Hi all, Thank you for your comments; I appreciate them! Natasha - the units you have suggested are very much what I had in mind. We will have a shaker kitchen and the media unit would also be shaker style and would have 4-6 cupboards with the TV in the middle with book shelves either side. Part of the reason we kept a partial wall was to make the space more usable. I can’t envision how the fully open plan room will be able to meet all our needs, but I am open to ideas! I feel that open plan would be more impressive, but potentially less usable. With regards to the doors. I do plan to reverse the doors both into the kitchen and family room part, but couldn’t work out how to do it on the app I used for the floor plan. It is a 1920s house and we have the original doors which we are planning to keep. We are also keeping a lot of floor space as when the table is not extended, we still have young children with lots of Lego and trains etc. I plan for these to be hidden in the cupboards at bedtime. J - we haven’t installed the kitchen but we have ordered it and paid a big deposit. Some of the units are bespoke/irregular sizes and I don’t think we would be willing to change this. I have attached a photo of our rendered kitchen plan. Thanks again for your comments. It is good to have other people’s opinions and ideas.

This is a very crude attempt at subtly changing your plans. It would require more internal modification to move a wall which you may not consider worth it but I wondered whether the utility would be better as a longer and narrower room to incorporate outdoor access (for laundry, muddy feet / boot room, etc) rather than having outdoor access from the study with the wasted ‘corridor’ past the bathroom. This would also make a wider second living space which could have double doors to link it to the lounge so that you could open it up for larger family occasions or close it off for smaller events / everyday.

One option

Just on the chimney point. We knocked through between our kitchen and small sitting room. We needed a structural engineer to specify the steel. as part of the work they took out a similar chimney and supported the chimney higher up with a diagonal steel. the whole job was £15k and the diagonal steel wasnt itemised but we had the wall taken out, new plaster throughout, lights, new floor, radiators etc included. so i guess a couple of thousand pounds for the chimney removal to first floor.