Would this put you off? Kitchen/utility extension.

[Thistledew]

I have a small Victorian end of terrace property. At the moment, on the ground floor there are two reception rooms (living room and dining room), which are open to the extension on the back of the house that contains a narrow galley kitchen just over two metres long with units on both sides, and a bathroom at the back of the house. There is currently a bi-fold door between the bathroom and kitchen.

We are planning an extension and will put the bathroom upstairs. I am deliberating whether to knock down the dividing wall, opening up the kitchen into what is now the bathroom space, or whether to keep the wall and door so that the bathroom becomes a utility room.

If we go for the utility room option, we will then move the fridge and washing machine into it, to free up a bit more work surface space and two more cupboard spaces. It will also mean that we can shut the door on the washing machine and not have to listen to it churning away if we put it on in the evening, as currently there are no doors between it and the living room.

One idea I would appreciate opinions on is to move the kitchen sink into the utility room. This would create a significant amount more work surface in the kitchen. The sink would only be just the other side of the wall, and the doors stay open most of the time. It would be not more than about a metre away from the cooker, for example.

Would it put you off buying a house if you found that the kitchen sink wasn't actually in the kitchen, but was very close by?

Dishwashers are quiet.

Dishwashers come with different Decibels so look for a low one if you have open plan.

Some dishwashers are quiet. We had an old one (couldn't afford new at the time) which was very noisy indeed!

One large room and fridge in the kitchen. I and many of my friends have similar sized houses to you and opening up the bathroom into the kitchen just makes the space feel so much bigger.

Can you imagine the faff of having to open door every time you wanted a bit of milk for your tea?

With regards to the washing, in many countries it is common to have the washing machine and dryer in or off the bathroom. I know someone who has their washer dryer in the downstairs loo. You can put airers up in a bedroom if you want washing out of the way and it's too wet to line dry.

It round put me off if the fridge was in there too. The fridge should be in the main part of the kitchen.

I have a washine machine with a built in time delay, so I put washing on and set the delay for twelve hours later so the washing machine is noisey at five am when we are upstairs in bed, or after we have left for the day or morning out.

Plus my machine has a 30 minute cycle so not to long making noise

Just another alterative

You need a working triangle in the kitchen if at all possible so it should have sink, fridge and cooker all handy so none of these in a utility. Do you want to be going into another room to get the milk for coffee/tea all the time? It would drive me mad.

Stack a washer and dryer in a housing for them. Make the kitchen as big as possible. People like big kitchens! Put the dishwasher in the kitchen too. They are not very noisy and they have noise ratings so look for the quietest A rated machine. Again do you want to take all your dirty crockery from the dining room, through the kitchen, to the utility? This is inconvenient. If you have a tumble dryer, how much washing will you hang up anyway? Much better to have a conventional, non quirky, kitchen layout as prospective buyers will not have a reason to knock down the price! Utility rooms are useful, but not in smaller houses. You spend loads more time in the kitchen, so get that right. 4m would give you a far more spacious feel to the house.

When our dc were young we bought a house where the previous owners had had the kitchen extended. The original kitchen was 10 ft sq and they had built what was intended to be a utility room behind it, also 10 ft sq. However, in the process they decided to knock down the wall between, so ended up with a kitchen 20ft by 10ft, and no utility room.

Imo, this was a much better arrangement as it gave a decent sized kitchen, with room for a table. Yes, it meant the washing machine and tumbledryer were in there but we only put them on when we were out at work or overnight, so noise was not an issue for us.

I would rather have a bigger kitchen and lose the utility room if I was forced to choose. I really wouldn't want to have the fridge in the utility room, and you will need a sink in the kitchen. We now live in a house with a utility room and do all our washing up in there, but still need to rinse hands, veg etc in the kitchen.

I would consider redesigning to have a proper kitchen diner and seperate lounge...

A seperate utility is wonderful but yes to prep sink still in the kitchen. Also why not have a large storage cupboard in the utility room - you don't actually need a huge amount of cupboard space in the kitchen if you move the things you use rarely to the utility room.

I have the wm and tb stacked in a cupboard. It really annoys me as things fall out of the dryer onto the floor when I am emptying it. I am hoping to build in a big laundry cupboard into the hall so they can be side by side.