I’m currently sketching up some plans for a kitchen extension. The plan is to build a new kitchen off the dining room to create a kitchen diner and turn the old kitchen into a toilet and laundry with space for a couple of bikes

I like the idea of having a proper back door, espcially if it goes straight to the laundry. Good for coming in mucky. This seems to pinch a lot kitchen space so might not be the best option.

Here are a few skecth plans. ‘A’ is my preffered option but will require planning permission which is 50:50 at best. The rest are a bit compromised but wont need planning. I’m leaning towards ‘D’ with a door by the kitchen sink, sort of good middle ground.

I keep going round in circles so any thoughts would be appreciated. Little tweaks or completely different schemes.

The only thing I would say is that if you are going to go to the trouble of planning and building regs, make it as big as you can afford – you can never have too much space.

Also, you seem to have bits of wall left over between the kitchen and diner on some plans. Why? get rid of bits of wall that are not required.

D seems the best space for your money I’d have thought as some of your other layouts waste a lot of useable space especially in the kitchen. From your photo you’ve got the bathroom svp coming down on the wall – this will stop you doing some of your options anyway – you’ll need to allow some boxing in for this and you’d be best avoiding a MH inside.
I’d keep the remnants of the external wall as it’ll reduce the steels you’ll need and still retain useful wall space especially in the kitchen.
Have you allowed for a handbasin in the wc? It doesn’t look like you have – also check your door swings… Not bitter experience or anything…!

CBA drawing it, but IMO you’d want the loo to be more accesible from the rest of the house so there’s no traipsing through the laundry etc. Also it’s not obvious which are the strucural walls or how big your budget is. So, with no picky little considerations like keeping the house standing, budgets or sewers…

Same overall footprint as B/D but lose existing wall between kitchen & dining room and replace in line with hall/lounge wall. Move loo so there’s a door to loo off entrance hall – assume hall is about 1.5-2m wide, so just enough for a bog & washbasin in that size x 750-900mm or so. Then back door from existing outside loo(?) into longer laundry/utility room that runs to loo, door from there into larger kitchen/diner, double doors from there to back garden (or go the whole hog & have floor to ceiling glazing across the back of kitchen. Kitchen goes at lounge end, dining area at doors end.

as above no point have a loo downstairs if you need to go through three rooms to get to it from downstairs- I would replace it witha bike shed though as I can hold my wee in long enough to get upstairs 😉

Id go for the bigger footprint that goes with B,D & E,given whats already been said above about maximizing the floor and it wont cost that much more in the bigger picture.

The distances between the sink and cooker look a bit big,might be best to keep these a bit closer.

maybe go for E but make the wc off the downstairs hall, splitting what yo uhave as the laundry, then on to the Laundry/utility room leaving the space at the back for bikes?

LAundry room will just end up as a corridor/hall exentsion I think – you can’t store/dry stuff in there as you need to get through it to access back door – I’d think hard about what you want from it and drop it altogether/make smaller if all you want is a sink and somewhere for the washign amchine.

Just a few things to add:
Wall between currrent kitchen and diner is supporting so I’m keen not to move that if poss.
Little walls between new kitchen and diner are what would be left with no additional structural work and I think it helps the kitchen layout.
Downstairs loo is mainly for use when working/relaxing in the garden or garage so ideally near the back door
Budget is tight (is there any other kind)

Thanks for the help so far, keep ’em coming 🙂

D.

But….

*Laundry is too big.
*Loo would be better with access from hall; laundry only needs access from kitchen (+ poss with own external access) (i.e. turn them round)
*Build a half island across between kitchen and dining room.