Dining room to kitchen... Yes or no?

MikeJR

Hi all!

My wife and I bought a Georgian 3 bed semi-detached house around 18 months ago. It's pretty much everything we wanted. The only compromise we made was that the kitchen is small at just 2m wide x 3m long.

This being the case we want to create a larger kitchen/diner and have been developing some ideas...

The simplest idea we've considered is to remove the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The rooms are offset and the kitchen "wing" extends beyond the back of the house leaving only 1.5m of shared wall between both rooms.

Our most ambitious plan is to extend the dining room length so that it comes level with the end of the kitchen and then, using an embarrassing amount of structural steel, remove all the now-internal walls forming an L-shaped kitchen diner.

Our meet-in-the-middle idea is the one that raises the question in the title.... we'd like to extend the dining room as previously mentioned and then make the extended dining room into a kitchen/diner. The old kitchen would become a utility room.

Our concern is that this idea would effectively rid us of a reception room in favour of the kitchen/diner, and have a negative impact on the value of our home.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

MikeJR

Davesnave

MikeJR wrote: »

What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

MikeJR

My thoughts are that I wouldn't want a house with a poky kitchen, no matter what it was 'worth.'

So long as you still have a decent dining area, there are ways to minimise the impact of being in the same physical space as the kitchen. Making the kitchen sympathetic to the age & style of the house also helps.

If you don't intend to live there a very long time, you may find that the larger plan is over-development, the costs of which cannot be re-couped.

If you intend to stay indefinitely, the question of value becomes less relevant anyway.

cte1111

I would prefer a house with a large kitchen diner to one with a small kitchen and separate dining room. I don't think many people use separate dining rooms any more, although I'm sure there are some that prefer this still.

Candles_by_Lisa

I would prefer a large diner/kitchen. Were in the same position a large dining room attached to a small galley kitchen. When we have the funds we intend to do the same remove the adjoining wall and make it the one large kitchen/dining room.

Doozergirl

Square footage and number of bedrooms affect value.

Whether you knock a wall down won't affect it, it's purely about preference. You can't please everyone, so you may as well please yourself.

Davesnavr has a point, however. Because it doesn't affect value, whether the cost is recoupable could be questionable. But it might be more saleable. I don't like small kitchens either.

SailorSam

I've got a nice big kitchen/diner and i much ptrfer that to seperate rooms with only a small kitchen.
I suppose a seperate dining room is good if you have Dinner parties, but most people are happy eating in the kitchen.

tyllwyd

We've got a three bed house with a lounge at the front, and a full width kitchen/dining room extension across the back of the house, with the original back room opening onto the extension, so we have an l-shaped kitchen diner. The biggest problem is what to do with what was the back room - we've got it set up as a living area, which is nice for family evenings but it does mean that noise from the kitchen is annoying when you are trying to watch tv. Our other problem is that the front lounge is a bit too small for a modern home, which made the house more difficult too sell when we had it on the market for a while.


We ended up with the L-shape by accident, and to be honest we like having a big kitchen diner and separate utility room, but I don't think I'd plan to have an L-shaped room.

MikeJR

Thank you all for your replies, you've been very helpful.

It is very much intended for our home to be our forever-home so thanks to your replies we feel better now about concentrating more on making it our own.

As 2 of our plans involve extending the square footage, it's good to know the value should travel in the right direction should we need to call upon a little of the equity in the future

Many thanks

MikeJR

Paully232000

MikeJR wrote: »

Hi all!

My wife and I bought a Georgian 3 bed semi-detached house around 18 months ago. It's pretty much everything we wanted. The only compromise we made was that the kitchen is small at just 2m wide x 3m long.

This being the case we want to create a larger kitchen/diner and have been developing some ideas...

The simplest idea we've considered is to remove the wall between the kitchen and dining room. The rooms are offset and the kitchen "wing" extends beyond the back of the house leaving only 1.5m of shared wall between both rooms.

Our most ambitious plan is to extend the dining room length so that it comes level with the end of the kitchen and then, using an embarrassing amount of structural steel, remove all the now-internal walls forming an L-shaped kitchen diner.

Our meet-in-the-middle idea is the one that raises the question in the title.... we'd like to extend the dining room as previously mentioned and then make the extended dining room into a kitchen/diner. The old kitchen would become a utility room.

Our concern is that this idea would effectively rid us of a reception room in favour of the kitchen/diner, and have a negative impact on the value of our home.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks in advance,

MikeJR

If it is everything that you ever wanted then I would presume (and correct me if i am wrong), that you want to stay here for a while, if not forever.
If that is the case then it doesn't matter what it does to the value, just do what would make life easier for you and what you would be happier with.

We are having the same discussion at present, I want to keep the dining room separate, but my other half wants to open it up. Slightly different in our case as our kitchen is bigger, but in our last house we had an open plan dining room/kitchen and such a better use of space than if we had had a wall between and had two small rooms.

prosaver

why dont you put a big hatch in the wall. and you can use the room i as a snugroom/dinner.
I built a extension and left the kitchen small. and the extension has a door leading to the kitchen..so we use the extension sometimes as a lounge and a quite room or we put the table up on special occasions like christmas.
Plus friends can sleep over.
my son/wife can use the room for friends and wont have anyone snooping (oh im just making a cup of tea).