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.

OP your house is almost an identical layout to mine, so much so that I wondered if you lived on my street until I saw you live in the south 😅 I have had the same thoughts for the decade we’ve lived here (me and two DC, early teens). It is VERY tight but spending £££ on either a loft conversion or an extension on the kitchen (which, if it were my house, I would make a dining room and also try and squeeze in a tiny downstairs loo) doesn’t make any sense. The house is only worth £250k, and spending £60-100k on building work would never make it worth £350k, not on this street. Mine is terraced though, which might make a difference. I have considered moving lots of times, but it’s harder with slightly older children. In your shoes, and with the benefit of hindsight, I’d move sooner rather than later, and put that extra £100k into a property that already has the space you need. Better to stretch yourselves financially while you’re young and your child is young, than to try and do it in ten years time.