How would you rejig the downstairs of this house

[HalleLouja]

Dear Wise Mumsnetters

We are moving house and will need to re-do the kitchen. We can’t afford to extend, so are thinking of knocking through the wall between the dining room and kitchen, to make it one room.

Any other ideas? I was thinking of possibly making the lounge smaller and bringing the wall back a bit.

Ps I am going to get someone to design it but you vipers often have great ideas.

Knocking out the wall between the kitchen and dining room seems a good idea. You may need a steel if it's a supporting wall but that's not a problem.

You then would not need a garden door in the kitchen as you'd have easy access to the one in the dining area, which could be made into French doors or retractable doors to give light and space.

Is there a patio directly outside the dining room area? If so, you could create a glass pagoda / awning cover, which would give you weather-protected useable outdoor space at limited cost.

Yes there is a patio outside the kitchen / dining room. I hadn’t thought of a cover but that is definitely worth having a look at.

There is a big window / door in the diner, so I think that should be relatively easy to convert to some proper doors onto the patio.

I’d make the utility into ceiling height cupboards with machines boxed in. The wall could be revised and the space used for the kitchen. Even a huge breakfast bar would be good.

Or you could do a door to the garage and have a utility at the back - I can see it’s not far from the back door but it’s annoying going out in the cold. You could also store the rubbish in there - recycling - easier when there’s access.

I would knock kitchen dining room wall down

Then convert garage. Add door from kitchen at the back into garage. The back half of the garage make a utility room/ pantry for kitchen. Freeing up kitchen space .
The front part of garage change doors to double normal opening doors and use as a large storage area for bikes/ outdoor stuff whatever. Car under carport

Is it a nice sunny back room?

I am definitely thinking it needs a breakfast bar or if possible an island…

If i was knocking a wall it would be into the garage for overall extra floor space.
It will cost as that wall will be structural. I would also look at any changes needed to build over it.

If the garden is small keep a small section for bikes and garden tools.

If you would be wfh or have exam age students it can be handy to have a dedicated space so i would tend to want to hang on to the dining room wall.

We only have 2 children and we will have space for a study upstairs. So not sure if we need to keep a separate space for study / work.

Also was thinking of possibly turning the garage into a den type area. But its all under discussion. I did think knocking the kitchen into the garage might work too….

It looks to me as if you have 5 entrances to the property - do you really need them all?
Won't your insurance be quite high because of that?
Could you block up anywhere eg the entrance from the carport.