Edwardian terrace side return to utility or kitchen knock through?

2 years ago

last modified: 2 years ago

Hello Everyone

I am 2 years into a edwardian house renovation and have been stuck on the ground floor layout for 12 months. Issue being the small kitchen and access to the garden where we have a garden office, small kitchen and no downstairs toilet.

Currently this is accessed via the door in the kitchen as there's a path leading up the (small) garden to the office. The Kitchen juts out of the back of the house and was an exenstion somepoint in the 1990's, the main bathroom and toilet upstairs are directly on top of the kitchen.

We have already knocked through between the livingroom and dinning room with crital style doors to create a living room / playroom as we have 3 small children.

the wall seperating breakfast room which we use as our dinnig room and playroom houses a huge fireplace which runs the length of th house into a bedroom and is a main structural wall. back wall of kitchen is structural too.

We've had quotes to knock the kitchen down and extend slightly out into the garden creating a glass box all the way round with bi fold doors but i dont feel this solves the way we'd use the room (and i'm also not a fan of kitchen islands, roof lanterns or bifold doors)

i've thought about adding a small glass roof side return leading on from the playroom to make a small utility and then possibly wrapping this half way round the back of the house to give us a downstairs toliet too?

We are a terrace house and the neighbours to our right where the side return would go would be ok with us creating a wall but the neighbours to the left have already got a really old lean-to (thats bulit over our boundary) and i don't particulary want the hassel of having to deal with them

my questions are:

1. anyone else got any different ideas in how to best utalise the space? am i missing something really obvious?

2. Can you complete a side return without knocking through from the kitchen?

3. would a toilet in the end of the L shap side return be a terrible design?

4. Thoughts on costs?

any help appreciated!

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i-architect
2 years ago
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Edwardian terrace side return to utility or kitchen knock through?

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