Turn beautiful second reception room into mediocre kitchen / diner?

[OrangeCrushes]

We have a great house, but the current kitchen and dining space is really lacking. We are considering converting our beautiful but little-used second reception into a kitchen / diner and making the current kitchen into a kitchen mess overflow/utility (we already have a laundry room).

The issue is that the space is very narrow and we don't want to go through the expense or hassle of an extension or much structural work. The best we could do would probably be a large room with units on two walls and the dining table in the opposite corner.

Really welcome any opinions or advice!!

Diagrams / examples forthcoming!

Floorplan. In this diagram, the laundry is now in the downstairs loo. The "utility" is now part of the kitchen. The utility is a low-quality lean-to that is external to the original house.

This is how someone else locally converted their (same floorplan) second reception:

Here is the current kitchen and dining room.

I don't know that I would., Could you just use the second reception as a proper dining room and keep the kitchen as it is?

Yes i would definitely move the kitchen into the back reception room.

@Ellmau I don't think that this really works because you would have to carry the food down a long hallway. The kitchen also feels crowded and poky. In my vision, we would put all the kitchen clutter into the current kitchen and keep things minimal in the kitchen diner.

You could make a lovely kitchen/dinner out of that back room, with a decent utility space in the current kitchen & utility - perhaps incorporating laundry space and reverting the loo/laundry space back to just a loo.

The existing dining room could then become a snug or a study depending on your needs. Probably blocking up the door to the current kitchen.

I definitely would - I love a big kitchen/diner which opens onto the garden and I'm a 'kitchen is the heart of the house' type person.

100% a good idea. Knock out the loo/ shower room so your kitchen diner has extra width. Turn the current utility and kitchen into a good sized utility and downstairs loo/shower (two separate areas - there's space for both.) Then open up the wall between current dining area and front reception if there is one (looks like it may be steps on the plan). Make the back area, which will have no natural light, a cosy den-like area - maybe sofas and TV or lined with books and some chairs to read in. Then have the front part as the smarter living room with sofas and coffee table.

A good, big kitchen diner is the hub of a house. You can chat to guests and family while you cook. You can sit around the table comfortably. DC can do homework, family can play board games, do craft activities. It would make the resale value higher too. We are currently looking and I just pass on everything that doesn't have a good kitchen diner with doors to the garden.

As an aside your kitchen doesn't have a window
All kitchens, as habitable rooms, must have a window
It currently does not conform to Building regs so I would definitely do something about that

of note
different planning authorities may have a minimum size that allows for a kitchen to be excluded ( as your extg kitchen is just under 6m2) This may not, however, allow exclusion from all Parts of the building regs. It would be worth contacting your local planners

@Cinaferna

Knock out the loo/ shower room so your kitchen diner has extra width.

unfortunately, we can't really knock through to the loo because that is another low-quality later add-on to the house.

The room also has beautiful original features and I am a bit precious about retaining them 😊

@DrPrunesqualer I think there is some exception for the current kitchen as we bought the house relatively recently and nothing was flagged up in the survey.

This is what I'd do

@Cinaferna also, due to the structure of the current kitchen/utility, it's totally impossible to put a shower and laundry in there. The utility has a (previously external) window into the dining area...

@theunbreakablecleopatrajones would you carry food around the corner and down a long corridor each time?

There aren’t exceptions allowed for all building regs purposes
It seems the original lightwell that your utility is in has been built into without buildings regs permission thus removing the natural light.
if it wasn’t picked up when you bought then they missed it

Is there building regs permission? . If there is then it’s been allowed. ( but I’d still suggest you see the approved drawings) If there isn’t then they’ve enclosed that space without bregs permission

So I wouldn’t assume that if you go to sell the next surveyor misses that too. I wouldn’t as it’s so obvious.

My last house had the same layout, although did not have the utility or loo to the side. I had the dining room at the back and we carried the food round the corner and down the corridor, though we did latterly move the dining room into the middle reception.

Nearly all my neighbours knocked the kitchen and back room through and made one big kitchen/diner. One neighbour had a shower room in the old kitchen. I could never afford to do the work, but it did make the house harder to sell when I moved.

We resisted the urge/trend to make a big kitchen diner. We just kept the existing floor plan with 2 separate reception rooms, kitchen and separate utility room. I love it and have no regrets. We refurbed the kitchen, keeping the small breakfast bar, decorated the downstairs throughout and kept the character of the house (1930s). It suits us perfectly.

I hope I've understood everything correctly...I would knock wall down between the utility and loo together to make one longer space. Then knock wall down between kitchen and second reception to create large kitchen diner. Use the current dining space as a living space & block it off from new kitchen diner space - does it connect to another living room at the front of the house? This way you have some larger spaces that may function better for family living?

Our kitchen is too small even to accommodate a breakfast bar 😔

The utility/loo rooms are so narrow that if you could knock down the walls between them (unclear, as they are separate structures), there's nothing you could do with the space.

The problem I think with knocking down the wall between the kitchen and second reception is that you would still only have the same amount of wall space in the new, renovated kitchen as if you did not knock through, due to the layout of the spaces.

I'd do this

Here is a photo of the reception room (though the boxes are now gone)

@TheCurious0range this would require very significant structural work.

I would definitely move the kitchen into the second reception @OrangeCrushes...but we have 'form' for this, having done it previously and are currently doing it again.

Imo, it's far more important to have a lovely, large, usable kitchen than a poky one with several - however well-appointed - reception rooms. But obviously not everyone would agree!

It looks like a great house that would only be improved by creating a showstopper kitchen. Which reminds me - why would it be a mediocre kitchen/diner?