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!

Thanks all for the suggestions. You've given me a lot to think about!!!

Well, the lovely example with island linked by @Heronwatcher is 11'5 wide according to the floor plan, so something similar is hopefully achievable in your space @OrangeCrushes!

@LibertyLily it's almost unbelievable to me that this would work! I am considering whether we could get away with having an island in the new kitchen and then just carrying food to the current dining room on special occasions. It's too bad the conservatory is so small 😐

I'm guessing that the island in that house is approximately 900mm/3' wide with similar depth walkways between island and perimeter cabinets/opposite wall which would be the bare minimum you can get away with.

In our old kitchen (as per my pics further back in the thread) we had a 1100mm wide island that was roughly 2200mm long.

Our walkways between island and perimeter/opposite wall - where we managed to fit in some ikea shoe storage units - varied between 900mm and 1000mm due to the slightly off-square nature of the 400 year old room/building 🙄 This was never an issue for us - even when we pulled out the island stools (on shoe storage side), which made it a squeeze to walk through that side when someone was seated at the island.

I think the suggested requirement for walkways between island and perimeter cabinets is 900-1200mm with 1000mm being the average, although the wider the better, obviously!

Hello!

I have a new idea. In this plan, we would rip down the current conservatory and put in an orangery type extension, with good insulation and heating.

You are correct, there is no requirement for a kitchen to have a window, though it must have adequate ventilation. Habitable rooms must have a window, but a kitchen is generally not counted as a habitable room. However, a kitchen / diner or kitchen / living room almost certainly is a habitable room, and so does require a window. So in this case I imagine it hangs in what the room is described as, and how it was drawn on the originally building regs plans. IMO :)

What do people think of this? We would have to leave the current (charming but annoying?) door in place. I actually like having separate rooms, but would this be overly confined feeling?

So this room would be a kitchen, and the conservatory behind the doors at the end would become larger and would be for dining. We would also plan to have an island in the middle (as numerous posters here have proven can be done!) with bar seating for casual everyday meals.

Edit: not sure why the photo didn't attach to this post

Photo

I would incorporate what is now the downstairs loo into the kitchen, put a nice glass roof on it for light and run the kitchen in an L shape along where that is and along the back wall, and have an island.
Make the existing kitchen the laundry/utility room walking through into downstairs loo where the utility currently is.

Unfortunately, the downstairs loo is a later, poor quality addition and incorporating this into the room would require taking out an exterior wall and putting in a steel.

The current utility room similarly is a later addition. There is a formerly exterior window that looks directly into this space. There's also nowhere to put a toilet as the exterior door is right in the centre of the tiny room

I may also post on AIBU!

I’d do the kitchen/ utility first and then see if you do still want a new separate dining room. You may find that the bar in the kitchen, plus a conservatory you can use in the summer or for special occasions (with a heater) is enough.

I like the doors too, but on your plan I would worry that having a long thin dining room would start to make the kitchen really dark, hence why I’d do the kitchen and then take it from there.

@Heronwatcher thanks for this perspective. I already know from experience that both the existing conservatory and our existing dining space are too small for our needs

I know what you mean! My kitchen plan would involve adding lots of lighting, but agreed that artificial lighting sometimes doesn't cut it

A kitchen is counted as a habitable room

3.5 x 6 proportionally is a long thin room. The 3.5 width will appear smaller because of the length

It’s an uncomfortable dimension. Personally I’d reduce the 6m

Thanks. I tend to agree, but my partner seems super keen on making it is as big as possible. If we move ahead maybe I can talk him down

It’s a classic mistake
We see it all the time with people knocking down walls and then they wonder why the ceiling height seems low. ( the ht of a room needs to increase as you make it bigger or the ceiling appears to come down on you ) Proportion is really important

Have you considered moving the Kitchen to the front reception room and making that back room and conservatory your living space? it brings the kitchen next to the dining room, means and you could possibly zone the lunge into a TV area/reading corner etc - depending on how you need to use it,

A long narrow room with doors at both ends will always be a bit of a corridor but the other reception would make a much easier kitchen I think

Unfortunately, this is impossible for various reasons relating to the structure of the house

I think a kitchen and large island in that reception space would be absolutely fine, especially as you have a dining room separately. I've seen some beautiful islands that are repurposed dining tables with storage added.

If you did decide to go the whole hog though, replace the utility and shower extensions with a beautiful side return then put the new utility in the middle of the house where the rubbish lighting is to reduce room length slightly.

Yes, that wouldn't bother me at all and seems far far less annoying than building work. I would look for a good tray and have a designated place to put it down in the dining room. You could try for a couple of weeks and see if it bothers you.

Not really that black or white though, is it, as there’s no consistent definition of habitable room. Hence my use of the world generally :)

So for Part B of building regs it is a habitable room, but for Part F it’s not. For Part M it can be 😂 As B is fire regs and the diagram in the OP showed two exits then with appropriate mechanical ventilation (Part F) I think it’d comply. Most Victorian terraces fail on Part M anyway, but they’re not required to be brought up to modern standard - you just can’t make access worse.

Of course, you’d never design or build a new property with the layout in question, but that’s not what is in question here as far as I can see.