Adding 3rd Bedroom to our Villa.

Hi guys,

We've been looking at possible ways to add a 3rd bedroom to our villa unit within the roof line. We currently have one child and will probably have a second in the coming years. We plan on eventually purchasing a house but for now we're happy with where we are. If we could add a third bedroom it would mean a few more years at this current PPOR and I would imagine it would not only add value but also increase the rental return on the property if we decide to turn it into an investment property.

The villa is on a sloping block and we have great access under the unit. My father is a carpenter and I have a lot of trade experience so we'd be doing almost everything ourselves to keep costs down. Basically the idea is to turn the current bathroom, toilet and laundry into a 3rd bedroom (Roughly 2.7m x 3.6m) and then cut a bit off our main bedroom to create a new bathroom which would be a narrow (1.1-1.2m x 3.6m). I've attached a very rough sketch to give people a better idea of what we are thinking. We'd then put a european laundry in our hallway cupboard.

My concerns are whether ..
1. The bathroom is far too small? I think it will be fine considering the place itself is small but wouldn't want it to be a deal breaker for majority of potential buyers/renters.
2. Will the lack of a large main bedroom put off buyers in the future? The bedroom size would be 3 or 2.9 x 3.6 depending on how wide we make the bathroom.

The Villa is located in the inner east suburbs of Melbourne so I think the pro's would definitely outweigh any cons as anything 3 bedroom and up sells for a high price generally.

Iv attached the rough sketch (Apologies for the severe roughness) and a current floorplan as well as a 1.25 x 3.9m bathroom to give an idea of what we are looking to do.

 

With 1-2 kids, how practical will a bathroom without a bath be?

There is minimum ventillation & natural light left in the bedroom (need 10% of floorspace for light/5% for ventillation).

How are you going to treat the existing window to the proposed bathroom?

It may be preferable to flip the bathroom onto the wall backing onto the robes so you have a small window into the bathroom & the larger one in the bedroom with a new doorway to the bedroom.

Of course this has to fly with body corporate & with the DA at council as you may be required to address a requirement for additional parking spaces.

 

Bung in a cavity slider on the bathroom to save some space.

 

How are you actually wanting to use the 3rd bedroom? We were in a 2 bedroom house when our 2nd child arrived. He stayed in our room until he was 12 months old and then shared a room with his sister.

For us, the biggest challenge was not having a dedicated study space and somewhere for guests to stay. I just wonder if you could do something creative with the combined living / kitchen space to make it a bit more multipurpose, rather than going to a fair bit of effort to add an extra bedroom just for a little person to sleep in?

From a rental/resale perspective, I wonder how practical that bathroom would be for a family of 4.

 

Thanks for the replies guys! We won't have an issue with Owners Corp, only 4 villas and we won't be changing anything on the exterior. In regards to council approval, can't see this being too much of an issue as I've seen multiple villa unit's in our area do the same thing as well as go up a level to create three bedrooms all with one car space.

We are considering whether it best to put the bathroom where the Robes are. It would create a wider bathroom our only issue is that we'd lose those robes for both rooms. Adequete light and ventilation won't be an issue.

On the bath, agreed a bath would be nice but our current bathroom doesn't have one either.

In terms of how we want to use it... initially we would use it as a study/guest room and depending on how long we stay in the property we may eventually put one of the two children in it. I suppose our thinking behind this idea is that it gives us more space and more options into the future. Currently we barely use the space taken up by the laundry hence our thinking that the space could be better used.

 

Most built in robes are 600mm deep, so factor that in when calculating your remaining usable space for the bedroom.

What's the house made of internally? Brick? Timber frame?
It will probably be more costly, but what about removing the wall between the kitchen/living room and the hallway. It will allow you widen the bedroom that faces the front, and therefore insert a built in robe without making the space too small. Kitchen will require some major tweaking though.

 

Timber frame for interior. Like the idea but we really want to maintain the seperation between the kitchen/living and the rest of the place. The place is small but we're able to put baby down at night and still entertain due to the seperation!

 

Use “external solid core doors” on the bedrooms for better sound insulation

Also makes doors hard to kick in (when the kids are older and chuck tantrums )

 

My computer drawing skills aren't great, but what about this. Hallways are wasted space, so remove the wall from the main bedroom & the kitchen to create an open plan kitchen/living/dining room & put two bedrooms where the living room was. You get to keep your bathroom & laundry where they are, because, personally, I'd find the proposed bathroom way too small. Of course, you'd have to spend some money to re-do the kitchen, because I've just taken a good amount of space from it.

 

The money saved from having to redo the bathrooms could go towards a nice kitchen
Estimating the area of the meals area, i'd say its about 1.8m ~ 2m.

That that total space would be 4m x 6.6m. Dividing that by 2, it would give you two very nice size rooms (eg 4m x 3m + 4mx 3.6m).

In addition, if you do decide to redo the bathrooms, you could add a toilet to the existing bathroom, and then also convert the laundry into a second bathroom with a euro style cupboard laundry. The Laundry tub can be put outside in the yard if you really need one.

3 Bed + 2bath... that's where the money's at.

 

You would lose the dining area, but you can make up for it with a nice eat in bench area in the kitchen.

 

Ooh, another thought......to save space in the kitchen, remove the door between the toilet & laundry & put a big panty in the laundry.

 

Done......see above, but my version only has one bath.

 

Even better.....2 baths, one with an actual bath. You may have to chuck the laundry outside though, then there's room to fit a separate shower as well.

 

That's one of the advantages of a villa over a unit.
Much easier to access the subfloor to do piping for a toilet.

My brother's villa had bath/shower/basin in one room and separate toilet.
There was a bidet in the bath/shower/basin room, which we thought was rather silly given the toilet was in a separate room.

So we removed the bidet and added a toilet in its place. $800 later, it became a place with 2 toilets, which is heaps better in a 3 bedder setup.

 

This is a great use of the space to create the extra bedroom.

 

Wow! Amazing ideas thanks guys! We've never considered reconfiguring the living to create bedrooms. It's something we'll definitely look at further my only concern is that this would require a lot more work and money and the front bedroom would be white close to the road.

I think even if we decided against adding a 3rd bedroom wed seriously consider your plan with the two bathrooms.

 

Curious to have your opinion on why a conversion from 2+1 to 3+2 would increase the value much more than to a 3+1 (as if also often costs more). Is this because you change demographic or change target buyers/renters to a more wealthy pool?

 

@Yann
Buyers expectation.
If you had a choice between a 3 bed 2 bath and 3 bed 1 bath, both were In the same location and same finish and the same price, which one would you take?

 

Might depend on the size of the bedrooms and whether they had built in wardrobes.