Extend for kitchen diner or not?

[Believeitornot]

We bought our house and moved in a few weeks ago. Before we moved in, we decided we would create a kitchen by extending and moving the kitchen.

Now I'm thinking we move the kitchen and knock through to the dining room without extending. To me this will save us a few £ks (especially as we would be moving the kitchen back to its original place, so not a big job) and would get a decent sized kitchen diner (roughly 6m by 3m).

Dh wants to extend out to give us 6m by 4.5m). I'm wary of this as our garden is a slight slope towards the house and we'd lose garden, which isn't huge anyway. Plus an extension would take much longer (I think!) and cost more.

It would give us more space but I can't decide if the extra 1.5m is worth it.

Has anyone any words of wisdom?

I have done similar to what you're suggesting (I.e. Internal reconfiguration) and I love it, plenty of space. And it means I can add an extension / sun room later if I want, and it would be "extra" space.

To be honest, it would depend very much on what that extra 1.5m strip gets you. Yeah OK we'd all like bigger space, but do you actually need it? Would you fit in all the cupboards / workspace / table / chairs you want / need without it? Or does it make a difference to the size of table, or having a dishwasher or not?

We are in a similar position - before we moved in we planned to extend for a kitchen diner and have the current kitchen be a second study or music room but once we got a full appreciation of the practicalities of extensions we decided not to extend and knock through. Haven't got around to doing it yet though!

We would have a utility room (where the existing kitchen is), so I'm not too worried about fitting in things. Washing machine and tumble dryer would go in there for example.

The extra strip would mean a bit more room for our table (which we can already fit in) and some more kitchen cupboards. We might be able to have an island instead of a u-shaped kitchen . But because it doesn't give us space for an extra living space I.e say a sofa or arm chairs then it just means more "circulation" space.

I would rather save the money for other projects like sorting out the driveway and re-doing the roof to make bigger bedrooms. Dh says these aren't priorities - I know they aren't but I would like to have a head start on the funds to do them!