Starting to think about extending

[Roarsomemore]

My house is a 3 bed semi detached, coming up for 25 years old. We converted the garage to a playroom and downstairs loo. The bedrooms are all a good size. The downstairs has archways from the living room to the dining room and then the kitchen. This has suited us with the children young as we're all together and I can keep an eye on them easily.

The kitchen and dining room are very small. I'm starting to think about extending out from the kitchen and dining room, knocking down the separating wall, and close up the arch from the living room to dining room with double doors. This would leave us with a square living room but a nice sized open kitchen diner. One of the reasons behind this is thinking about 4 adult sized people trying to use this small space in the future. I've got plenty of time before this happens but I want to know from anyone who has done similar - are you glad you did it? How much did it cost? Any tips?

I've considered moving but the leap to the next sized properties seems to cost more than extending.

We extended across the back of our house so our lounge and kitchen are 12 ft longer than they were. Our house is a semi, nearly 100 years old and having the bigger lounge has made the room much more comfortable especially when we have visitors (remember those?). We could have knocked through to give us a large kitchen/ diner but then we would still have had a small lounge. You don’t say how old your children are. When my grandchildren visit and want to paint and cook, my kitchen still doesn’t feel big enough because of its shape.

Children are 8 and 4 so no urgency re getting this done straight away. That is a consideration so that when they have friends around when they are teens there would be somewhere suitable near food and drink! We do have the playroom but that is small. Yes, that us a lovely thought about having visitors!