Were you planning on bringing the kitchen cabinets all the way up? If not then maybe the skylight can still work there. Is the skylight existing? If so - does it really bring in a lot of daylight right next to the side wall of another rowhouse? When I was redoing my kitchen I found this image on Houzz that I just loved. I'm in a SFH, but I thought this was a brilliant use of space in this Chicago rowhouse. Hopefully the link will work. It's probably wider than yours, but it just seemed like a really nice living/ kitchen combo space with large windows out the back. If you do feel the kitchen is best in the back, I like other's comments about adding an island - perhaps with seating on one end - and leaving out cabinets altogether on the dog leg side or make them shallow like one of your plan versions. And like others I don't care for that peninsula that narrows the entry to the kitchen too much. https://www.houzz.com/photos/lincoln-park-residence-traditional-chicago-phvw-vp~27619954

Oh, and poster from 16:53 again - TV placement is a HUGE consideration as far as I am concerned!

Hi, we are currently in the process of having our rowhouse completely renovated and adding an addition. It is interesting to look at your floor plans and inspiration pictures, too. We had a lot of the same considerations.

We toyed with the idea of putting the kitchen in the middle of the house, but ultimately decided not to. We do plan to having our living in the front and dining in the middle, but we can easily swap it out if we need the space. One of the reasons we did not put the kitchen in the middle is because it just isn't seen much and we felt that it might be a layout that people were not fans of, in general. Also, as you point out, light is a huge consideration and we were concerned the kitchen would just be too dark.

I love the idea of having your powder room opposite from the stairs, but I see you quickly abandoned that and I imagine it is, again, due to ensuring as much light as possible flows through the house. We struggled greatly with where to put our powder room for the same reasons and ended up putting it roughly in the same place since the stairs already block out light and we did not want to block out any more.

We are also essentially putting windows on the entire back side of our house to try to get in as much light as possible.

Sorry I don't have much in addition to offer - as I said, your plans look very similar to ours so it would seem we came to many of the same conclusions as we worked through the process. We did decide not to include a tub in our master bath. We decided that as far as personal use goes, my husband and I don't really take baths. This allowed the bathroom to be a bit smaller and we put more space into closets. But I think this is more of a personal preference than anything else. We do have a tub in the hall/guest bath.

I do agree with a previous poster about getting rid of the peninsula and going for the wider opening into the kitchen. This is another personal preference thing, but I'm not sure how much you will use that peninsula. I think it would end up just collecting stuff?

Another note, is it at all possible to get at least a half bath in that den on the top floor. I just imaging it could be a pain if you are up there and need to go to the bathroom and have to troop downstairs. We actually have our master bath on a separate floor from the other bedrooms. The floor our master bath is on has a den/tv room and we put another half bath there because we do not want people using the master bath when in the tv room, but we also did not want people to have to go downstairs. Just a thought.

Good luck with your project!

Anonymous wrote:I might have missed this in the previous posts but have you thought about switching the living room and kitchen and making the kitchen more centrallly located in the plan? It looks like you’d be able to get a large island there, a window for the sink and the living room would be the room that opens up to the back yard.

Thanks! That is the other floor plan that I have thought about. There are a few things that make me think it is better in the back, do any of these factors affect your opinion?

1. If the living room is in the middle, there can be a skylight in the living room. If the kitchen is in the middle, the skylight is not possible (because it would be blocked by upper cabinets). Light is at such a premium in rowhouses, that having a skylight seems like a pretty big pro.

2. There will be a small porch off the back french doors, where a grill is kept (so you'd have to walk through the living room with anything grilled). The porch is VERY small though, no room for seating. It is literally just to hold the grill and for stairs down to the backyard.

3. The backyard is small. There is basically space for the stairs to walk down from the first floor and up from the basement. A very small concrete patio and then parking for two cars. The living room will not really "open up" to a nice large back yard area. You'll mostly see our cars. To be outdoors, we will go up to the third floor roof deck where there will be a couch and a dining table.

4. This particular block has alley house. So across the alley from my backyard is someone's house (i.e. a front door, their second floor has windows looking at my first floor). So they have a pretty good view into the back of the house. Would it be better to have the living room in the middle for privacy?

Here is plan of the backyard in case it helps visually:

I might have missed this in the previous posts but have you thought about switching the living room and kitchen and making the kitchen more centrallly located in the plan? It looks like you’d be able to get a large island there, a window for the sink and the living room would be the room that opens up to the back yard.

Anonymous wrote:Where's the HVAC and water heater?

Water heater is small/instant and in the storage closet between the powder room and the stairs. HVAC will be in the basement (the third floor will have a separate mini-split unit).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do you have the living room between the dining room and kitchen?

Is the 2nd drawing from the left the first floor? It's a bit confusing.

Yes, they are in order from left to right, the third floor, the second floor, the first floor and the basement.

The living room is between the dining and kitchen, mostly because I don't use the dining room that frequently and the middle space is MUCH larger (I don't need a table to seat 25), so I'd rather have more living space. However, I don't think there is anything going into either space that would force a future owner to use them in that way (i.e. no chandelier over the table) so if someone else wants to flip them, they can.

Where do you eat? In front of the tv?

That's where I eat if I am home alone? Is that weird?

I'm single and primarily eat at the office on weeknights or out on weekends. Thus, the rarely used dining table.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought.

What about putting the kitchen in the middle (the traditional dining room area and the proposed living room area) and the living room where the proposed kitchen is, at the back, feeding into the backyard via a nice terrace/deck, and the dining area up front.

Just to toss out an idea.

Great idea! (I'm not the OP)

That was my thought too. I'd hate having my living room area where I spend most of my time in the middle of the house and not directly by windows. Also think future buyers will be bothered by the weird layout of kitchen -->living -->dining area

One other thing to consider with a proposed living room in the back. There are alley houses in the alley of this particular rowhouse. So the best view from someone else's house into mine, is from the back, there are some windows from the alley houses into what is currently the proposed kitchen. There will be a skylight into the living room, and there is a window at one end of the living room. If the kitchen were in the middle, we would not be able to have a skylight into the kitchen (because upper cabinets would block it), so ultimately less light.

Future buyers would be totally able to put the dining in the middle of the house and the living in the front. I don't think anything will force them to put their furniture the way that I have mine.

Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought.

What about putting the kitchen in the middle (the traditional dining room area and the proposed living room area) and the living room where the proposed kitchen is, at the back, feeding into the backyard via a nice terrace/deck, and the dining area up front.

Just to toss out an idea.

Original poster here: This is the main other layout I have considered, but I see this layout very very rarely in the houses near me, and that makes me think there must be a reason? I think that this layout may be easier to accomplish if the basement is a totally separate unit (so that you don't have stairs between the basement and first floor), as is the case in the first example below.

This one has it, and is otherwise quite similar to my layout, but the kitchen really suffers from an awkward layout (the sink is in the island basically in between the stove on one wall and the fridge on the other). And they did not have to account for stairs to the basement.



This house has it in the middle, but the space the living room is in at the back is a bit wider than mine will be. The other downside (to me) is that you can't see the living room well from the kitchen, so you are less connected.

Anonymous wrote:We are in a row house and have lived in it for about 10 years. We also use the front room as dining room, contrary to most traditional three room deep row houses. We did it for the same reason - middle room is bigger/more open and gives us more seating and options to arrange furniture and more privacy.

For the kitchen, one of those last pics you posted - that looks like a big wide space in the middle. That’s a lot of walking back and forth between sink and stove and fridge. Carefully consider your layout. Did you have a kitchen designer weigh in? One of our friends does have a similar, but smaller layout. They have a smallish mobile island they plop in the middle with a couple stools. We did a different layout and went with island in the kitchen. So we have cabinets and counters on two walls with fridge and stove there and sink in island. There wasn’t a better place for our sink, but it worked out well as we can talk to kids or guests while washing dishes. Our island has room for four counter stools. The other wall is blank - no cabinets or anything

The one thing that I didn’t realize about our home is that the back door would be our primary entrance bc we park out back and also have a shed where we keep strollers, scooters and bikes. So even though we don’t have strollers anymore, we still often go out that way. If we did it again, I would plan a storage/mud room something as well as a small seating area at the back of the kitchen. We kind of had to force the coat and backpack storage in there.

Thank you! Original poster here.

I also live in a rowhouse about 5 minutes from the one I will be renovating and it has the same layout. So I have lived with the dining room in the front, then living room, then kitchen for 2.5 years. I'm glad to hear other people like it too! I agree, having the living room in the middle gives privacy and keeps the two spaces we spend most time in (living/kitchen) next to each other.

In my current rowhouse (and perhaps in the future in the renovated one) I also have a fairly small mobile island. It is too small for stools, but easy to walk around and provides a gathering place in the kitchen.

That is a good point about the primary entrance point. In the current house, we enter probably 65% out the front and 35% out the back. No one who lives in the house commutes in a car. Its hard to see in the design, but as currently drawn, across from the table at the back there is meant to be a little mud room/storage type space which will allow for coats to be hung (and for pet food to be placed underneath).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought.

What about putting the kitchen in the middle (the traditional dining room area and the proposed living room area) and the living room where the proposed kitchen is, at the back, feeding into the backyard via a nice terrace/deck, and the dining area up front.

Just to toss out an idea.

Great idea! (I'm not the OP)

That was my thought too. I'd hate having my living room area where I spend most of my time in the middle of the house and not directly by windows. Also think future buyers will be bothered by the weird layout of kitchen -->living -->dining area

We just moved into a new house and we inherited the seller's awesome and very solid dining room table (it's super heavy). They placed it in the great room (next to the living room). I'm not too happy with this setup, but we can't move it without a lot of help. So there it remains, but I would really like to move it in the area next to the kitchen.

Is it marble? If it’s wood and a few people can’t move it, it’s probably bolted down.

Where's the HVAC and water heater?