Dining Room vs. Extra Bathroom

Here is the original floorplan:

http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015026793094?urlappend=%3Bseq=985

a trade-off no doubt ... beauty is in the eye of the beholder

so for a guest to go to the bathroom they need to go into one of the bedrooms. having a room with 2 WIC that is not that large doesn't make too much sense. lastly, why didn't they just put W/D where the shower was in the maid's room and make it a small 1/2 bath for guests to use????

strange to say the least

I like the new layout better except that you need to go through a bedroom to get to either bathroom. Maybe should have made the converted bedroom into the master and left the other bathroom open at end of hall.

What is the makeup of the family living there?

New bath not the issue for me here - that definitely adds value. I much prefer having a separate DR and two smaller BRs over the current arrangement. If clothes storage was a biggie here, I'd much rather do some clever closet builtins in the maid's r.

Love it, a great design as far as maximizing space, if you need to compromise a little to get a 3 bed, 2 proper baths. I see it that you are
losing:
- Separate dining room
- Pantry
- Tiny second bathroom
Gaining:
- A larger master bathroom. (plus upgrading the maids to a normal size)
- 2 WIC for the master
- Making the maids room a proper 3rd bedroom.
- If they got rid of that closet at the end of the living room (the only decision I didn't like), it would be a great square combined living and dining, without compromise.

have you seen 4X7 WIC? they are not that Walk-In at all. have 2 regular closets with custom closet systems would yield similar storage.

These were great comments. I think ultimately it would have made more sense to swap the bedroom and dining room, then to install the new bath, but to leave the door at the end of the hall open so that it was a hall bath.

The maid's room seems like a separate issue to me. In it's current configuration, I can't imagine getting much use out of it besides having a laundry room. It would have been better to leave the bath and/or WD separate from the room. Alternatively, an eat-in kitchen could have partially made up for the loss of the dining room.

I'm not sure I understand this at all: what bathroom would the person in the maid's room use? Would s/he walk through someone else's bed room in the middle of the night? Even if it were a family member, that doesn't seem like a good plan--kind of mean's someone couldn't use it as a three-bedroom, but consign the "maid's room" to being a home office.