monkeytreeuk

Help please! Going bonkers!

Frances C
8 years ago
Dear Houzzers,
For the sake of our sanity and relationship, we would be grateful for your help as we are going round in circles on the final layout for our new open-plan kitchen/dining/living extension.

Our Architectural Designer has come up with some interesting ideas for the extension but I am getting stressed as I want to make sure that we get the right flow from the existing rooms and that all our stuff will fit in. And that it is not dark and dingy!

Here's what we have so far ...
Most of the existing kitchen will become a new utility/boot room with a new WC. I have shown on the plan where the boiler and soil are located
The old dining room becomes the kitchen
The new part becomes the dining area and living room with bi-fold doors to the garden.

The garden faces northish, but we get full sun at the bottom and sun from East then West as the day goes on. We want to maximise light. Currently we have a slight dog-leg to try and catch evening sun from the west.

How do you think this layout works? We need to accommodate a 2.1m x 1m dining table + 6 chairs, a sideboard/dresser that is 1.8m x 0.6m, a sofa that is 1.95m x 0.95m, a large coffee table and probably a new occasional chair. We also have some wall units that are 0.5m deep to go on the short wall in the new living area.

We still have the option to change how far the extension goes into the garden, and could potentially flip the extension shape so it is 4m in the dining area and 3m in the living area. Although we would prefer not to, we could also have it the same depth right across the back. What would you suggest?

I am also trying to work out how best to accommodate a loo as we are exploring changing the garage into a spare room for the when the wrinklies stay, that could also be used as a study. Does that sound like a good idea!

One final thing, our house has brick piers on each corner so we are thinking it might look better to build inside these. We would lose about 0.6m but we think the extension might tie-in better, particularly as we think we might render/clad it, rather than match the existing brick. That explains the crossed out dimensions.

Sorry for the huge mind-dump but we need to move past our indecision and get our plans finalised and into the Planners. Thank you for taking time to read this. Your wise words would be welcome, or just send us some positive thoughts ... We just can't see the wood for the trees at the moment!

Comments (11)

United Kingdom
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