Show me your lovely but TINY kitchens in Victorian houses

[drspouse]

I started a thread about kitchen planner apps and the Ikea app was mentioned and it has gone "computer says NO" because the kitchen is too tiny.
The picture (wait for approval, blah blah) shows next door which is a mirror image. It's definitely ground floor (they have a utility room in the basement, though it's marked as the ground floor and the ground floor as the first floor, which is bizarre).

We currently have a full height fridge-freezer in the dining room and we have washing machine and dishwasher in the kitchen. We have some original built in cupboards in the dining room (between the fireplace, which doesn't have a fire in it but has the biggest lintel in the world over the top so can't be knocked through), and backing onto the sitting room on the non-window-wall. These cupboards are nice - panelled, painted white - and it might look good to have the kitchen echo these. Ceilings are high and the previous owners were tall so there are full height cupboards I can't reach (but on the other hand, is the space between a cupboard and the ceiling any use for anything except gathering dust and grease?)

We could possibly relocate the washing machine to the basement but it would be a pain and we don't want an under-worktop fridge so we are happy to keep it in the dining room. Also in the dining room are the dining table, chairs, and a very large Welsh type dresser where we keep ornaments, homework, mug overflow. Not getting rid of dresser (heirloom) but we find it's not massively useful as a kitchen storage overflow, though it's useful as life admin storage.

If it's relevant, we also have the basement steps in the dining room (so that they go under the stairs to the first floor, they also have this but it isn't marked. We have the door off between kitchen/diner (it used to be sliding and was neither use nor ornament) and in fact we also have the door off between dining and hall. The dining room door had original non-safety glass and we were one slammed door away from a major artery rupture in a DC, after a breakage on a similar door to the upstairs loo.

Floor in dining room is original encaustic tiles and in kitchen is harder-than-diamonds black slate (you can drop things on the dining floor and they don't break and then you drop the same thing in the kitchen and wham).

Outside is an outside loo, and a bike shed/chest freezer store.

Anyway - all tiny Victorian kitchen arrangements gratefully acknowledged.

Ah no we want a separate play room! Couldn't have that with a knocked through lounge/diner/kitchen!
On second thoughts maybe the DCs banished to the back of the house... Not a bad idea..

If you decided and could afford to move things around - Play room = existing dining room. Existing kitchen = utility with d/s loo and shower if possible, kids can go to loo from their playroom and be thrown in the shower if they get mucky! Utility at very back handy for dogs if you have one.

Look, I'm just visualising it. If money was no object it could be done!

My friend has a tiny kitchen and redid it recently. She has a full walk in corner pantry with shelves. It is amazing and hides and stores so much. I think it was from Howdens

Can you move the washer upstairs? And then, if you are eating in the dining room, cuktery and crockery could live in there in a sideboard or the dresser or that tall cupboard.

Fireplaces like that are a feature adding value to the house, and they are also structural.

I know a small house where washer and dryer (stacked) are under the stairs behind a door, and another where they are inside a hall cupboard (stacked) on an upper floor.

We had a 3x3m kitchen in our last house but with only one door. We had U shaped bottom cabinets fitted and a tall FF at one end of the U. washer and dryer were stacked in a cupboard next to the bathroom.

Wouldn’t add as much value as having a 6m kitchen-diner however…!

Three seconds on google tells me you can probably do this with a steel frame.

Your basement. What exactly can be moved there? I 100% would move washing and tumble drying to down there and make utility room area down there so it’s all together.

You could definitely do that with steels and is exactly what I would do.

Two very small (3x1.7m and 4x1.8m) Victorian galley kitchens for you:

We don't have a dryer (the Lakeland heated airer is pretty good though) but under our stairs is, unfortunately, the basement stairs. Maybe in the bathroom though.

I thought we had plumbing down there but we don't unfortunately. Next door had their basement entirely sealed (not the right word but it's late) but ours is, er, more natural aka entirely made out of mud AFAICS.

Edit: tanked? Is that what I mean?

If it went the whole width of the room that would be one thing but you'd get pillars in the middle of the room so you can't actually walk through your through kitchen diner. That's what the other houses in the street have.

The offending lintel, with the nice (but too small to be a doorway, I now see) cupboard on the left. We do keep most dining crockery in there - just a few breakfast plates in the kitchen.

If you're thinking of converting that back space to a shower room at some point, why not start by creating a utility with water supply/multiple power outlets/insulation? That way, if it becomes necessary in the future, you've already got the majority of expensive work done. And it'll give space for the fridge in the kitchen which, combined with a table rather than a fixed island, would mean plenty of surfaces - and if the shower becomes necessary, then you can consider either increasing the footprint or moving utility stuff into a tanked basement.

It's currently an outside loo which is tiny, and a shed - it would need walls and a roof to become a utility, and we'd need to get rid of the loo and then later on put it back. So in other words, it would need a greater footprint to become a utility room.
Discussing with DH the idea of the play room becoming a kitchen diner might have legs though - the diner becomes a kids room and the kitchen becomes a utility. We're in negotiation!

Our kitchen is bigger than yours but still small….I have no wall units as they close the room in…..just industrial tape shelving ( oak and cast iron) …I’ve then had a made to measure pantry made to fit in alcove in utility room for all food….i stream lined when we moved here….got rid of loads we didn’t use….I keep the food mixer and coffee maker in the big floor to ceiling cupboard in back lounge as I don’t use them often….I have very litttle on the worktops so they don’t look overcrowded

I know you mentioned IKEA but instead would you go for inspiration to a high end kitchen design place who has probably worked with lots of older properties and quirks like this. You could do a design session with them but never buy from them. I agree with open shelves. Also drawers are better than cupboards for the lower units. Also agree one big pantry unit could work. Could you also think abou what works better in a kitchen versus a dining room? E.g. a big double door free standing dresser in the dining room could take all of the lesser used items, small appliances, cook books, storage tins, extra pantry stock, etc. and just keep the very regular used items in the kitchen.

@SparkFinder the dresser doesn't have closed doors but between the dresser and the cupboards we keep most of the small appliances, plates, cookbooks etc. in the dining room. We find we don't remember we have spare tins etc. if they are in the dining room.
We will definitely consider getting a fancy kitchen design session! We aren't that likely to use IKEA for the actual units - I was just trying to do some designs.
DH has thrown a spanner in the works by mentioning the bathroom (the sink has a crack I cut myself on and the bath keeps shifting and leaking) but if we did the bathroom well we could move the washing machine.
We mainly seem to lack counter space in the kitchen but if we had better storage we could keep more of the worktop stuff we don't use every day, or things like milk bottles that take up loads of worktop space before they are put out, in cupboards.

Can you live without a dishwasher?

Over my dead body!
One teen boy and one preteen girl?
We live without a dryer but no dishwasher, no way!

what about doing side return from kitchen only and leaving an inner courtyard where current dining room is?

I have knocked my dining room/kitchen together (although there was no fireplace) and just have a beam and a bit of wall, so it looks fine. But mine is bigger than yours. I am moving my washing machine upstairs to a small bathroom as I don't like it in the kitchen.

The Victorian houses in my area are mansions but I live in much more modest Edwardian terrace and this is my kitchen. I’ve yet to have blinds made up 🙈

The kitchen is awkward as it has two doors. Can you have no external door in the kitchen, but turn the dining room window into a door?

Then you get a pretty standard u shaped kitchen.

We put our washing machine under the stairs if thats a possibility.