Cost to swap living room with kitchen

[eatentoomanygrapes]

Anyone done this? We are buying somewhere with have a south facing garden with two sets of double doors from the living room out onto it.

But I would love to make it so it was a large kitchen/diner, kitchen on left maybe with an island and then a sofa/dining table to make it a multifunctional room and not just living room.

We are toying with idea of extending at same time but that might be very costly?

The downstairs WC being basically inside the current kitchen is annoying too, and it would also annoy me if we made it into a living room.

BUT. How much do you reckon it would cost to rejig -- with no extension? And then how much roughly if we did a 20sqm extension out the back?

Also probably worth noting that the doors coming out of the side of the (current) kitchen only lead onto side access of the property, no real need for them. Was toying with idea of side extension but there's not a lot of room to play with so not sure if it'd be a hell of a lot of structural work for not a lot of return

Can you clarify if you want to knock through or keep two separate rooms.

What are your family circumstances? With small kids, a separate adult living room away from clutter is nice, but so is a dedicated playroom.

The location of your soil pipe is going to be outside your bathroom wall so to keep costs down, keep the kitchen sink, dw and w/m where the h of haart is on your layout.

moving pipes is expensive.

if you put the kitchen into the living room but on the right (K on the plan) so that it backs onto the same wall, that doesn't cost much more than buying & installing the units. so £5K from IKEA upwards depending on how fancy your units are.

moving the loo is v complex & expensive. Think carefully before doing that.

if you want to make the new lounge/snug (old kitchen) into a square room, I might chop off a bit more to make a laundry room / storage cupboard (U). that lets you get laundry out of the kitchen and the remaining space would make a good 'snug' living room. and probably turn the double doors into windows if you don't use them.

If your current kitchen is in good condition, you may be able to reuse the cabinets/ appliances.

Your costs are then making good the walls in the old kitchen and possibly new flooring for both rooms.

How big is the current lounge?

You can pipe a water supply pretty much anywhere if you dig trenches in concrete floors or run them under wooden flooring. Your biggest challenge is always going to be waste as water has to have a fall rate to move it.

Looking at your floor plan, you seem to have a waste pipe at the front of the property for the wc, the sink waste will also pipe into this and there is possibly a manhole correlating to that. Then the bathroom sits in the middle of the house so your soil pipe is either on the outside wall or it runs internally in the corner of the current kitchen. The kitchen sink waste will probably feed into that.

If you want a kitchen sink waste pipe it has to have a 1 in 40 fall so a 1cm drop for every 40cm linear length which is across the property to the current waste pipe. Unless you have access to another manhole on the left of the property that you could connect into.

Just something to consider before you think about moving a kitchen. Extensions are ballpark around £2k per sqm now with all the increased costs. That is bare shell, first fix with your wires sticking out the wall waiting for sockets/lights and your pipework waiting to be plumbed into sinks etc and fully plastered out. Then you have the cost of the kitchen, the flooring etc. Foundations can cost more because a builder will never know how far down they have to dig to hit solid ground.

Thanks everyone, this is so helpful! The kitchen is brand new so we can just shift it into a new position so that won't cost us, unless we need to buy a few new units.

Sink is at the very front next to the loo so I imagine yeah the waste from that is at the front too. Would that make it more difficult to shift?

Current Living room is 5.27m x 4.40m (17'3" x 14'5")

Current kitchen is 4.88m x 3.70m (16'0" x 12'1")

the bathroom above the kitchen must have waste pipes somewhere - have a look at where those go. your new kitchen can probably connect into them.

Can you confirm if you are looking to knock through.

@JamMakingWannaBe

Can you confirm if you are looking to knock through.

I think we want to keep them as two separate rooms!

I would suggest ball park £25-35k depending on quality of fittings you want. I would suggest getting a property maintenance firm in to quote and tell you timeframes as well, as once they start your downstairs will become unusable for a few weeks.

TBH, I'd move in and live with the current layout for a year and then decide.

You may find you want to keep the existing layout with a lovely entertaining space facing the garden, rather than inviting guests to a living room with a view of your side return.