Small kitchen extension, good time to build it?

[2025beyond]

Bought the house at the top of the market 2.5 years ago with the view to extend. With the amount of money we already spent on it (full rewire, re-plumbing, redecorating throughout), it is probably sitting at the ceiling price for the road. Okay to spend another 30k+ on a smallish extension or is it just unwise in the current economic climate?

How long will you live there for? If looking to sell in the next few years I wouldn't. If staying long term 8+ years I would go for it.

A great kitchen will always sell a place more easily than other places. Whether you will make your money back is another ball game!

How long do you plan on staying there?

Hopefully for the long term: 10 years+, it's a lovely area, and works well for us. For us to get something bigger we need to spend another 50k+ on top of stamp duty and moving costs, so probably more economical to stay put...

If I were planning to stay as long as you are I would be thinking more about making the home I want to live in than resale value - I say go for it if you can afford it and it will make your lives better for the next decade!

I think it depends what you stand to gain from the extension. Not financially, but on a practical day to day level. As it’s a long term prospect, if the impact would be a biggie I’d go for it. Providing it’s not going to stress your finances.

That's a very good point. My self and DC love cooking so we spend a lot of time there and currently it's just stepping on each other as it's rather small. Family meal times are also very important in our household and we always have dinner together. Currently, the only way to fit a table in there is to have benches under the table and then pull these out when eating together, but even then it's a real squeeze. I think it will improve our life considerably....

The other option is to simply open the kitchen to the living room but then I am not too keen on open plan living downstairs. I will post current, proposed plans...

These are the current plans. The other less expensive option would be to add double doors between the kitchen living room and have a table that end.

Proposed plans

Building work is incredibly expensive post brexit/covid

3 of our neighbours who built the exact same extension as we wanted did so for between 50k and 70k between 2015 -2019.

We cant build it for less that 100k (build only, no kitchen, flooring or fittings) so we decided not to.

Its not our forever house and a few estate agents we spoke to said that it wouldnt add any more than 45k-50k to the house value.

As things currently stand, I will probably add nothing to the house value with the extension, so it will be just be a matter of improving our life. That's why I am hesitant. I am hoping that long term it will payoff, or at the very least we will get the money back if we sell in 10+ years...

I am planing to reuse the current kitchen with some tweaks to keep costs down, but the build/labour itself will be around 35k (potentially more as we have a manhole to move too!).

I've just had quotes to do similar and build is coming in at around £90k (south east). I'd be amazed if you could do it for £35.

Wow! At 90k it's simply not worth it. I have a 3rd build to quote next week, so I will report back on costs!

What about a serving hatch to dining end of living room? No need for open plan. Must have been what house had originally...dining room that end

If you have rewired redecorated replumbed it seems crazy to do an extension.

Better to wait until a unmodernised house comes up for sale of same layout.

Or, Maybe fourth bedroom was original dining room...could you see how that feels to put a family table in there for meals and then keep tiny breakfast table in kitchen.

I'd do extension and knock our the wall between living room and kitchen too. We live and love open plan. As a family it flows better. But of course interior designers need to brainwash people every couple of years so they spend more money and designers can sell new ideas. Now non open plan is the rage apparently, but every single family wants open plan from estate agents. Anyway I digress.
If you're in there long term you should think about your comfort rather than value of house. No one knows what will happen to house prices.

14 x 10 is hardly a small kitchen, perhaps if you just re-organise where things are you won't keep tripping over each other?
Or consider a conservatory off the kitchen?

So is the extension 2 storey? Either way, I hate to say it but I don't think there's a chance of it coming in anywhere near £35k. Just done one a bit bigger and spent more than four times that.

That was the original plan. But a fully insulated conservatory of roughly the same size as the extension to house the dinning table was coming at around 40k. I might as well save a bit more for a proper extension...

No, this is just single story extension.

Extensions are always more expensive than conservatories.