Walking straight into a kitchen/diner

[Spicylolly]

Has anyone got a layout like this? Never liked the idea of the front door opening straight into a kitchen diner but our new bungalow has a ridiculously large entrance hallway with weird triangle chimney (think once upon a time it the the original living room) and just a stud wall separating the small kitchen.
In an ideal world with endless cash I have a brilliant floorplan but that's rearranging whole layout, knocking down walls, moving doors etc BUT we don't have the endless cash annoyingly 😆 so the cheapest way to have a nice big kitchen would be to turn both rooms into a kitchen diner but will it be really odd walking into it straight from outside? Thoughts appreciated.

Gosh it’s a big of a strange layout! Ideally the kitchen would be better at the other end of the house, where the bedroom and en-suite are which adjoin the dining/utility room and the current kitchen and hallway would be better as bedrooms. However if you’ve got limited budget it would make good sense for now to get rid of the big fireplace and use that area as dining space. I’d only knock down the wall if it’s a fairly straightforward job, if it’s structural and if you’ll need to completely re-arrange the kitchen I’d probably leave it and live with it for a while before doing anything too drastic.

I'd knock through into the back of the lounge from the kitchen, then put up a stud wall with doors to make a smaller lounge.

How sturdy is the conservatory, is it a lean-to or more of a room you could make into a kitchen-diner? Keeping the kitchen part as a pantry area with washing machine but moving the sink-oven-fridge triangle out into there?

If the budget dictates only one wall can be knocked down or erected then that's the one. And if you absolutely have to, then you could place a divider off one wall so that there's a turn after you come through the front door, which creates a nice alcove for coat hooks, shoe racks. A solid base with a more open upper might do the job. Or the dreaded 'there's one in every home' kallax, properly secured of course.
There are advantages to your weirdy layout, as in future years you and your partner may find yourselves at the opposite end of the house to teenagers, much more...ahem...privacy.

Where would you store coats and shoes if you turn all of the hallway into kitchen? Could you keep a small part of the hallway?

While our front door is straight into our hallway not a room, there's no storage space at all and it's a pain - when visitors came coats ended up on the stairs (which you won't have), there are piles of shoes everyone trips over, nowhere to put post, keys or handbags. We've remodelled and now have a back door into a small utility with coats and boots space and it's so much better.

I love open plan living and have never had a problem with walking straight into the lounge area. You might want to think about having hallway furniture, eg somewhere for coats and shoes, in the vicinity of the front door though.

You could easily do a tall unit for coats, bags, shoes, etc, integrated into the run of kitchen units

We walk straight in to our kitchen/diner although we use our back door rather then front door (due to house/road layout) and have no problems with it. Although we do still have a hall way that the front door opens on to, we don't actually use that entrance.

It wouldn't be something I particularly wanted- but it wouldn't necessarily be a deal breaker if everything else about the house was right. The only time I think it would really mean a no from me was if I was trying to decide between two places which were equal in every other way.

I would love a bedroom a few rooms away from the dc.

Do you only have the one bathroom? So you have to go through the bedroom to get to it?

We don't want to loose the lounge space, it's wonderful. The kitchen looks out over the garden so it is in the right place so to speak, the conservatory is amazing, we use it all the time as it's central heated and has underfloor heating...when we bought the house we assumed it would be deal and we would put a kitchen diner there and use the kitchen space to make the bedroom next to it bigger.
It's an odd layout but it works for us...love being separate from the kids! They have their own bathroom at the end of the corridor (it's hidden under the zoom toggle on the screen shot)so
We have a utility room so no need for appliances. Theres no room for a fridge in the kitchen though so that's currently in the hall anyway along with a big larder cupboard....and I have no room for a dishwasher (gasp!)

I think we'll just have to live with it how it is for a while longer yet. We bought the house for the garden and knew it would be a project. Luckily perfectly liveable unlike our previous house which was shocking when we first move in haha.I

Thank for the replies 👍

This is actually a more accurate floor plan, shows the fire places.

I would definitely like the bedrooms like that. Privacy.

I'd build a stud wall across the top of the dining room so that it can become a bedroom. Then change the bedroom next to the Kichen into a dining area and if you can afford to , knock that wall down.

Add a stud wall to enlarge kitchen into the hall space - knock through an entrance through to lounge from hallway . Job done !

Could you add a porch to the front so you have somewhere for coats and shoes etc plus a bit of protection from drafts from the front door?

It’s a bit of an odd layout. If money allowed I’d relocate several rooms. But if you’re looking for the cheapest way to make a big kitchen then yes, you could knock through into the hallway. I’d keep a tiny bit of hallway though, just a few feet wide with a wall or divider and coat hooks. Just so you’re not walking straight into the kitchen.

I think it's a genius idea for this house. I have friends who had their kitchen and dining room either side of a narrow hall, and they just took down the walls to turn the whole lot into a big kitchen diner. Similar sort of idea really. Some sort of chicane as you come in or a nook for taking shoes off might be nice. You could maybe consider adding a porch in later years.

I would create a vestibule, so you still have a buffer space between the external door and dining / kitchen. If the door is central, have storage cupboards either side for coats, shoes etc. Then have a glazed internal door.

Do you use the dining room? And will you keep this for formal dining?

If you do, I would consider having a kitchen with a large island / breakfast bar for occasional seating (breakfast/lunch) and then keep the formal dining. That way you can fit a fridge freezer, nice larder etc in the kitchen, and your not making the existing dining area redundant.

What's classed as the dining room is currently our study (it was the garage many moons ago) with a tweak and small extension on the back to make a new corridor it can work as bedroom, can't at the moment as the utility is on the back of it....I've attached my long term plan, it's the cheapest way of jiggling it all around taking into account stud walls, soil pipes, load bearing walls etc....excuse the crass drawings literally just did it on my phone.
We could put a new stud wall in the hallway and take out the kitchen wall for the time being I suppose but it's probably throwing money away that we could save for the long term plan. Think I'll just have to put up with a pokey kitchen and weirdly large hallway. We have plenty of other rooms to escape to so It won't be too bad ☺

I don't understand why you don't make the hall smaller and enlarge the kitchen as that's in your long term plans.

Only because the doors to the bedrooms and lounge will be coming off the newly bigger kitchen then so we won't be able to put in new kitchen cabinets. I suppose it will feel larger but it won't look great. Although it's small now at least its complete iyswim.
That long term plan is just that, very long term 😕 unless we win the lotto haha

If in the short term if you want a bigger kitchen, my suggestion would be to remove the wall between the kitchen / hallway. But place a vestibule between the entrance door and Kitchen, just like you have in your long term plan. I know the internal door positions won’t be correct, but you wouldn’t be removing this wall later as it’s shown in the long term plan? You could move the lounge door if needed at stage 1, but obviously the bedroom one is tricky.

Yes, this won’t give you the long term kitchen layout. But you could refit the existing units, get a cheaper temporary kitchen. Plus this way you increase the size of the space, and can include the units currently sat in the hall, into the kitchen.

Can you not put the kitchen where the dining/utility is? That would keep all the "wet" stuff together. Make the current kitchen a bit bigger for a new dining room, gives you good flow from living/dining/conservatory space. Leave a smaller hallway (without fireplace) to store all the outdoor stuff

Would it help to just widen the doorway of the kitchen, or even just take the door off the hinges, put a small kitchen table in the hall, paint both rooms the same colour and just start treating them as one? You already have kitchen bits in the hall and if you need more "kitcheny" furniture you could get an IKEA island unit or trolley for extra worktop, a dresser for storage or a freestanding unit like those at Unfitted Kitchens. Put them up at the kitchen end like an extension of the kitchen "through" the wall.

But then I think I must be misunderstanding your long term plan. The lounge and bedroom doors don't look like they are moving so I'm not sure why you can't take the wall down now. Aren't you going to end up with fewer kitchen cabinets when you remove the end wall of the kitchen? Or will you run the units out to the conservatory?