can I avoid an extension? All advice welcome!

[blueteapot]

Hiya everyone! Just wondering if anyone could advise if something is doable. We live in a mid 70s semi detached bungalow with attic conversion. The living room is quite large, as it was intended to also house the dining table. The kitchen on the other hand is relatively small. We are in the process of redecorating throughout, and have put in a new bathroom, fireplace etc and are gearing up to sort the kitchen.

The previous owners had the house from new. Although there is a garage now initially there was a single skin of bricks little outhouse by the back door. When the garage was put up it wasnt needed for storage so the owners built a little corridor over to this with a back door on (its literally the length of a door and a half) and made it a joint on utility room. The back wall backs onto a similar room on the neighbours side and is dry. There is another little joined on outhouse beyond it which houses the boiler, so the facing wall is dry. Problem is, the wall with the door on is quite damp, given that it is only a single skin of bricks and nothing beyond it.

At the moment this little utility room houses washing machine, tumble along the damp wall with space for one more appliance, and fridge, chest freezer and 3 lower / 4 upper units on the dry wall. There would be space for roughly another 2 cupboards down this size.

point is, we would like to make better use of this space, and remove some of the units from the kitchen to increase the dining space in there when we come to put in the new kitchen. We'd like to avoid the expense of knocking it all down to extend as there is plenty of potentially useful space already there.

is there any way to make that single skin of bricks wall insulated and dry? It has a relatively new PVC window, and the door is a good and well sealed PVC door with a long thin window beside. I'd also be tempted to knock into the boiler room outhouse and steal a bit of that space too as there's quite a bit of spare in there also but would that need planning or anything? The corridor and 2 outhouses are all covered by one long sound flat roof that was renewed approx 4 years ago.

All ideas welcome!

Ps sorry that was so long winded, I hope you can picture what I mean in your head lol. Essentially it's a small square kitchen, with a door at the back right that leads to a little porch / corridor with the 'back door' forming the left hand side. This opens out into a little square room and there's another smaller square room beyond which houses the boiler and is accessed from outside x

We had part of a double length garage incorporated into our house to make an office. The walls were single skin so we had insulating panels put on the inside then insulation above the ceiling and a new flat roof, double glazed windows and a radiator. There was never any damp and never has been but I would not do this again - the room is always cold even when the heating is on full in the winter.

I just don't think the insulation is up to it - maybe if we'd had a pitched roof so could have had more insulation that might have helped but it's now a room we don't really want to use. With hindsight I would have demolished the back part of the garage and had it rebuilt with insulated cavity walls and a pitched roof with insulation - I just hate being cold!

Double it up with breeze blocks and then you can insulate properly. I just don't see the point in skimping. This is an important part of your home, so I would built it properly. It is hardly going to cost a fortune.

Thanks for the replies! Definitely not looking to skimp, just trying to work out if we should go the whole hog, knock down what's there and rebuild (would be longer away savings wise) or if the current building could be brought up to scratch. Size wise it's ample. Is it as simple as doubling it up and insulating it though?

We use the room a lot at the moment, nipping in and out to the fridge / washing machine etc. It doesn't have any form of heating, which tbh you would only really notice in winter. though as there's a door between it doesn't make the kitchen itself cold. We would be putting a radiator in if we went with that option.

I guess I'm just hoping we can afford to do this all now rather than having to wait to extend x