Extend or knock through

[jarox]

We have a kitchen diner and a separate living room.

We spend all or time in the living room with the kids because they play/watch tv and we sit on the sofa.

We haven't got room in the kitchen for any soft seating so it's not very nice to sit in for long.

We are trying to decide if we extend the kitchen. Small 4m extension to the dining area so that we can have a sofa/tv area in there too or just knock through the dining wall into the living room.

Extension is going to cost a lot more money and be a lot more work but knocking through means we have one big living space no separate rooms.

We do have a small playroom/study that we really just use for toy storage. Everything seems to be brought into the lounge anyway!

Wwyd?

I’d say extend, it’s nice to have a room separate to the kitchen space where you can retreat to if you want to. We have done something similar and although we spend the large majority of family time in the kitchen area, I imagine as the children get older they will want to spend time away from me and DH

If you have a study/playroom already that you don’t use, I wouldn’t build an extension too. Is the study big enough to be a snug/tv room?

Hey Jarox, we went through a similar situation of late. After tossing and turning over this for what felt like years, we came to the decision of biting the bullet and extending as it adds value to our house. It also means containing building work to outside our house which we're over the moon about as I couldn't deal with kids and the fun construction tools that are left out.

Anyway, we're nearly there with our builders, but found this article really useful to understand where we stood with costs.

www.vitaarchitecture.com/how-much-does-an-extension-cost/

hope it helps you as much as it did us.