Perplexed by DH’s home ‘improvements’ plan (with floor plan)

[BlueAndWhiteGem]

I’m looking for some other views on what my DH has proposed to solve our lack of space. It’s us two and a young baby, we lack living space and can’t comfortably fit a dining table.

I’m not keen myself, but would welcome opinions and any other ideas.

His proposal:

-knock through the existing wall to combine living room/kitchen - could add an island and dining table. We only did the kitchen 3 years ago so would mean we can keep that.

-Extend with either single storey build or an orangery and make this the living room. Would run length of back of house and extend out by up to 3metres.

My concerns:

-Kitchen/diner at front of house is unusual, right? Due to lay out of our house, we’d need to walk through it every time to get to living room.

-4 by 3 living room would be small’ish, but could work. We have trees at the back of garden so it would be a nice outlook.

-I’d rather we built an extension and knocked kitchen into it but DH says that would be a lot more expensive and we’d largely lose what we did for it 3 years ago.

Ideally we’d move but whilst possible, that would stretch us financially.

I think I'd be inclined to do the same TBH
Alternatively, make the current lounge into a snug, fit a corridor between snug and stairs, open out extension and kitchen into a bigger kitchen/diner with open lounge family area. You'd need to get your tape measure and work it through properly as it's a big of a squeeze I think

I don’t think you can knock that wall out between lounge and kitchen as it is the only wall running across the middle of the house and likely structural.

Personally, I would extend behind the kitchen and make that into a long dining area across the back of the house. I would also make it both stories so your 3rd box room becomes a proper bedroom.

I'm with others in that you're best saving your money for when you can move. Meantime, consider replacing that under stair cupboard door with a pocket door or even a curtain and buying a folding table to have against that wall in the kitchen.

Something like this has a small footprint but will be a decent size for the 3 of you, extended.

https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/pinntorp-gateleg-table-light-brown-stained-white-stained-70529465/

Have you actually viewed houses and looked at mortgage affordability? And costed up getting work done? Build costs are horrendous just now. In your shoes I would do that first. Otherwise, as others have pointed out, you’re likely to be throwing money away and will end up moving anyway. We just moved on that basis and although it’s meant a higher mortgage and we’re having to do some work ourselves I’m so glad we did it, there’s no way we could ever have turned our last place into what we wanted.

Do not spend near £100k or remotely close on a house of that size. You will not make it back

£100k is a lot of money
There is a danger you will exceed the max that people will be prepared to spend on the house.
From the floor plan it looks like a fairly standard family home. It's probably surrounded by similar houses and there will be a max people are prepared to spend.

In the long term you might be better off moving

I think you’d probably be better moving. You don’t want to spend 100k and go over the ceiling price for the street. Even if you have more space downstairs, upstairs you may grow out of quite quickly.
Also just be wary re schools, it could be good now but anything can change so I wouldn’t let that stop me exploring other areas.
Also which part of the country are you in?

Thanks all, @desdheaddafs we are in the South West

Not sure how pricy this would be as you would probably need a steel for the internal wall but how about moving that internal wall to make the living room smaller and the kitchen larger?

Have you also had any of these ideas costed? The prices of extensions these days you might also find that £100k isn’t actually enough. Personally I would move before ploughing anything like 100k into a house that isn’t ever going to be long term.

Is the floor plan reflective of the actual kitchen layout now? If the built in cupboard was blocked up and accessed from the lounge would that allow enough room in the kitchen for a table?

Why can't you fit a table in the diner bit of the current kitchen diner?

If it's because of the understairs cupboard door, could you move the door 90 degrees so it's in the corner of the lounge instead? Would cost next to nothing in comparison to knocking walls down.

Ha! Snap

Another vote for moving! £100k would be a significant trade up, a lot less messy and possibly less stressful.

Your ground floor layout is almost identical to mine, but my house is a foot or so bigger in both directions, and my back door is on the flank wall, so the units run the whole width of two walls.

I have room for a table that seats 4 comfortably, 6 at a pinch. The table is quite narrow (0.7m x 1.5m) and there's plenty of room to walk around it. Maybe a narrower table might be a solution? Mine was made by a friend when he lived in a tiny terraced house, and he didn't have room for it when he split up with his wife and moved into a pokey flat. Technically, it's not mine, but I've been "looking after" it since approx 1980.

This is nigh on DH's house when we first met - except your bathroom was his bed 3, and his bathroom was right at the top of the stairs.

Definitely move the cupboard so it is accessed from the lounge. And look at creative ways to get a table in - even if it's against the wall 95% of the time. I'm not sure why you think a table won't fit in the other half of the kitchen?

Don't spend 100k on it. Make it work for a couple more years, then move.

Also, finding a way to get even a small table in there, without making super expensive changes is likely to make the house easier to sell, when the time comes, as you will be showing prospective buyers that it's possible.

Re the mortgage I always think you have to consider what works for now. If you don't make the jump now prices are usually only going up so that jump then becomes too much and you end up stuck. This is what happened to my friend with a starter home very similar to yours and her now 17 year old 6'4" son is in that tiny bedroom 3. The other son is 6'5" so no chance of swapping either.

If you are paying nursery fees they won't last forever and if you move with 2 children then the lending may potentially be less as you have 2 dependents. I would ring London and Country mortgage brokers, they are whole of the market and most importantly, free, no fees to speak to them or for them to arrange your mortgage. Have a look on Rightmove at what is out there and on the sold prices section too.

In the meantime try to squeeze a table in as suggested above which should make it easier to sell if you do that.

I would not throw more money into this property. You won’t recoup it.

Extend at the back (double story if possible) and keep/refit the kitchen?

But ideally dont put any more cash in at all (i doubt you'd recoup) and just suck it up and move.

Its honestly quite small for a family.
Our house is reasonably big but the way we see it is it's for 10-15 years and we can downsize when kids are bigger

I’m assuming by the room size that this is a relatively new build (post 80’s?). The chances of getting planning for a double height extension is virtually nil. So you could put on a downstairs extension. However, the biggest issue is the lack of hallway as however you configure the layout-the front room is a corridor. I’d prefer my kitchen to be a corridor rather than my lounge but ultimately it’s too small and you need to move before another child.

Similar to ours. We had open plan but put a wall in to create a separate sitting room and I much prefer it but we extended out the back slightly to make a bigger kitchen diner.

I am “perplexed” by making plans for £100k extension but the op and her husband don’t appear to know the existing size of their property and how much extra they’d be getting with DH’s “plans”!!

My kitchen is as the front. It’s better for us.

My house was built with your layout. When I bought it, the work had been done and I love the layout. The utility room was built where the old driveway was, but that aside, the end extension dining & reading area is so light (roof light too). The kitchen is small, but so efficient. Could something like this work for you ?