Back door off kitchen - essential?

[fiorentina]

We're moving to a new house shortly, and want to do some work to the place, knocking through the kitchen into the dining room to make it more family friendly.

The kitchen isn't particularly big and one question I had, was whether you'd consider it essential to have a back door off the kitchen, or just leaving a french/patio type door, from the dining room end would suffice, replacing the kitchen door with a window. Trying to create more space for units wherever possible.
Thanks

I would be happy to just have the one off the dining room end - but I guess it depends if you'd be annoyed by muddy feet going through that part of the room?

If both rooms are fairly small, then fine but think about things like carrying a leaky rubbish bag of gunge through the dining room to get to the rubbish bin - fine if the route is fairly short and direct, not so great if you have cream carpet down in the dining room bit of the room.

We've just swapped our back door and window round, so that the door comes out of the dining room end of the downstairs and the kitchen has an extra window. It meant we could put about 50% more work surface in, so basically much the same as you're planning on doing. Have put a rug by the back door and a big mat on the outside step, and so far it's not got too filthy, though we've not had a winter yet and have wooden floors so v easy to keep clean.

That's helpful. I think we are considering tiling throughout the kitchen/diner so dirty carpet shouldn't be an issue but it's a good point...

I don't want to put off potential buyers when we come to sell the place either, it's not a forever home.

I would say no need for a back door off the kitchen.... but we lived in a house for 12 months with just french windows at the back and it was very very annoying actually. I personally would never buy a house like that

we have just turned our kitchen round so that we have a back door instead of a window and it is fab. it was a total pita with bin bags, rainy days and kids running in and out of the house however, not having seen your set up if it is easy enough to get past the table and stuff to get bins out and stuff then go for it!

We knocked through to create a kitchen/breakfast room and we just have patio doors at the breakfast room end and a window at the kitchen end. Works fine for us but we have a separate area for dining so tends to be family meals only in the kitchen so don't mind the muddy boots by the door!

I'd say that more worktop/units so more functional space is more important to live in and for resale. also if you have two lots of doors could be a bit much depending on size of the space, might make it feel like a thoroughfare iyswim

We got rid of the back door from the kitchen and had french doors put in. This practically doubled our kitchen unit space. It was the only place we could have wall units too as we have windows right round.

We don't have any doors from our kitchen except the one into the hallway. Our kitchen is at the front of our house.
I would think that french doors and no back door would be perfectly acceptable.

We have no kitchen door as previous owners blocked it up to increase kitchen space but they also knocked through to the dining room and there is a French door off of that. This works fine for us. Our rubbish doesn't go out the back door anyway - it goes out the front as that is where the wheely bin is. The french door is purely used as garden access.