And would you do it again?

Thinking of doing this in our 1930’s semi. We have a large lounge, large dining room and small kitchen. Our dining room currently has a large table, 3 seat sofa and cupboards in the alcoves. It also has large French doors to the garden.

I am worried about ‘losing’ 2 walls, one in the kitchen and one in the dining room and ending up with nowhere to put things. I would like an open plan kitchen/finding room with a small sofa/chairs in it as well.

Anyone done this? And how did you find it?

Currently I spend a lot of time on my own in the small kitchen and the the dining room gets used at dinner time (not always) and when the kids play the Xbox. Seems a shame not to really use this large room.

Help/pics very welcome.

Simone

Sounds like we have a similar house. A few in our row have done it and its quite nice. We decided to extend instead by building a new kitchen on the back, opening up the dining room door to make an open plan kitchen diner and keeping the existing kitchen as a laundry (and maybe bike store). My rationale was we save a packet on not needing structural work to the existing house and disruption is minimal as we have kept the kitchen fully operational during the works. We will have a lot more space when it is finished

We did it in ours.

Great room for doing all sorts if stuff in.

Thanks nickjb, we have considered just that. However, the extra expense puts us off. Also, the back of the house does to get a lot of light, so the dining room is quite dark, adding to it will only make it darker. Our garden is also small and mostly higher.

Taking the wall out and having windows on the side of the house as part of the new room will hopefully brighten it.

We did it in our last house (Victorian terrace) and it basically transformed the way we used the house. We had a smallish kitchen and a dining room which was barely used, outside mealtimes and was effectively a corridor to get from the lounge to the kitchen. Stuff got dumped there and it was basically unloved.

We took four feet of wall and a door frame out and the kitchen diner basically became the centre of the home. Both rooms were quite dark but when we opened it out it became a really warm bright room. We now live in an extended 30’s semi and I’m itching to do the same again. It’s only the cost of re-modelling the kitchen that’s stopping me at the moment

That’s great to hear, thanks. Still worried I won’t fit all the furniture in anymore losing the wall. Perhaps my fears are unfounded. Will have to measure and draw some plans I think.

I am considering blocking up the back door in the kitchen and making it a window. The French doors will be the only way out. Will I regret this? As it will be one room, there will still be a door to the garden in it.

Also, presume I need building regs?

We did it here http://www.rightmove.co.uk/#/property-for-sale/property-26689929.html (just click on the gallery)

We’ll be doing it when finances allow in our new place.

Is losing a sofa in a room you don’t really use a problem if you stand to gain hours every week interacting with the rest of the family and letting the kids join in more easily in the kitchen?
That’s why we want to do ours anyway.

The light is an issue. Our dining room is dark, too. I think the new kitchen with 2 1m2 roof lights extra glazing will more than compensate for the back of the room being a bit dark. As for costs I think either option will more than cover itself when you sell but I appreciate it might be a stretch now.

You will need building regs, which might mean you end up doing more like a full rewire

Jondoh your link takes me to the rightmove homepage

Yeah, we knocked through. It’s completely changed the flow through the lower floor. Our dining room was used as a dining room once in its existence. The rest of the time it housed our running machine & permanently set up turbo trainer. The kitchen’s now 12 metres long. One end’s got a table & chairs, the kitchen’s in the middle & there are a couple of sofas at the opposite end adjacent to a patio door. It’s one of the things I shouldn’t have waited 10 years to do.

D.

Odd – it works for me.

Type in hg29lx into Rightmove – it’s the house at £269k

I lived in the same area of Cardiff with the same style of house for quite a few years. Some houses had had their front and back rooms knocked together, some had not.

I much preferred the ones that hadn’t. You get two still usable rooms, otherwise you get a giant void that’s really nothing. You still have to lay them out like separate rooms, cos it’s the wrong shape to use it really as one room, but you are missing a whole wall in both rooms on which to put things. And you end up with two chimney breasts which is weird. But then I’ve always tried to make two rooms that can be used rather than just a stuffy formal dining room.

I sometimes think you just say things to have an opposing point of view Molgrips.

tbh i agree with molgrips on this one

lots of my friends and my girlfriends parents have their front rooms and dining rooms together.

it means both rooms look bigger but in reality they are actually both small rooms – coupled with having to walk round the dining room table to get into the kitchen GRRR

a kitchen knocked into the diner on the other hand i think would offer a good family room so its not a chore to be cooking in the kitchen away from the family and without having to go next door to keep an eye on the kids.

In a previous hous, which sounds similar, we took a kinda halfway approach, light was an issue and it was easy to feel a little isolated in the kitchen and couldn’t keep a proper eye on our little girl if she was in the lounge / garden and we were in the kitchen.
We put a 3′ pair of french doors and a window either side of them in the wall between kitchen and living room. This still allowed some wall space for kitchen units and worktop either side of the door,with shelves over the windows, let plenty light in and really felt like the house was larger and more airy. The french doors opened into the kitchen against the kitchen units , so didn’t occupy any useable space. It did seem odd having two doors into the kitchen, but worked very well, particularly because we could still shut the doors and open the kitchen window for those onion frying / toast burning/ heavy grilling moments too without fumigating the living room.

We did it (well actually due to the layout of our house we knocked our kitchen into the lounge and turned the dining room into the lounge)

During

After

More pictures here

Our house had a lounge diner. We bricked up the hole and made a kitchen diner instead.
Previous lounge diners have been a pig to heat, so we wanted one room that we could crank up to max to try and keep her ladyship warm.
If we had a seperate dining room I’m sure it would end up full of junk.

ebygomm , thats almost EXACTLY what i want to do in my kitchen.

another who hates over the worktop cupboards too … :d

We have a pantry where all food stuff is stored so plenty of cupboards without the need for wall units. I know it’s often said you can’t have too much storage in a kitchen but seeing as we still have one base unit virtually empty I think you can. Worktops are far nicer to work at if they don’t have units over them imo.

Yes thought we extended at the same time to create one large family living/dining area and kitchen. Works really well (and what buyers are after at the moment) providing you have another living room which you do. Wall space not a problem…

you can definantly have too much storage.

previous owner clearly had their kitchen designed by a bnq kitchen “designer” whos sole point in life was get as much comission as possible by craming as many units as possible into the space.

half our kitchen cupboards are currently empty and i long for worktop space as we cook from scratch almost always- i think the previous owner must have done ready meals all the time.

anyway top job on your kitchen looks good