Kitchen layout input - what shall I do with this f***ing kitchen!

[StatisticallyChallenged]

A couple of years ago, we bough a new house (newbuild) which had already been finished so kitchen was already in. Very much "the sales team chose it" - white gloss, mushroom-y greige worktops, greige floor. Not my style really, but workable. I've done everything I can to try and improve it aesthetically (new floor, changed handles, decorated) but I fundamentally just don't like the layout.

It looks good on the face of it and people come in and say "Oh it's so open", but the reality is it doesn't work for me at all. I've included our ground floor plan and a picture of a kitchen from the same house style (there's an integrated fridge freezer missing from the picture, to the right of the oven). Our house is actually a mirror image of both the floorplan and the picture

Reasons it's doing my head in:

• the fridge freezer is far too bloody small (we've got a garage drinks fridge freezer too, but I can't even get a basic week's shopping for a family in the kitchen one and I don't want to have to keep basics in the garage)
• There's not enough worktop. It looks good in pictures, but most of the workspace is on the far side of the breakfast bar or in the two corners. By the time you have the basic kettle, toaster, couple of dishes drying beside the sink there's nowhere to actually prep food, and I'm a keen baker!
• The sink is also bloody tiny - not big enough to lie an oven tray in.
• I can't actually reach one of the two wall units because it's over the corner. Didn't bother me in an old house when I had lots but when there's only 2 not being able to reach one is kind of annoying.
• There's not very much storage. We've improved it by putting pull out drawers in the tall cupboard but it's still far from great. There's basically a 60cm tall unit, 2x 60cm walls, a 40cm base, 2 spinny corner base units, a 90cm drawer unit (a godsend, holds all the pans and plates) and a 40cm drawer unit. It's not a lot for a decent sized house.
• We don't use the breakfast bar to sit at. Ever. The table is 2ft away and comfier
• Consequently the breakfast bar is my DH's dumping ground. Endless piles of stuff

So, i'm trying to work out how to improve it but the space is actually a bit awkward and has limited scope for redesigning it without structural changes. I think everything I come up with involves a bit of reconfiguration but this is a touchy subject as my DH already thinks I'm cuckoo for wanting to change a new kitchen.

Ideas I've come up with to try and help include:
A) moving the utility room door round the corner (this is definitely DH's preferred option)
B) Getting rid of the utility altogether, and just having the utilities in the garage on the other side of the wall from where they are now.
C) Removing the existing utility and creating a new one on the other side which takes a bit of space from the kitchen and a bit from the garage
D) Switching the table (currently in front of the bifolds) in to the kitchen space and putting the kitchen in the bigger end, which would let me have a run of units along the wall and a big island. Whole family hates this, they all like the table in front of the window.
E) divorcing my husband for insisting we have to maintain a double garage when we've never once put either car in it!

I've added a couple of design ideas I've drawn up which would work with option A - the first one has limited tall units and more worktop, the second has more tall units and a corner larder. I'll add 3d images in another post along with the utility room moving option (option C).

I'd appreciate any ideas anyone has; I've designed our previous kitchens (which were smaller) no problem but the space just seems really awkward. Our last kitchen was a good bit smaller but it felt so much more user friendly and I'm actually missing it.

This could be an idea! Especially if you make the swap the door to the lounge to a single door, then you could make the cloakroom quite a bit bigger

He's right that having garage space is super important to house value, but as you say no one keeps cars in them - or if they do it's because it's a special car, not a daily drive.

So keeping a single car space is important, and having storage is important. A 1.5 garage is plenty and meets most people's requirements easily.

But more important to saleability is kitchen and separate utility- whatever you do, with this size house having washing machine in kitchen is a no go. Everyone says kitchens and bathrooms sell houses and it really is true.

Regardless of whether you plan to sell, how you live is important. The kitchen is where most families spend most time, so it should have priority over other concerns.

Ah okay yeah definitely center it

Option B definitely. Get rid of utility.

All your issues would be resolved with more space.

Move washer/dryer whatever to garage and make your kitchen bigger.

We were just discussing this; we moved out of our city just after lockdown and we'll probably end up staying here a long time as we won't be able to get anything close size wise if we move back in. We've also just fitted solar panels and batteries which is making this place very cheap to run (it's mostly period properties in the city) so moving would be a real jump up in cost.

We mostly love the house otherwise - for a newbuild the rooms are decent sizes, we've got nice neighbours, no parking issues, quiet little cul-de-sac, warm, well insulated. But whoever designed the kitchen and utility had never cooked more than a micro-meal, or washed more than a single shirt. You can't put a drying rack in the utility, for example.

Have you seen what other houses have done? The kitchen looks like my friends and it is fully and cluttered as nowhere to put stuff!

he is worrying about the garage I assume because he doesn’t use the kitchen as you do. The kitchen is tiny worktop and storage wise.

We have a pantry cupboard in our utility plus the microwave and kettle which clears the worktop. We ditched the idea of waist heigh oven and have an under the hob one, to have more worktop.

You could visit a kitchen designer and ask them for ideas?

I would make the kitchen u-shaped but along the wall which has the utility on the other side and remove the breakfast bar with the job. Have the oven and full heigh cupboards on the utility wall and have worktops and hob where the current full heigh cupboards are.

This is definitely an option. We actually use that hall space (we have a huge cat scratching post, saves the carpets from certain death!) and a lovely vintage unit and I do like it having quite an open hall rather than a narrow corridor. But it might be a necessary trade off.

Could swap the lounge doors to a single happily, they're only useful for getting sofas in! Can't say they're ever opened.

The whole estate is only 2-3 years old and there's only a couple of each house style so no neighbourhood inspo available! Lots of white kitchens with greige worktops though...the sales team got to spec lots of houses thanks to covid.

To me its pretty simple. Your not moving for quite some time and therefore cheapest and easiest is to move utility to the garage. All the pipework is nearby so no need to move utilities.

Looking again at the floor plan, it’s an odd layout having a dining room miles away from the kitchen - I assume you don’t use it that way?
You could be quite radical and basically turn the doors to the garden (in the kitchen area) into windows and just have a longer run of worktops with an island. Then have doors knocked through to the lounge to make it more open plan. And then the dining room as a proper living space. The door from the kitchen to the utility could be closed off and moved so it’s 90 degrees to the one between the utility and garage.

So true. I think there's maybe 3 garaged cars on the street, and they're all fancy flash boy toys. And a couple of nice bikes. Other than that it's all storage and gym equipment - you could equip a brand of David Lloyd from the neighbours!

The cheap and easy option is to stick the utilities in to the garage, just the opposite side of the wall from where they are just now. Pop in some worktop, but not actually bother creating a separate room right now as we just don't need it. That would also minimise the space it would take up from a car perspective. The internal walls are all just studwork so it shouldn't actually be very expensive to remove the utility.

If we ever come to sell then stick up a stud wall and make it a 1.5 car garage. We've got a double drive anyway, and a 3 car space opposite which is usually empty.

If you are able to move the washer/dryer to the cloakroom, you could keep the utility as a walk-in butlers pantry, keeping the large sink there for pots and pans, and add loads of shelves for larder and/or appliance storage. Then some of your tall cabinets in the main kitchen could be converted to lower ones with additional worktop above, and the smaller sink in the main kitchen would be less of an issue.

It would work best if the garage access door could be moved out of the utility/pantry,to give you more usable storage (it could be moved across a couple of metres to the family room wall) but I imagine that's a relatively small change compared to some other possibilities.

We have the dining room as a snug/TV/playroom type space. The living room is a more grown up sitting room (velvet sofas which aren't sticky finger friendly!), I love it actually - it's dark deal, deep purple sofas, lots of metallics. Quite a luxurious but cosy feel and the one room where I didn't worry too much about practicality!

Sounds lovely!

This is also a good idea..another variation on this is put washing machine etc in garage on opposite wall instead of cloakroom

Sorry not RTFT but can you reach out the Karen at one plan? She is amazing and 100% worth the investment before making expensive design mistakes/regrets

The utility is probably the only reason I haven't already lost my marbles completely with the kitchen. I fitted wall shelves full width and all the way to the ceiling as soon as we moved in - I actually forgot about that when I was saying what's wrong with the kitchen but actually the lack of storage is much worse than I realise day to day as all my cake tins, cake cases, casserole dishes, bits for my kenwood etc are on shelves in the utility. It also houses the bin and the recycling bin. I've even got the toaster in there!

There's only one tall storage unit in the kitchen (a 60cm one), the other two tall units are the fridge freezer and the oven.

I was going to echo turning the utility into a full butler's pantry, including fridge/freezer. Get rid of door to the outside and door to the garage. Then, knock through the closet in the vestibule and turn that into a door from the garage (it isn't a big closet, and it should be enough space).

You could then do the utility as a floor-to-ceiling pantry with shelves, plus a fridge/freezer, which should vastly increase your storage with relatively little cost.

In terms of washer/dryer: have you thought about moving it upstairs? It's actually far easier to do the laundry, and then you don't have to sacrifice a washroom. If there's space for it upstairs, which it sounds like there might be in a five bedroom, even in a closet, that might be really nice.

Without meaning to sound too presumptuous: can we see your upstairs plan?

I viewed a house like this last year - in good nick, farrow and ball everywhere extended to the max to get 5 bedrooms, and a teeny, tiny kitchen with a peninsula cutting off half the storage space from the cooking space and only room for a bistro table.

Did whoever designed the house it hate cooking? Did they owners only eat out? It boogled my mind. It looked like a couple with 3 teenage children lived there but only a kitchen for 2.

Anyway, I’d get rid of the stud walls around the utility. Relocate the washer and rest yourself to a big American fridge.

I have a strong dislike of peninsulas. The beauty of an island is it controls the flow of traffic around it and there is more than one way into the kitchen. With the peninsula you lose the flow around the kitchen and get another crappy corner space.

This is a better picture of the kitchen layout (ours is all white and vomity mushroom coloured, but otherwise very similar)

There's no spare cupboards or obvious spots upstairs but we did discuss putting it in the family bathroom which would be possible I think.We had it upstairs in our old house and it worked well so we're not averse, just trying to minimise cost as much as possible. DH thought we'd do something about the layout "when the kitchen needs replaced, in about 10 years" 😂😂keep hoping darlin'

The obvious place on the floor plan upstairs is to reduce the master bedroom wardrobes and access it from the other side but we are already short of clothes storage so it wouldn't be ideal. I have way too many clothes.

Upstairs floorplan below (awaits being told my house is actually a cupboard and no way big enough for a family, which happened once before when someone posted a floorplan from my estate!) We lived in 96sqm before so it's big to us

No extending to the max here - the builders actually designed it this way, we bought it from new. Designed by a bloke who buys takeaways but has lots of people round to eat them and get drunk, I think! Very social, but not practical.

We knew the kitchen wasn't ideal but it was overall by far the best of our options; we sold really quickly just after the first lockdown and didn't want to jeopardise our sale if the market started to slide so we didn't want to hang around. And we walked in and really liked it; it's in a quiet spot away from the road, it's very light and bright and has a nice feel to it, and the kitchen/diner/family room is a really nice inviting space with the big doors (we're not really overlooked and on the edge of the estate) so I thought I could live with the slightly small kitchen.

But what looked slightly too small in an empty house very quickly became a lot too small once we moved in.

We viewed a different new house nearby which had a bigger better kitchen, but the bedrooms were all just too small (master was about 10ft x 10ft and it got worse from there) and we figured we could improve the kitchen but we couldn't fix the beds being too small. Everything older was worse (for us); lots of awkward layouts with tiny kitchens, or needing lots of structural work which we didn't have the appetite for.

The peninsula is so annoying. Poor man's island indeed!

What's in the space marked ST on the upper floorplan? Is it moveable? Because that would be a very easy place for a stacked washer/dryer.

Unless you don't want to use your study and instead turn it into a laundry and walk-in closet...

Have you considered putting more cupboards into the utility ? Ours just had boiler cupboard but we have added same units to run right across and use those for most of our pantry

Now I see photos kitchen does look small with that utility there id be tempted to move garage door and take down the stud walls like this and block up that outside door unless u really need it. This opens kitchen up more

I agree, I would go with moving the utility door to the end. You could add a lovely sliding barn type door so you don’t lose that corner space in the family area completely.