If you've moved your kitchen to another room...

[TaleOfTheContinents]

DH and I are buying a new home and would like to rejig the downstairs area. As part of this, we'd love to switch the kitchen and living room around - it would really improve the layout and they're next to each other and share a wall, so we're hoping it wouldn't be a hugely difficult move.

The cost will really be the deciding factor as it would require structural work and moving of utilities/pipes/boiler plus the cost of replacing the kitchen and flooring.

If you've moved your kitchen to another room, what did labour costs come to? And what obstacles or difficulties did you have to work around? Was there anything you hadn't thought of/anticipated that we should keep in mind?

Thanks

Ooh this is exactly what we want to do! Although we want to change kitchen to a utility and knock the lounge through into the garage to make the kitchen/diner

We’d love to do this to kitchen and dining room, knock down wall between and swap... wondering if it would super expensive.

Access to drains is probably the biggest issue - piping for hot and cold water and the electrics are quite a sizeable cost, but without access to drains a kitchen is not easy to do.

We did this, moved the kitchen into the dining room and knocked the wall down between the two. It was not that expensive because we have wooden floors, so moving plumbing was easy, we were told if the floors were concrete it would have been a lot more expensive.

I think the main factor here is water out from the new place the sink and DW would be. Water in and electrics are usually easy to move but water out can be the problem that gets expensive to move.

@Baxdream and @FloweringFlowers - welcome to the club! Your plans sound great! Fingers crossed it works out for all of us. When I get quotes from builders, I'll let you know what they are. I'm in Greater London so I'm sure I'll pay a premium!

Thanks @Flamingolingo and @lookatmememe - I'd heard that access to drains is the biggest deciding factor, so we'll probably get a plumber or the surveyor who did our building survey to come out and check how feasible that is.

@Elsiebear90 - that's so reassuring to hear; I'm not sure whether the living room has concrete flooring as it's been extended, but will get that checked out. Would you mind saying how much it cost in labour or in total if you don't know the breakdown?

Also looking to do this in our new house when we move in! The previous owners swapped over to have a big square living room and a long narrow kitchen, I'd much prefer them back the other way! I'm hoping that access and utilities won't be too much of an issue as the original kitchen was on that side, but there may well be one of the dreaded concrete floors...

We have recently done this, relocated kitchen from 9ft x 10ft room to a kitchen diner in a much bigger reception room. The pipework went through the cellar (we had already moved the boiler here previously) and the pipe work ran under the wooden floor void (we retained the solid wood floor as it was in really good condition). The sink and dishwasher were fitted adjacent to a wall which had a drain already there.

Cost wise it was a package so I don’t know the exact cost of fitting, but based on a similar quote we had from a different company I guess the installation costs were maybe £2k - £3k more? Although it included extras like upgrading the electrical consumer unit, some plastering, supplying and fitting tiles etc.

We had french doors knocked through into the garden at the same time and it’s absolutely changed how we use the room.

Last job is to turn the old kitchen into a wc/utility, maybe with a little study area. Saving up for that at the moment!

Best thing is to ask some kitchen fitters/builders and companies to come round and quote. They will tell you what is and isn’t feasible. Our kitchen company had a builder they worked in conjunction with, that was what swung it for them. Main issue we had was getting builders to quote for what was a small job.

Thanks @Cottipus. that's really helpful and comprehensive! And the extra cost is less than I expected which is reassuring. How long did it take from start to finish?

@TaleOfTheContinents the building work took around 10 days and the kitchen fit around 4 weeks- it’s a big kitchen though and there were some days where one trade was waiting for another and it delayed things a day or two.
We could still use the old kitchen so it didn’t inconvenience us too much.

Thanks @Cottipus - we could just about survive on a month's worth of microwave meals but I'll definitely be glad to get cooking again. I'm sure it's been 100% worth it for you, though.