Could we create a kitchen diner here without extending?

[MummyvdM]

Hi all,
Really hoping you can help before I pay to get an architect involved. We moved into our house a year ago and needs everything doing. Hoping to move our kitchen from where it currently is (see floor plan attached) into where the dining room is and knock all walls out in-between to make a kitchen / dining. Ideally id love to get a sofa in but appreciate this may be a push, particularly as id like an island or large peninsula. The man hole is currently located on the patio, very near where the current kitchen sink is. We absolutely cannot afford to extend so I'm hoping some creative brains on here could help and alleviate some of the worries I have about none of this being possible. Thank-you!

Are you meaning to make a new kitchen-diner using the space that is currently dining room, study and kitchen but still keeping a separate living room? Presumably squaring the living room off either in line with current kitchen wall or current outside dining room wall? I think you would have a plenty big enough space, even for a sofa. It will be a bit L-shaped but that can be more interesting than a huge square.

Would it not make more sense to knock throigh to the current living room and make the dinning room into a snug?

I think I would square off the living room, make the kitchen and study and bit of living room into a kitchen diner and keep the dining room as a study / snug. Then you don't have to move all the kitchen pipes etc.

This is what I would do too.

I love this idea but the chimney breast can't be taken out, mainly because there's a lovely log burner there x

You can move a log burner and have a new chimney put in, in lots of places, for a fraction of the cost of knocking walls down. So don’t compromise your house for a log burner.

We mean like this, with red area being your new kitchen diner. Doesn’t affect chimney breast

Nice. Do you think id be able to fit an island/table there? It's quite a small area.

Yeah, it would have to be quite small island and a small table, or you can have just a bigger table. You won’t be able to put any other furniture round the table, but if you put it down the study end you can expand your kitchen cabinets to the right.

You could still knock through into the dining room as well, that would give you a massive open plan space if that’s what you’re after. I would rather keep a separate room though but it’s not my house!

Yes this.

@MummyvdM how big is your dining table? Can you measure how much space it needs for people to be sitting at it? And try it both ways if you can. I would draw out the room to scale on graph paper and cut out a scale dining set.