Is it worth extending the kitchen? Thoughts welcome!

[themummyway]

Hi loves, first time poster here!

Lockdown has given me some time to think about the kinds of work that I'd like to do to our house.

We have a kitchen diner at the moment which is roughly 5mx3m and a large lounge which is roughly 8.5mx3m.

In the kitchen diner is a breakfast bar but I'd love an island. The kitchen is also tiled horribly needs overhauling.

The house is not our forever home, so I'm torn between:

• Extending the kitchen by about 3m (to have more space for an island, longer work surfaces and shower in our downstairs loo) and redoing the kitchen

OR

• Just redoing the kitchen and keeping the size as is.

I'd also like to split our living room up two separate reception rooms as it once was - this time using industrial glass doors.

Again as the house is not our forever home, I'm unsure whether it is worth the cost

Has anyone done similar works to their home and is able to share roughly how much it cost them?

What's your budget? Have you thought about just moving?

In the current housing market I'd hesitate to spend a lot unless you were adding a really functional room to the house - e.g. a utility, study, extra playroom rather than just a bigger and prettier kitchen.

A small one storey extension just to push in a couple of meters more space in might help - sometimes nosying at what neighbours have done (rightmove) can give you ideas.

I think 5m x 3m is big enough for an eat in kitchen if well planned, if you go to the effort of extending people would probalby expect to see a sofa area as well as dining table. An island is good for workspace but it doesn't take the place of a dining table, not everyone wants to perch. There are often posts of people trying to work out how to plan the space in an L shaped kitchen extension, it's not always straight forward as you lose so many walls.

@loofah01 budget isn't an issue - but my DH raised the point of just being grateful for what we have and not spending money unnecessarily. Not keen to move though as I like the area and the house of sentimental value of us.

Thanks for the advice @notmenono!
We have an L-shaped kitchen and I'm not really keen on an additional sofa area as the living room is more than sufficient. We also have great garden space/potential to convert our garage into another large social space so if needed.

I think perhaps I just need to rearrange the kitchen/potentially knock down the wall in between the kitchen and living room to take space away from the LR and add it to the kitch xx

Not keen to move just yet* I should say.

Once we have kids, it's highly likely that we'll move for a bit more space though xx

You mentioned and emphasized this is not your forever home? Clearly you're more attached than I thought so get the pad and pencil out and start sketching. If we could see drawings etc it would help enormously

Before spending money see what happens with your jobs and the economy in general.

I wouldn't bother with an island. But space for a Kitchen table is always good.