Where to start with a kitchen extension?

[LifeBeginsNow]

We are moving house shortly and going from a lovely large kitchen/diner with family area to a bog standard kitchen with a separate dinning room. It's very dated so will definitely need something doing.

The trouble is, neither of us have ever undertaken a project like this and have no idea where to start.
I've seen a layout I like (which I think will work) and it involves knocking down the adjoining wall (not supporting as far as I can tell) and blocking up the double doors that lead from the dinning room into the living room. I was also hoping for a long concertina door opening the one half of the finished kitchen into the garden. I think we may need a little extension added on to increase the overall depth of the kitchen also.

Where would I start planning and pricing this up? Does it require planning permission and if so, is this fairly straight forward to obtain (it's a 20 year old brick house in the Midlands)?

Could anyone point me in a good direction please? As for funding, we were thinking of adding it to the mortgage. Not ideal but I'd rather be comfortable than have to save for years and live in a hovel (the move and the amount we've paid off in the last three years means the mortgage reduces by £50k).

Personally, for such a big undertaking, I'd hire an expert. There's companies which can do this entire process for you, including the design and creation of your extension. They'll take care of the planning and pricing part too, as well as go through any necessary legal hoops for you.

I would use an architect whether or not you are applying for planning permission.

If you can afford it, a good one will also draw up a detailed build spec to use when putting out the project to tender. It saves costly mistakes with builders later on.

I would use an architect, they will come up with ideas you haven't even thought of and tell you how to best use the space available.

You may not need planning permission, it depends how big the extension is.

Do architects charge a lot to provisionally put a plan together? We've just got no idea how much something like this would cost.

I know someone having their kitchen updated and it's costing around £11k but that's without knocking down walls and adding an extension. I dread to think how much it will be once other people are added into the mix.

Get quotes. We got architects round and told them what we wanted to achieve, they then told us how possible it was and gave us ideas we hadn't thought about plus talked about knocking down walls, installing the steels etc. That was all free. Then we got the quotes emailed to us.

That's reassuring, thank you. I didn't want to shell out anything if the whole project is going to be unfeasible.

We have just instructed an architect for our Kitchen extension plans.

He came wednesday. Looked around and discussed what we wanted. When we agreed for him to start he took measurements and photos everywhere and will return in about 3 weeks to go over the plans with us. This plus submitting planning permission, building regs, steel survery etc is costing about £1000 + vat.

Were planning going out approx 4 metres from the kitchen. Then adding another 2.5/ 3 metres onto the back of the garage for a utility room. DH's rough guess price wise is that will be costing around 40/50 k for the building work.

I second the recommendation to use an architect.

We are in the long, drawn out process of getting an extension organised. We had an idea that we could just tack a bit of space onto the back of the house. However, we commissioned an architect to do some basic sketches in case we were missing something. What they've come up with is much more clever than we would ever have got to ourselves - and it's going to give us loads more space (and of a much higher quality). The extra that it has cost is well worth it, because the final product will be so much better than it would have been had we just got a techniian.

That said, there is a huge difference between a really inventive architect and one who just makes bog standard extension that are hardly more imaginative than what would could come up with yourself! Choose wisely!