Which floor plan? Photos included.

[Honkeywonkeydonkey]

Please help me decide which floor plan for my mid terraced Victorian house. Apologies for the rubbish drawings.
Option 1 is current lay out and would be significantly cheaper however we don’t have a dining kitchen (just small breakfast bar).
Option 2 would be significantly more expensive to put french doors in and would also mean ripping out the original fireplace and alcove which I would find quite sad (sacrilegious to remove lovely original features!). But a utility would be nice and give us a dining kitchen.

We don’t want to knock through as that means blocking the kitchen door which means the hall would be too dark and we want separate spaces. Can’t afford to extend either.

Keep the kitchen and DR where they are. You could have the utility in the kitchen when it's redesigned. In pic2 you won't see the 'vista' you do now?
Put the double doors into the dining room, don't take out original features.
Mostly go pic.1

You can go with option 2 and keep your original features.

Put your units along the wall adjacent to the old kitchen and around that corner up to your French doors into the garden.

Keep the fireplace and build storage into the 2 alcoves on either side.

Go for an 'unfitted kitchen' look

Something like this

Have a look at Devol and Plain English

Option 2. Would you use a dining room?

We do now as it’s the only place the dining table fits. So yes, we do.

Thanks but we wouldn’t do this as it gives us less kitchen than we have now. It would be option 1 or 2 as they are.

Although I like the suggestion of keeping the alcove. We had thought of that but would still mean ripping out the fireplace. Those photos are lovely and that could work as a compromise. It just feels a bit sad to remove it when it’s been there for 100 years.
those photos show it could be done sympathetically though. It appreciate that, thanks.

This is what we did. We didn't lose any features, fireplace still in situ, blocked up for now.as we can't afford to sort chimney etc at moment. Removed wall between two walls, but kitchen is mostly in same place.

Added french doors in dining room window, and a long window at the end of the kitchen, so there's a view from front to.back.