Please critique this kitchen plan

[NamedyChangedy]

Hints and tips would be great - this is my first project of this size and I don't want to make the wrong decision...

We have a skinny Victorian house and are planning to knock through into the side return to make a wider kitchen. We'll need planning permission because of the length.

We can fit a dining table in there now but it's a squeeze. I'd like to be able to get a sofa in there too, so we can all use the room as a family (2 DCs, 6 & 4).

The architects have come back with an initial drawing but I'm finding them rather uncommmunicative. Perhaps someone with experience of living in a similar layout can tell me if this makes sense.

My main questions are:

• Is there any point having two entryways into the kitchen? Will it make the whole of the downstairs harder to heat? (The thinking was that blocking up the right-hand doorway would make the middle reception room quite dark.
• Is there enough space left on the lefthand entry way so you don't have to turn sideways to get into the kitchen? Especially when the cupboard doors are open...?
• Is this the best configuration of dining table and sofa?
• Will we have enough kitchen cupboards?

I'm trying to imagine how we'll use the space - DCs playing or doing homework, us cooking / having friends over for lunch. But I'm not sure that I'm imaginative enough for this. Is it better to have had the kitchen fully designed before I finalise the structural stuff?

This is my first time posting pics so let's see if this works...

What are the dimensions before and after?

If you can move WC under the stairs and relocate the rest to the kitchen, the obviously no need to divide the living room.

If you can move utility room, you can open up the pace from the back room so it doesn't lose light from the back.

I don't like completely open plan though, so I'd block off the room at the from to make a separate living room. The back room can then have sofa toys etc and make it feel part of the new extension.

The big problem with the architects plan is the loss of light to the living room and I think this has been poorly addressed.

What toastie has drawn is what we did. (Without the side return.) It cost a very small percentage of what an extension would have, and achieved the same result for the property; a space to cook, eat and hang out in.

If you also need more square footage then get drawings and quotes to compare price for side return with extending into garden. The latter can often be cheaper.

Thanks for the drawing, Toastie, and for the advice, all. That does seem like the only way to get round the problems that everyone is pointing out.

I was initially reluctant to move the utility because the boiler is new and the room was redecorated recently. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not worth keeping if it means the whole house doesn't work.

So we'd have the loo under / behind the stairs, and move the boiler, washer & dryer into the kitchen. This is starting to make a lot more sense.

Would you expect an architect to be able to advise me on roughly how much this would add to the building costs? They've been reluctant to give estimates so far. I didn't know if I was overstepping by asking, but it is pretty important!

Oh and the garden is about 11m long btw. So we could perhaps lose a little bit of the length but I'd be reluctant to. We'd want the DCs to still be able to kick a ball around, but I'm also thinking about the extra cost of the rear extension - I have in my mind that it would add c. £20K+ to the building costs - is that outlandish?

Somerville, how did you use your middle room? Did you have your dining table in there? And where did you put your actual kitchen cabinets? Trying to picture this...

You should be able to get a lovely family space without doing an extension to the back, but you need to plan how you'll use the space carefully.

Can you draw various options and upload pics on here - it's easier for people to give critiques if they can see how you're planning to use the space.

NAMEDYCHANGEDY. Just extend to the rear, not the side.
Less hassle,
Less disruption,
Less cost,
More attractive and
Your dining room won't be too dark.

We had kitchen cabinetry down the whole right hand wall (that in your current plan is being knocked down) and L shaped to the end wall, as far as our double French doors to garden. And fridge and larder on the short left hand wall (the new one formed for WC). Then dining area on the left, beyond the WC.
Middle room had sofa and toys and with new flooring, all the same as kitchen/diner, and all painted the same colour, it felt like all the same room. And middle area was much lighter than it had been.

In all honesty though it was a house we knew we wouldn't be in long; we went through a period of buying wrecks and flipping quite quickly to be able to afford to move into the area we really wanted. So every penny counted with each conversion.

I'm about to do something to my house now that won't add value particularly but will make it work perfectly for us and mean we can stay here until the kids leave for uni. So I totally get that it is justified to do so sometimes. But I do wonder at lots of expense resulting in such a dark middle room.

I would do like this

Oh and window between play area and chair label

Thanks so much Somerville, that really helps.

Toastie, this is one of the images that originally made us think that we could leave the utility where it was, and not do the rear extension:

But I like the idea of drawing some options, will return shortly with a few ideas. Finding that we're both quite visual, so having to find ideas on Pinterest / Houzz, rather than being able to just 'feel' the space, like some of you seem able to.

How wide is the current kitchen? We got a sofa, table and units in a room 10 x19 ft. OK it was a tiny sofa!

Friends of ours have a similar layout but it's the other way round - as you walk from the hall, there would be tall shallow cupboards (that store tons of stuff) on the side wall. The business part of the kitchen is a peninsula like your drawing, with a wide shelf/breakfast bar along the stick=out bit. I think they kept a door where the dining room window was. This adds to flow through the house saves congestion in the hall. Both table and small sofas are in the back half of the room near the garden doors. I've tried to sketch it.

I would try to set it out so the main route through the room doesn't go through the cooking area.

Meant to say, I think you could do a version of this with your utility kept in its current place.

NotMe, do they find that their dining room is very dark with this layout?

It's a bit dark but a lot of light comes from the lounge end. There are plenty of roof lights in the extension and a glass door IIRC. It's a compromise of side return extensions as others have said. You can get excellent low energy/LED lighting that would help too.

That house looks lovely. The kitchen layout is different to the way you have in your plan. I think your plans make the kitchen a walk-through area - can you draw up how it would look with kitchen to the right under the side extension?

The house is light because it's painted white and has sun coming though the roof glazing. Will that area catch the sun in your house?

Are you sure you'll get PP? Have you spoken to the neighbour on that side? I'm no expert but it looks as though they'd have grounds to object.

Also, have you spoken to them about building a new party wall on the boundary? That would give you and them more space if they wanted to extend in the future.

Hello again you clever people. So we've spent the weekend devising various imaginary scenarios and we've come up with a version that I think addresses a lot of the points you've all raised. My rough sketch is attached, which has ended up very similar to Toastie's.

On reflection, I see that it's pretty essential that we move the utility room. Having a washer / dryer in the kitchen is fine. The only consideration is the cost & complexity of moving the boiler. I have no idea what that involves, I just know that it's not completely straightforward.

The other advantage of this layout over the architects' is that we now don't need to extend the full length of the side return, we can just do 6m under permitted development. Hopefully with no PP required, we can start the work earlier.

So the big question is how much more does this cost - I'm guessing a fair amount of steel would be needed if we're removing the chimney breast in the centre of the house.

Does this make any more sense...!?

I think that's much nicer. Have you measured how much space you'll have between the island and the table?

I think if your going to the effort of move stuff, I would go and try and get planning permission to square off the extension. Otherwise your left with a strange shape at end

I think I would also still suggest no island, it looks squeezed in, and if table if right next to it, how much are you realistically going to sit at it? They are really for when a table is in a seperate dining room ages away so you have somewhere to eat coco pops. But you have table?

I would with new layout, extend as planned first time all the way down. Then tall kitchen units on left all the way down, low units only on right, and large table in middle. Playroom sofa area can remain.
That way the low unit side can house washer and dryer and cupboard for laundry basket. Plus extra storage for kitchen. And food and stuff on high unit side ( by high units I just mean bases, worktop and top units. Otherwise with untility gone you will be squeezing washing stuff into the kitchen island or something

I can't criticise it much, as it's the layout of how we built our extension.
Except that it was all squared up. And the back door was to the right, so we had a few units along the wall.
Plus we had double doors between the front living room and the back (already there when we bought it).

You can figure out how to move the boiler so that you don't need to move it too far. If you're already remodeling everything, it should be easier.
Ours was upstairs and it wasn't a big problem.