We live in a house that was new 18 years ago, and still has the original kitchen. It is a 15 x 17 room at the back of the house and we also have a garden room which has glass all round, two Velux windows in a tiled roof and is 14 x 7 accessed from the kitchen via external grade sliding patio doors. There are 4 houses like ours in a development of 6 and two have knocked through into the garden room to give a big kitchen/family room and the other has just refitted the kitchen and left things as they are. We are in our 50's and too close to the end of our mortgage to want to extend it, so our new kitchen is to be funded by the lump sum on a pension falling due next year, around £15k, plus a few odd bits of savings we can drag in if we go over budget.
I'm sick of the old kitchen which is now close to falling to bits anyway and can't decide whether to knock through which would require RSJ, building regs and upgrading insulation on garden room or whether just to refit the existing good sized kitchen with nice quality units etc.
A possible compromise would be to fit some newer style doors in the "gap" between the two rooms, and bi-fold or some kind of French window type doors that also fold would be good - does anyone do anything that small - I suppose the opening is about foot wide, but at present with the sliding bit of the patio doors only opening on one side and a huge step into the garden room they don't really flow well.
Our two neighbours who have knocked through say it isn't cold but as it faces south the garden room is very hot in summer and freezing in the winter.
What should I do? DH is an engineer and could do some labouring and decorating but we want a really good finish on the kitchen so wouldn't contemplate DIY fitting.