What happens after an extension is built?

[Why2why]

Hello, we are looking at extending the ground floor but I often look at the floor plans of extended houses and wonder whether in some (maybe most) cases it’s a waste of time. Rooms inside the original house, like the dining room or lounge become redundant because people now spent most of their time in the massive extended open plan kitchen and family room.

We will not do a massive open plan family/ kitchen space. The extended space will be used for a utility room and office.

Curious what others think. How have you used your living space after an extension? In hindsight, would you have done it differently?

I reconfigured the rooms downstairs to make the kitchen and hallway different shapes, added a dining room to remove the need for the dining table to be in the living room, and moved the downstairs loo into the extension.
At first we spent almost all our time in the new dining room (extension) but that was because it was fresh and new. As the rest of the house was decorated due to dust and the remodelling of those spaces we've gradually spread out more as a family, spread into the space and use it all.

I think the first thing is to make sure that you use the right person to design your new floor plan. We used an architect rather than a designer or builder. The architect it trained to think about flow and space as well as just tacking a box on the back.

Downstairs we were extending out the back and converting our internal garage.

We've gone from having a garage, kitchen / dinner, hall and WC and living room to...

Office/ 5th bedroom, hall and WC, playroom / second office, utility, kitchen dining living room and a TV room.

So far all those rooms are in use though the TV room is an overflow playroom at the moment while we source a sofa and TV lol.

We love the new space and it works so well for our family.

This is so specific to the property that it’s hard to assess. It very much also depends on which rooms get the light and also the location of the garden. If you want to keep using the main house you could consider extending for ancillary space (utility rooms and bathrooms, stairs etc) or add lovely modern bedrooms but preserve the original feeling of the house.

We use the existing living space as a bit of a retreat when we want space from each other. At the moment my autistic son spends a lot of time there as he likes his own space. It is also good if one person wants to watch TV in the new open plan kitchen family room and another wants peace and quiet or it we have people staying for long periods who need a bit of space.

Watch Kirstie and Phil "love it or list it". - they do loads if extensions and always reconfigure the house to make it work better, swapping rooms around and knocking through, it's really interesting.

Yes. We had the new space which was large and open plan (still love it years later) and the kids used the existing large lounge area. Been great especially when sons GF visits and they all sit together.

What we do find is that because of the extra space etc that son and Gf spend nearly all their time at our house than hers....so depends how you feel about that as it is a common by product of creating more space!

People often say they extend and have open plan so that family can all hang out together but ultimately people end up wanting their own space.

We are not doing open plan but the architect is helping achieve flow. We’re keeping it simple.

In our case, best thing ever. We fixed so many issues during the work. And our new space is beautiful. House is lovely place to be now.

First house I had no eating area, just a galley kitchen and living room which wasn't big enough for a table, so built a conservatory extension with proper heating and used that as my dining room.
Second much bigger house we had living at front, dining behind and largish kitchen, but we squared off the back so had a kitchen/diner/family room. We used this all the time, living room at night or when entertaining, dining room only occasionally (that was true before too). This layout really useful as we had teenagers as well as toddlers and two living spaces was very practical.
My last house I had dining at front, living behind and large kitchen to side and old coal storage and makeshift office beyond that. I knocked the coal storage and office and outdoor loo all down and made storage off kitchen, orangery behind with en suite. I spent most of my days in there as so bright. Dining room only used very occasionally as before, living room had the tv and wood burner so was used in the evening.
I like eat in kitchens so would extend a kitchen to add this space (unless there is a dining room to knock through too). A second more casual living area is useful if you have kids or like a day room and night room or need a home office. I would not extend just to make a room bigger unless it adds more functionality - for example I have an extended kitchen diner now, and a couple people have said I could extend further. But as it is already a sizeable open plan space I see no point, plus the garden is not that big.

We didn't extend but converted from a lounge/diner with separate kitchen to kitchen/diner with separate lounge just by moving a wall. We've found that we use both spaces much better than before and I love having a separate comfy area.
It's not so much about space away from each other, but having different options to be together.

Is there some back story to this? Your response seems a bit .... judgemental of people who've extended with an open plan space.

If you've got an architect on board great. You're the client so you call the shots. You can make the space work for you and your family.

Open plan with a playroom is great for us at the moment with little kids. As they grow their playroom will likely become a homework room and I suspect they'll take over the TV room a bit too. But that's ok abs that's how our family will grown into our space

I’m not being judgemental. What would I be judgemental about?

We’re looking at extending or moving. I have seen lots of floor plans where there is a big rear extension and internal dining room and lounge. I am simply asking about experiences to inform our decision in either doing an extension as well as Porto buying a house with such an extension. No ulterior motive.

We did what we jokingly referred to as The World's Smallest Extension.
Knocked dark but decent sized kitchen into small rarely used TV room.
Result is a much bigger and brighter space that we totally live in.
Yes, I get your point as our lovely separate living room is ignored. Frankly if the contents of living room were stolen, I might not notice for a week!
But we are only 2 people, who usually hang out together. If we were a bigger family I guess someone would be escaping to living room for peace and quiet.

Our extension was done to increase our living space and reconfigure how we live in the house; it has done just that.

So we have a 3 storey house. The kitchen was on the middle floor. Our extension moved the kitchen downstairs and created a new large utility room, and the kitchen has an open plan dining room area, all of which leads on to the garden.

The old kitchen upstairs is now a spare bedroom/study. The old 'garden room' was often a wasted space downstairs and, although used as a study, because of its location is wasn't overly used. Now the study is on the upper floors it is used way more. When first done dd used it constantly as a study for homework, revision, etc. During lockdown me and dh used it to work from home. now it is used as a study when needed, and also a spare bedroom when needed. DD will often have friends come and stay when she is back from university. such as this summer. When MIL and BIl both came we had enough spare bedroom space for all.

Moving the kitchen and dining areas downstairs also gave us more room in the living room.

The ground floor, pre extension, didn't feel very used. There wasn't really an living space down there. Now there is and it feels much more lived in and part of the house properly.

Re the open plan kitchen and dining area...

This works for us and has truly changed the way we socialise. In the past it was separate. The person cooking was away from the others for a fair bit. Now we really do all sit in the same room, and its much easier to use the garden too, when its warm enough. Often when friends come round we spend the whole evening sat in the extension - we deliberately researched and bought really comfortable dining chairs. Ones we are more than happy to relax sat in over drinks at the end of a meal, etc.

During the first lock down dh and 1 both worked at the dining table in this area, whilst DD was doing school work in the study. The weather was nicer and we would have the patio door open and it was a nice, light and airy room to work in together.

The only things I would change, if expenses had been open ended:

• better flooring (being changed next year along with the rest of the house flooring
• under floor heating in the new room downstairs
• large bi fold doors for much of the back of the house; we retained our old patio doors and window. Would love to be able to just have one big long door that opened up right on to the garden.

My parents extended so they now have a large kitchen/diner, a large living room -and a decent size front room that no one has stepped foot in for about 25 years

The house is very bottom heavy and is a 4 bed with only 1 toilet in it

I'm sure it could have been done much better

@Why2why

People often say they extend and have open plan so that family can all hang out together but ultimately people end up wanting their own space.

We are not doing open plan but the architect is helping achieve flow. We’re keeping it simple.

Nobody wants to spend 100% of their time together though surely?

We have a kitchen diner with a sofa in, separate lounge and a playroom (which is basically a huge toy cupboard presently). All our rooms get used equally, there're 5 of us, 2 adults, 7, 5 and a 23 year old (but he's hardly ever home).

We're extending in a few years, to make the kitchen/diner/family space larger. I have no doubt we'll still use our separate lounge as much as we do now though.

There’s only 3 of us and sometimes 4. You’re absolutely right that it depends on the size of the household.

@Abraxan that's interesting. We too have a 3 storey townhouse though our kitchen was already on the ground floor. Our sitting room was on the first floor but we found it difficult to use when elderly relatives visited so we had ended up mostly using the small family room on the ground floor.

We put a 5m*4m extension onto the back of our house. This became our living room. Our old small family room has become our dining area. Our kitchen was extended into what was the dining area. Upstairs our old living room became DS's bedroom.

I believe that the extension has added more than it cost onto the value of our house but at the moment have no plans to move.

Now that DCs are starting to leave home we have remodelled the two bedroom floors. DS has moved up to the top floor with a bedroom and snug. We have taken what was originally the underused sitting room and then later DS's bedroom and split it in two to create an office for me and a dressing room off the main bedroom.

We are very fortunate. DH was an electrician and also a skilled DIYer so changing layouts, refitting kitchens etc cost the materials but costs from 3rd parties are kept to a minimum.

@GnomeDePlume did you lose much of your garden?

In the main what we lost was patio space. The utility of the space gained was far in excess of the patio space lost.

Attached are the before and after layouts.

The greyed out areas are radiators. I was worrying about them at the time I drew the layouts and they are shown as double the depth they actually are.

My feel is that there isnt a time when you can look at your home and think 'that's it, everything is done, I will never change anything again'. You will change, get older, if you have DCs their needs change as they get older.

Something we learned from our DParents experiences was not to make the living space too small. DPiL had a bungalow which was big enough for the two of them but always felt cramped whenever they had visitors (which was often, they were very hospitable people).

One day we may be blessed with GCs in which case we want to be able to host without it feeling like someone has to step out of the backdoor to allow someone in through the front door.

I wish we'd used an architect rather than the architectural technician we used - we've basically got a big narrow box tacked on the back.

Good points - there's a lot more light in the dining room at the front of the house, we've got a kitchen that's narrow but bigger. We can sit in the house and see the garden and have sliding doors on to it.

Bad points - I'm not sure the flow works. We are having to rethink the utility room and downstairs loo to put a back door in so we can come into house not just through the new kitchen.

There's a dark end of the extension. This is very common. In retrospect I wish we'd had a shorter extension with more glazing which would have bought more light in. Bigger isn't always better.

I think extensions can very often end up as another room tacked on the back that can seem a bit meh.

We knew we wanted access to the garden, a bigger kitchen, a utility, a downstairs loo and more light.

We've ended up with all of that but....it's a slightly weird shape.

Also if you garden, try and work out if and where the exension will create more shade. We've gained and lost by the extension - but the new sunny bit we've gained meant we had to get paving put down to actually be able to use it.

And I'm also now googling shady courtyard ideas for the dark area we created.

@BarkingUpTheWrongRoseBush thanks for such a careful reflection.