Where to put the kitchen? Floorplan attached

[kitchenwwyd]

We are thinking of buying a house with this layout on the ground floor. We want to have an open plan kitchen/lounge/diner. We are thinking of moving the kitchen to where the lounge currently is, with lounge and dining area towards the back where the garden door is. Perhaps knock through a bit more into the garage to make the space bigger. Would love any thoughts of where you'd position the kitchen and why. I know we are most likely going to need a steel going across the top between the current lounge/dining room as this was the original exterior wall before they added the extension. The old kitchen / garage we will probably convert into an office or bedroom (funds allowing way in the future...) thanks!

Has the kitchen always been at the front? Is there easy access to water, gas and drains where you want to move the kitchen to?

I'm guessing the door to the lounge is at the bottom of the stairs?
I'd think about where I wanted the light, and put the stuff with less requirement for natural light into the current lounge.

Yes I believe the kitchen has always been at the front. We've been told by a builder friend that technically it should be easy to re-route the water and gas etc to wherever we want (although we need this officially confirmed). That's a good point about the light. Maybe keep lounge area where it is so there is less glare on the TV. Thank you for your reply :)

There are lots of options with that layout.

Here I've drawn lounge (L) and study (S) and utility (U). Then kitchen and dining at the back with space for a sofa of kids play zone in the corner.

Are all the windows shown? Is there really no window in either the lounge or the reception room? And how do you get from the 'reception room' into the lounge? Also, how many bedrooms do you have and how many people will be living in this house? I would also say you have a good sized floorplan so while you might think you want a big open plan space think about if you want a separate utility, do you need to keep the study and does it need to be downstairs, and do you want more than one sittingroom (I have 3DC and having 2 sitting rooms allows us to do different activities in each, e.g. someone can read in one or listen to music or do homework while in the other someone is practicing piano or watching TV or has an enormous train set all over the floor or has build a big den). I think a kitchen diner is great but wouldn't want to be watching TV while the washing machine is on a spin cycle or the kettle is boiling or DC is rollerskating round the open plan space. And where is north on your floorplan? That might make a difference to where you put things. And think about flow round the house as well and are you allowed to e.g. change the garage door to a window.

Thank you so much @parietal for your idea! I think the lounge, dining area and kitchen is pretty much what we want. Really want a nice kitchen island but don't want it to feel too crammed in. Great shout about the separate lounge at the front! Not sure we'd have budget to put in a new lounge window straightaway but defo something to consider for the future. The dining space is quite narrow (2.79m) so just need to work out how to make it feel nice.
Appreciate that you think it's a flexible layout (getting nervous now as offer has been accepted!!) :)

Hi @JaninaDuszejko thanks for your reply! They've missed a few things on the floorplan 😅there is a door going from the reception room into the lounge, it's at the bottom of the stairs. And yes the lounge space has no window (it's a terraced 4 bed) there is some natural light which comes from the dining room window/door and the study window, but yes the lounge area is a bit gloomy in the current layout! So that's why we are were thinking of making it open plan. Also in our current smaller house it's all open plan which we like, so I think we want to replicate that. But you make a good point and we want to future proof for when we hopefully have another DC (currently have 1 toddler) so I think a separate lounge would be a good idea. It will just be myself, husband and toddler for now. Upstairs layout now attached (we don't think we will need to make any layout changes upstairs).

Also agree about the washing machine while watching TV.. this is an issue in our current house (as much as we like the layout) we don't have a separate utility space. The reception does have a window, they have just missed that out too - it's a long full length window between the porch and the kitchen wall. We do need to check out which walls will be easy to change and which are supporting walls. But it's great to hear everyones thoughts :)

as you only have 1 bathroom upstairs, it might well be worth making another downstairs bathroom with a shower. If you have a utility room with a loo & shower at the back of the garage, then you can also use the study (front of garage) as a guest bedroom if needed.

We have a bathroom upstairs and one downstairs in the back of our half converted garage. I initially thought we wouldn't use it much as a shower but with two teenagers it gets used every day.

Which way does the house face? I have an East facing kitchen and it gets no sun after 10 am, we are moving kitchen so it gets sunlight all day. I would try to make it South and West facing if possible.