Worth extending or not?

[IShouldBeSoLurky]

We've had an offer accepted on a house. It's a pretty standard Victorian house layout: double reception room with a kitchen off it at a slight angle. It's a good size but the layout is slightly awkward because of the angles. We're considering doing a small side return extension, going less than 3m out into the garden, and taking down the internal walls to open up a kitchen-diner. Wouldn't want to go bigger because that would mean losing too much outside space.

I think it would make the space a lot nicer, but we couldn't actually be gaining a huge amount of additional square meterage. We'd be putting in a new kitchen, doing the windows and floors anyway, so it's not like the options are doing no work versus doing loads. Not at the stage of getting quotes yet (we haven't had the survey done) but I'm wondering as a general principle whether a small extension is worth the cost and hassle or not? We'd be living there for 5 years at least.

We'd also have to take into account the cost of continuing to rent while the work was done.

Having just done pretty much what you desricbe, I'd say yes! It was stressful, but worth it. We lived in our house while it was happening and were kitchenless for 3 months - with a weaning baby (she's still a big fan of sandwiches!). So I'd say worth the hassle definitely. In terms of worth the cost... I suppose it depends where you live, whether you'll get back what you spend on it when you come to sell. It does make a big difference in terms of how we use the downstairs space, and the kitchen feels much more part of the house, rather than just being stuck at the back. For me, thats really imortant as we have people round a lot and it means one of us isn't stuck in the kitchen away from the fun!

sound that's important for me too, and just being able to use the kitchen together rather than one of us me being stuck in the kitchen while the other DP is holed away upstairs.

So cute that your DD loves sandwiches!

We're doing the same as soon as we've saved up enough. It's going to make a huge difference to how we use our space. Though we won't gain much extra footage as such, being able to open up the new extension into the existing kitchen and current dining room will be a much more workable space for us. We're hoping to start next summer so I can move into my mums house during the summer hols

Woah that sounds like an excellent plan. It's so hard to judge whether one will actually make one's money back, especially in London because prices are rising pretty fast anyway. We wouldn't go crazy with top-end finishes etc, but having had a sucky galley kitchen for 4 years I am really keen to have something a bit more sociable.

Just remember that good contractors are often booked up months in advance ! So if you are thinking about a specific time frame,look around for peeps well in advance !

Thanks - yes, as soon as we've had the survey and know if anything else major will need sorting we will get people round to quote. We'll need a party walk agreement so there will be a delay with that anyway.