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So we want to remodel our smallish 3 bed 1 bath 1951 ranch house, in order to create a master suite with an extra bathroom (hum, at long last, a real tub ), get rid of the current shoddily-built-but-so-useful family room and add a new family room.

As a starting point here is the plan of the house as it is right now, minus the unpermitted addition (since these plans will eventually go to the city's planning department we don't want to open any can of worms we don't absolutely need to ).

So. Where would you put a master suite and family room in there? We can only expand towards the back. There is plenty of space there, but since we bought the house because of its relatively big backyard we want to encroach into it as little as possible. And of course the bigger the more expensive .

More facts: The entrance of the house faces east. The back (full west) is very sunny during the day. The budget will cover adding 800 to 1,000 square feet. At this time we don't plan to touch the kitchen, since it is the single most expensive type of remodel and we can't do both at the same time. But extra points for plans that will let us/the next owner open it up. More points for ideas that impact the existing structure as little as possible, since we plan/hope to remain in the house during construction and need two bedrooms, the bathroom and the kitchen to remain usable. We originally thought that we couldn't have more than three bedrooms but that is finally not the case. So we are truly looking at adding a master suite, not remodeling the third bedroom into part of one.