Semi-detached side access

[HouseyHouse21]

The plans for our rear extension involve building a utility room with a door that opens out to the side alley. My thought was that muddy DH & DCs / wet dog etc would come in via that door rather than using the front entrance.

But now I'm wondering whether this is really necessary as in order to get to the utility door, they'd first have to open the side gate. Does it make sense to force them to open two doors rather than one? Just thinking about faffing with two sets of keys when your hands are full - might become a pain.

Also, by removing the utility door I'd have space for more storage.

Can anyone with a similar setup let me know how much of a difference the side access makes to they way the space is used?

Sorry if that's a bit of a jumble - I'm at that stage where I'm obsessing over every single detail before it becomes real (and expensive to make changes).

If they are out walking a dog then could the side gate could be left open? Wouldn’t occur to me that it’s hard to open a gate then a door though. We never go out the front door when walking the dog, we always use the back door then the gate.

That makes sense, thank you. It's probably not that much harder, you're right. Just trying to find small ways of reducing the chaos.

I'd agree with pp that it wouldn't occur to me to need to lock a side gate. But, depending on how close your wall with the door on is to your neighbour's boundary, you may need that door to be a fire door.

I've just been down to check - at the moment our side gate locks automatically but I'm sure that's easily changed.

Good to know re. fire door as well - thanks, will check with the builder. The gap is just under 1.3m.

We put a rear access into our utility room. Completely regretted it, never used it! On the basis your front door doesn't step straight into carpet, I imagine you won't either. We regretted losing valuable space in the utility room

We've since moved house and are going to block our side door up due to this very reason (we're extending/renovating). We have a dog and teens

We have dogs and never use the front door when we walk them. If they are wet they shake or get towelled in the utility. The wet dog smell then stays there. I love having a back door

Yes, that's exactly what I was worried about too, @Baxdream. The front hallway will be tiled so mud etc not as much as an issue. Thank you.

We're having an extension built now. We're planning to have an outside door halfway along the side for access into the utility room. We'll have the side gate after the side door, so there's no need to open the gate and the door to get in. Not sure if that would work for you though, if it's more of a shared access or alleyway.

We use our side door loads with the dogs, especially in bad weather, I wouldn’t be without it.

Looks like DH has answered this question for me - he's just bought an electric bike that needs to be indoors to charge the battery, so wants to store it on the wall of the utility room. So we definitely need the door to allow him to wheel it in. And I've just lost even more storage space!