Going open plan

[jellyandsoup]

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on how opening up their house to make it more open plan has worked for them? We are looking to open up the back of our house so we have a large kitchen diner with a sort of sitting room/playroom off it. We will still have a seperate hallway and seperate front room. Have been all for it but now wavering on if it's right. We can just about afford the work but all mean extending the mortage by a few grand.

[5rivers7hills]

Great as long as you have one other separate reception room I think.

The modern desired layout is very much a 'super room' kitchen / diner / family room with glass doors onto garden plus one other separate reception.

[notacooldad]

I would do it as long as there was a separate living area which there is in your case.
I love the idea of open plan but when i have expierence it the noise if appliances when trying to watch tv or something ruins it!

[christinarossetti]

As you'll have a separate front room, playroom/sitting room and hallway, it sounds great.

The kitchen/dining area is much lighter than previously. It's not huge, we we knocked through without extending back, but it gave us quite a lot of space and function for the amount that it cost.

[OhWifey]

We've just done it. It's changed the way we live as a family so much for the better.

[YorkshireTea86]

I'd do it as long as I had a separate reception room as a grown up room I could go and relax in after the kids had gone to bed.

[namechangedtoday15]

Yes, but only in you can have utility room too / appliance cupboard so you font have washing machine and dryer in open plan space, and you have quietest dishwasher on the market.

We've extended to be open plan at the rear of the house, separate living room and utility room. As pp has said, changed the way we live. So fab especially when we have friends / family. To be honest, I can't remember last time I went in separate living room but always good to have to future proof house as children get older.

[guilty100]

I'm currently converting to open plan, with a small utility for my washing machine. I can't wait for the new layout - the current one is simply unfit for modern living (1920s semi).

[Mollieben]

We are buying a house with open plan kitchen diner and living area. I love the layout although hadn't thought about the noisy washing machine!

[IDidContact]

Our plan is to go open plan but with internal doors that we can use to create separate rooms when we need to. So definitely when the washing machine is on. Hoping it will work!

When people say going open plan has changed the way you live, can you give examples?

[Redredredrose]

We have something like this - kitchen area then dining room with a sofa right at the end, and glass doors out into the garden, wth a separate utility. It is quite nice, though DS doesn't play in there very often. I'm hoping when he's older he'll do his homework at the table while I do the dinner, or sit on the sofa telling me about his day... We also have a separate sitting room, library/study and playroom on the ground floor though, so the house isn't really very open plan!

[Stinkymimi]

I’m going to rock the boat and say I lived with open plan for 15 years and would not buy such a house again. With small children it might be nice, but we ended up putting many of the walls back in as our children grew. Noise travels more than you would anticipate and somehow there was never anywhere I could find peace and quiet apart from my own bedroom, especially as the teenage years approached (that was the straw that broke the camel’s back really, nowhere for teenage friends to hang out except the kitchen / living space).
I do completely get the appeal of a kitchen diner (rather than the tiny galley kitchen that many older houses have), but going open plan is the next step along: I have no desire to sit and “relax” in what is effectively the kitchen of an evening with all the detritus of family life around me and the washing machine whirring in the background. I love my tiny and cosy front room and the door which shuts the world out.

[SingingMySong]

We are debating doing this at the moment.

I do wonder about the sofa in a corner of the kitchen. Do they get much use? Do you have a tv too? Whereas knocking through to existing living spaces seems more appealing. We were annoyed by dishwasher noise in our old house though, so maybe it's not for us

[Ttbb]

It depends on how old your children are. Meal times are hell in our open plan kitchen/dining/living room.

[Toomanypackingboxes]

We are overseas and renting an open plan house, the sense of space and light is a plus as is being able to chat to people as you cook. The noise of the dishwasher in our case is very loud, also the fridge at times, the DC practising musical instruments goes through the entire house, cooking smells get everywhere, every room has to be kept clear and tidy or the whole house gets messy, kids playing is both noisy and messy everywhere. I prefer our zoned space in our UK house, but our kitchen in uk had a table and a island with stools, which is the best of both worlds I think.

[5rivers7hills]

@Stinkymimi but the OP does have a separate reception room as well

[Believeitornot]

We are well in the middle of building work to go open plan. We also have a separate reception room and utility room. Plus a study upstairs. So plenty of places for us to spread out as the children get older.

I'm looking forward to it. In our old home, we used to have a kitchen with table and that was nice. But the table wasn't that big so we had a separate dining room which felt a bit too formal. And we had a separate living room.

So taking it down to effectively two reception rooms seems about right. I imagine when the children are teenagers, they have the option of the other reception room or their bedrooms. As a teen we just hid in our friends bedrooms!

[heateallthebuns]

We've no separate reception, all open plan. We love it. My dads an architect though, so I've never lived in a house with separate rooms except when renting, I founded it annoying, I didn't know what was going on in rest of house.

[minipie]

That's what I want to do OP. Big kitchen/diner which also has a semi separate sitting area (semi separate because the room will be an L shape), then a completely separate room at the front.

However I am also going to have a very small utility/laundry cupboard so that the laundry machines can be somewhere else. I hate having laundry in the kitchen, noise and trying to keep it all clean. I am debating whether to carve the laundry cupboard out of the big open plan kitchen, or carve it out of a bathroom upstairs (unorthodox but it's where the clothes are and where we will have space to hang out to dry).

[Ropsleybunny]

We have a large kitchen dining room, with double doors, that open right back, to the lounge. When the doors are open the whole downstairs is open plan. I love it, especially when we have visitors.