Home Chiropractic: How a Small Remodel Can Improve a Home’s Chi

Just like a chiropractor can do little movements and adjustments to help your body to work better, oftentimes a micro-remodel can provide major improvements to your home.

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In this post we’ll look at two projects that are small remodels with big flow improvements. 

Pam and Ted’s House:  

This home was occupied by a family of four: Mom, Dad, and two young kids.  The pain they felt every day was that there was no easy way to enter the home.  The front door opened into a cramped entry area with no room to move around, without a deposit spot for shoes, backpacks, coats, etc.  

Looking at the as-built floor plan (before remodel) of the main level, you’ll see a tiny coat closet that backs to a powder bathroom.  Adjacent to this is a large living room.  

To solve the entry dilemma we demoed the tiny closet and stole square footage from the living room. We created a large walk-in entry/mudroom closet with a pocket door where the family can hide all of their stuff.  We continued the new wall of the entry closet and built an archway into the slightly smaller living room.  This provides separation from the entry and living with some visual interest, while providing the perfect spot for a good sized entry bench.

What about the now smaller living room?  Previous to our project, this space was underutilized.  The traffic pattern through the entry and adjacent dining room cut the room in two and made furniture layout difficult.  Re-purposing some of the living room to gain a big dedicated foyer actually helped define the living room more clearly.

Nate and Jess’ House:

This home actually has 2 chiropractic floor plan adjustments, one in the kitchen and one in the upstairs bedrooms.

Kitchen Tweak:

Here’s the original kitchen floor plan:

Here’s the new kitchen layout:

As you can see the new kitchen layout didn’t change too much.  We moved the fridge out of the corner to create a small front entry closet and full height pantry next to the fridge.  This moved the aisle way between the kitchen and entry to the right, allowing us to create a nice bar top area using the previous dead space in the lower right portion of the existing kitchen.

Bedroom Tweak:

Here’s the upstairs original floor plan:

As you can see, there is one large square bedroom and one awkward big long bedroom with a closet at the end of the room.  This huge closet holds the bedroom space in front of it hostage as you can’t put any furniture or anything in front of it.

Here’s the floor plan we built:

We carved up that long bedroom and big closet into several smaller and more useful spaces.  This new floor plan commits the nice big square bedroom to being the Primary Bedroom (we don’t use the term Master anymore) by providing a walk-in closet and a cute window seat area.  The other bedroom that was extra long now has a little office area in the upper right corner.  In other words, these moves let that big dead space in front of the old huge closet be utilized as a window seat and an office.  

I hope this inspires you to consider how small changes can have huge impacts on how you live in your home! Read more here about other small changes you can make to improve your home's flow.