London 1st floor flat - large(r) kitchen - floor plan/ design advise
I would LOVE a large(r) eat in kitchen. Our current kitchen is lovely but only has a wall bar/ stools and not ideal for a young growing family - bought pre babies. Our dining table is in the sitting room at the front of the property. We have an ok budget and my husband is very handy but we can’t decide what to do. We will continue to live in this flat for minimum 5 more years. So not forever. We paid top £ for it 4.5 years ago (pre Brexit, pandemic) so are anxious to control spend and we do not want to reduce its appeal. The options I am proposing I believe will be the most cost effective - not require major services changes. We are share of freeholders for building reg purpose and have a great relationship with downstairs. Thanks!!
Idea 1: Swap the bedroom at the end of the property with the kitchen. The kitchen would be bigger but the once double bedroom would be smaller. We would likely partition the dining space in the sitting room to create a small playroom/ office/ single bedroom. This would become the 4th bedroom.
Concern: still a small kitchen but a table would be possible in front of the double windows and look on gardens. We loose a lot of space due the internal staircase to garden. Is this a opportunity to remove walls around this staircase and create trap door?
Idea 2: combine the kitchen with the bathroom to create a large open plan kitchen. Move the bathroom into the adjoining bedroom. Partition the dining area of sitting room to recreate 3rd bedroom.
Concern: whilst the kitchen and bathroom would be fab, the 3rd bedroom would be smaller than the current 3rd and also the front of the house is on a relatively busy through road.
Comments (12)
S Wall
3 years agoRelated Discussions
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Comments (15)All the above posts are excellent...................however, nobody seems to have mentioned the drain position. I'm a little concerned that some of the plans above may be unachievable because you'll never get to the drainage. Can you confirm where the main drain is. If you're really lucky, then they may cut across the property and it's conceivable that you have a drain outside the kitchen or even a manhole in the garage ( we've got one in ours, as the drain makes it's way to the front ). Like this:-...See MoreVictorian flat kitchen renovation on a budget- advice in London
Comments (31)Good news that a builder is coming over. I suspect all the green walls I have drawn are originals and can’t be changed without permission- you can probably tell by their thickness relative to thinner partition walls but it would be good to check. As Bobby said you need to know where the buildings soil pipes are because this will dictate where you can put a wc. There may however be more than one- I suspect your wc pipes go under the kitchen and exit near the kitchen window. 1- get the builder to tell you if there is any extra bit to the left of your kitchen window that has been hidden behind boxing- extra square footage is nearly always useful. Are there original doorways (2 & 3) that could be reinstated- look for telltale signs in the skirting board, flooring, hollow walls where an opening has just been boarded over, door shaped cracks in the decorating etc....See MoreLondon victorian garden flat extension help please!
Comments (23)I think that you may be looking at bigger rooms in other properties and imagining something that’s not achievable here in the same way. Without the measurements I can’t exactly tell how the room sizes compare but it appears that the new space is likely no bigger than the living room and kitchen in the original flat but you are wanting it to be better. I will concede that an extra bedroom does add to the resale value significantly. But you have stated that you are imagining a kitchen and an island and this takes up space. A kitchen run against the wall, a 1000w walkway, a 1000 deep island and 1200w space behind the island for stools will leave only a 2m wide space for your living room and you are looking to reduce that further with a fake fireplace and bookshelves. Even if you reduce the size of your walkways and islands to bare minimums this is still too tight. This is without any doubt a compromised space. And no amount of looking at pictures of very wide rooms will make this 5.9m wide room bigger. Your options are to have a sh&t living space, reconsider the island or to make a compromise on bedroom size and move the bathroom. Personally I would have already made the decision and that cornice would already be forgotten. Don’t forget that you can have replacement cornice made and installed so you can still have pretty bedrooms even if you move the bathroom....See MoreS Wall
3 years agoWow thank you so much for taking the time to do this. It does look great and I had thought of the kitchen at the front of the house. It’s south facing and with both a table and soft seating it would get a lot of use. My only concern is the room get very warm in spring/ summer months and the road (eventhou we are set back 15 meters) can be busy/ noisy. With cooking it would mean opening the windows a lot more than we currently do. I guess we could invest in better cooling blinds. The benefit of the kitchen at the back of the house is proximity to our lovely garden. Then again nothing about the current floor plan is amazing. This is definetly food for thought and thank you so much for doing this 😉
Wumi
3 years ago
Nicola Combe
3 years agoS Wall
3 years agokwg kwg
3 years agokwg kwg
3 years agoS Wall
3 years agoThe bedroom at the end next to the kitchen is a playroom/guestroom. We have guests stay regularly. We don’t want to spend too much but are happy to invest something to make it more family friendly. We want to maintain 3 bedrooms. It’s a pickle and maybe not possible when I balance up budget/ time we will likely continue to live here....
S Wall
3 years ago
rinked
3 years agoS Wall
3 years ago
Wumi