Redevelopment of a two-room apartment

A two-room apartment is the most demanded option. Compared to her, a one-room apartment is not spacious enough for family people, and a three-room apartment is rather expensive. Despite the fact that the old housing stock ("Stalinka", "Khrushchev", "Brezhnevk") is pretty shabby, in the future, it is in great demand among buyers.

A project for reworking a two-room apartment must meet some mandatory requirements.

• Load-bearing walls must not be touched. Find out where they pass through the apartment, if they are inside the square. If they pass only along its perimeter, there can be any redevelopment.
• Do not use brick, an abundance of sheet and profile iron, reinforced concrete as a material. Such structures are very heavy - even a half-brick wall weighs up to several tons. This, in turn, is an additional effect on interfloor floors, which can begin to crack and sag under excess weight - which, as a result, is fraught with collapse.
• Coordinate any redevelopment with the housing office and related authorities. The fact is that each apartment has a registration certificate, in which the layout of the walls between the rooms and the quadrature have already been specified. "Alteration secretly" will be revealed when the same apartment is sold - not you, but your children, grandchildren will sell, but to answer them according to the law. The fine for unauthorized redevelopment is impressive and amounts to more than tens of thousands of rubles.
• Do not use central heating for underfloor heating.
• Do not place the kitchen in a single-level house (almost all houses are) above the living room of the downstairs neighbor.
• Do not move the bathroom to an area located above the kitchen or living rooms.
• Do not carry heating radiators to a balcony or loggia.
• Natural light must penetrate all living rooms.
• If the kitchen has a gas stove, provide a kitchen door.
• Do not block any access to meters, plumbing, ventilation, water supply.
• The entrance to the bathroom should be from the corridor, not from the kitchen.

You can remake an existing 2-room apartment in a dozen or more ways.

It is possible to make a "three-ruble note" from a "kopeck piece" if the common room - as a rule, a living room - has a square of more than 20 square meters. m. The bedroom will never be larger than the living room. The latter is divided into two separate rooms in a number of cases.

• The balcony or loggia communicates directly with it. The partition between the living room and the balcony is being demolished - and the balcony itself is additionally insulated. Its glazing is required - if it was not closed from the outside.

• There is an almost square entrance hall, which in practice turns into a part of the living room. It vaguely resembles a studio apartment - with the only difference that the living space in the apartment is not the only one.

• The dimensions of the kitchen allow you to move the partition between it and the living room. This, in turn, may require removing the partition between the bathroom and toilet, transferring the washing machine and dryer to the resulting combined bathroom.

After redevelopment, its area grows so much that it becomes possible to divide it into two rooms.

• If the family has a child, then part of the living room or one of the bedrooms is fenced off under the nursery.

There are no other ways to convert a "kopeck piece" into a "three-ruble note". This alteration will not add many square meters. In the 80s and 90s, the following practice was widespread: additional piles were placed under the balcony, and it was simply built on. If it was about the first floor, enterprising people seized the space in the courtyard near the house, and erected a capital extension of up to 15 "squares". But this method required connections in the housing and communal authorities. The superstructures on the first floor were unsafe - the window turned into a door, that is, part of the load-bearing wall was demolished.

The living room, combining with the kitchen, becomes something like a walk-through room, provided that a large arch is cut through the partition, occupying half of it (and even more).

The resulting area becomes a full-fledged kitchen-living room. The passage to the kitchen from the corridor is closed, if it was, as unnecessary.

You can turn a two-room apartment into a studio by removing all partitions - except for those that fence off the bathroom from the rest of the area. But this approach is more often used for one-room apartments.

In an apartment of almost any year of construction, you can combine a separate bathroom. But let's start with "Khrushchev". It does not matter whether a brick house or a panel house, both options have almost the same layout.

There are three varieties.

• "Book" - 41 sq. m, the living area is divided into a couple of adjacent rooms. There is a small kitchen and a bathroom.

To isolate the bedroom and living room, their footage is significantly reduced. One room is a checkpoint.

• "Tram" more spacious - 48 sq. m, the rooms are located one after the other.

• "Vest" - the most successful: fully modular and isolated living space (44.6 sq. M.).

Alteration of the "book" - continuation of the corridor to the end of the passage room. This brings her plan closer to the "vest". In the "tram" the corridor is continued until it reaches the longitudinal load-bearing wall - partitions cut off part of the living room, but at the same time the kitchen and the rest of the living room are connected (the partition between the one and the other is demolished). In the "vest" they are limited only by combining the kitchen with the bedroom (smaller in area).

A kind of "Khrushchev" - "trailer" - is a modular structure with compartmentsresembling fenced-off seats in a carriage. The windows in such a room face opposite sides of the house. The plan resembles a "tram", it is possible to arbitrarily divide the bedroom at the far end into two children's rooms, connecting the living room with the kitchen.

Redevelopment of "Brezhnevka" consists in the merging of the bathroom and toilet into a single bathroom, in the connection of the kitchen with one of the bedrooms. And also next to the kitchen, a built-in compartment made of boards is removed, and the kitchen gets a little more space.

The "ruler" apartment is found both in Soviet houses and in new buildings. All windows face one side. The traditional option is more often used - connecting one of the living rooms with the kitchen, continuing the corridor with "biting off" part of the large room.

The number of rooms is distributed strictly according to the number of windows.

It is advisable to use a thin steel profile with plasterboard as a material for new partitions. It will not load the interfloor floors more than it is stipulated by the standards for this type of slabs and the structure of the house as a whole.

If a space for a children's room is being organized in the apartment, it is recommended to allocate a suitable space in advance, but at least 8 squares. The fact is that a growing child will soon need a larger room - especially when he starts school. It is recommended to divide a room into two when its area is at least 18 sq. m. If there is no second window in the same room, use opaque, light-transparent partitions.

When the passage through one of the rooms is eliminated, their area decreases - in favor of the continuation of the corridor. Then the through passage is closed - and from the resulting corridor, a passage is arranged to each of the rooms changed in area.

The cabinet, if you can't do without it, can be moved to a loggia or balcony. An option is possible when it is equipped in the kitchen-living room - for this, zoning of the living space is used. You can use special screens (including mobile ones) - or fence off the area with panels made of unbreakable plexiglass, plastic or composite. The latter almost do not take up living space.

A corner "kopeck piece", for example, in a Khrushchev building, often has a side window facing 90 degrees compared to the other two windows facing the main side - for example, on an avenue or a street. When you combine two rooms with such windows, you get one large room into which sunlight enters, for example, from the south and east, from the south and west, if the house itself is facing south.

Arrangement of a "kopeck piece" for renting one of the rooms for a long term makes sense if you do not have a "three-ruble note" that allows you to implement this plan. In this case, the living room or bedroom is divided in two.

Redevelopment of apartments, including two-room apartments, brings people closer to the apartment they have dreamed of for a long time. Even from a cramped apartment in "Khrushchev", you can make a much more functional living space. This option is a transitional stage for those who have not yet saved up for an apartment in a new building that meets all modern requirements.

Below are a few more options for redeveloping a two-room apartment.