I'd appreciate thoughts on whether we should knock down most of our kitchen wall which adjoins an L-shaped dining/music/sitting room, creating an open-plan cooking, eating, sitting and music room.
Its a 1970s house. The existing dining room was extended about 10 years ago so it's now L-shaped with the dining table next to the kitchen and a serving hatch from the kitchen.
The extension houses an electric piano and dd1's harp plus a sitting area in the L-shaped section.
If we knock down the kitchen wall, we could extend the granite worksurface to create a breakfast bar, but would lose four wall cupboards (although could create some storage space under the breakfast bar on the dining room side).
The kitchen is fairly small but well-fitted with expensive oak units that were here when we moved in - we then had the granite worksurfaces put in.
There is another separate living room in the house and I've insisted on keeping the dining/sitting/music room tv-free although there is a tv in the kitchen.
I'm not thrilled at the idea of mess, disruption and cost (am still recovering from the original work being done a decade ago), but it would probably be a better fit for our lifestyle with two teenagers.
Your views please? Has anyone done this and regretted it? Or alternatively done the same sort of thing/have this arrangement and found it much better than separate kitchen/dining?
We're thinking it would be more sociable to be able to cook and talk to the dc while they're doing homework on the dining room table for example. However if I've cooked for a crowd, it's good to be able to shut the kitchen door on the mess.
tia