Help! How to reconfigure ground floor?

[ScandiNoir]

We have a lovely house where we've lived for 20 years. It has lots of rooms but none of them are that big! Kitchen is starting to fall apart a bit now so I've finally got my DH to agree that we need to get a new kitchen. We can't afford an extension and don't really need one now...might have been nice 20 years ago!
So...we have good sized sitting room, then a dining room, family room, kitchen with just enough room for a table for 4, small study , very small utility and downstairs loo on ground floor.

Option A I want to knock through to the family room to make a kitchen diner whilst increasing the size of the utility room. This would maintain the size of the working kitchen we have now and the area where our table and chairs is would be incorporated into the utility room. We'd then turn the current dining room into the family room/ second sitting room.

Option B My husband thinks we should just get a more modern and better designed kitchen in the space we have...he particularly doesn't want to lose the separate dining room and doesn't see why we need a larger utility. However if we do knock through he wants to keep the dining room as is.

We are 60, both 20 something kids living here at the moment but this will change in the next year, we will probably stay here for another 10 + years so need to think of impact of what we do on selling in future

Basically...do you think people want dining rooms any more? I dream of informal meals with family and friends and just think the days of dining rooms are numbered although I know it's nice at Christmas!

Sorry this was so long...I'd love your opinions

The answer to the separate dining room question is no generally unless you have a huge house so in your circumstances no. Need a plan to be able to help further.

I would knock through and have a kitchen diner. I do recommend speaking to a professional interior architect though. We hired one and he suggested moving our kitchen completely to the other side of the house, and making the old kitchen into a sitting room. It was life changing. We would never have thought of that ourselves.

A plan will help. But it does sound like you have a lot of rooms on the ground floor.

When you do sell, the work you have done will increase the price. It’s is definitely the case in our area.

if you are thinking of resale value, separate dining rooms are rarely used these days - a big kitchen diner is much more popular. But a separate 'study' is popular now that lots of people work from home, so making everything open is not always good.

But if you aren't planning to sell, think about how you use the space. how often do you eat in the dining room? which rooms do you spend most time in? which room has the nicest view? and which feature of the house always annoys you (narrow corner, some area that always feels dark or messy or cluttered). When you've identified how YOU like to use your space, then you can think about what changes will make it work better.

Post a floor plan

I'm in my 30s and am desperately trying to rearrange our ground floor layout to keep a bigger dining room. I'm aware that, eventually, I'll be the one having to host Christmas and I absolutely hate the idea of having lunch in a kitchen diner. If we ever buy a new house, a dining room will be top of my list.

I have a formal diningroom and it is lovely, but if I was short of space it would be the first thing to go. Next house I'll have a kitchen/diner.

Thanks for replies...no idea how to put a plan on here so probably impossible for someone to help really.

Are both your reception rooms (family and living) in constant use? If one of these rooms is redundant then you can afford to lose a reception space.

Personally, I'm in the camp of having a kitchen/diner as long as the dining space can support hosting other people coming to visit (i.e. extending dining table situation).

I'm coming from a place of living in smaller homes but one living space, one space for cooking and one space for eating (either kitchen diner or living diner or separate diner) is all I need.

Without a floor plan it's difficult to get an idea of the lay of the land, but I'd do a large kitchen diner, one clear, main reception room, and then use whichever is the smaller of the former reception spaces as a nice dining space (if hubs insists on a secondary one, although I'm not sure you'd use two dining tables?) or as a quiet reading space with a sofa-bed to house potential guests.

You can create a feeling of separation in a kitchen diner by having the kitchen floor area tiled and the dining area laid with laminate or wood, you can also use a kitchen island or a breakfast bar to segregate the space while keeping it open.

Just my two cents, everyone has their own taste and you need to do what suits you both, but I do feel that you can make your space work for you. You certainly seem to have a lot of options!

Without seeing the plans, your idea sounds good to me OP. I like live-in kitchens with a dining table and, ideally, space for a sofa or armchair so people can hang out and talk to the cook.

And utility rooms are great. Is there scope to have a walk-in pantry?