Your opinions please - new layout

[renovationalt]

The house we are buying has a tiny, horrible kitchen and a very tiny dining room in the centre of the ground floor. There is a large second reception room to the rear. In the side return, there is a tiny and not very useful utility room (though it does currently house a washer and dryer). There is also a newer (but not nice) long, narrow shower room extension.

Current floorplan attached, along with photos of the current kitchen and reception room.

We want to reconfigure the downstairs at minimal expense and I am interested in your views! Both options involving bricking up some doors and opening up new doors.

Here are the options:

Option 1 is to retain the current kitchen as a utility room. The main structural changes would be:

• brick up the doorway to the shower room
• brick up the entrance to the kitchen in the long hallway
• open up a new doorway to the shower room from the current utility.

We would have a kitchen / diner about 19 ft x 11 ft (a bit awkward but manageable), a really useful utility, and a long, narrow WC room.

Option 2 would involve more extensive works. We would:

• open the back kitchen wall
• brick up the door to the kitchen in the long hallway
• remove the chimney breast
• build a dividing wall in the current shower room to make it into a larder on one side and a WC on the other
• add another door to the new WC

This would mean that we would still have the very small, crappy utility room, but we would have a more open kitchen with a larger dining area and a larder. We potentially could fit a peninsual between the kitchen area and dining area.

I think that Option 1 would cost less and be easier to execute. The dining area would be very small, though.

Where I've marked red knock walls down. Where I've marked yellow brick walls up? Have a lootility and an open plan kitchen breakfast room

@Mbop thanks! My first instinct is that the current utility and bathroom are so not fit-for-purpose that this may not be practical, but it is worth considering.

We also definitely don't want to lose the bathroom.

I agree don't loose the bathroom. But I don't like the opening into the reception room! If you make reception room kitchen you could then make kitchen pantry, storage and still have lootility.

@Mbop yeah, I am leaning towards Option 1 because it may maximise useful space. Unfortunately, nothing will be perfect!

I'd knock down the wall between kitchen and shower room if possible (or if not turn it into a big pantry) for the kitchen which I'd put into the back room with dining space.

The existing kitchen would become a shower room and utility. I'd probably combine them with the appliances hidden so it looks sleak (or keep as two depending on door access). I'm not sure where the dining room door is so may have to slice a bit for access.

I'd make the dining room a little snug.

@Calmdown14

Thanks!

Annoyingly, the current utility room is not really a space that can be used for anything other than its current limited purpose. It has damp and also weird pipes going through it and stuff. I would also prefer not to brick over the window from the utility to the current dining room as the space will be super depressing and dark then

The current dining room will be a snug/office!

Here is the current utility. That door leads directly to the outside.

If you're going with option one I would enter the utility from the new kitchen otherwise I think you'll end up walking through the house all the time to get to utility/ toilet etc and it would annoy me. Putting bins out etc!

@Mbop that's a really good point.

I wonder if something like this could work. Yellow boxes are kitchen units

Bumping in case anyone else has views!