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Renovating Design Dilemma

To knock through or not and internal doors

last year

last modified: last year

Hi lovely people who are always so helpful.

We live in a 1930s semi and currently have a separate lounge to our kitchen diner. The kitchen diner is long and narrow but a rear extension is not an option for us due to cost. I am considering knocking through our lounge wall to give the feeling of more space but cannot decide if its a good idea or not! The wall is a stud wall.

I only want to do this if there is still the ability to have internal doors as I have young children (so want to have privacy and soundproofing a lot of the time) and as you can see there is often mess I don't always want to see!

I was hoping to have internal double pocket doors but a builder has told me that the maximum opening with those would be 1.6m due to a coat cabinet (see drawing) behind the wall. I don't want to lose that coat cabinet as it is essential storage which cannot go anywhere else.

I have considered internal bifold with the fold lying flat over the wider edge of the wall which will be left (where cabinet is) but can only seem to find vufold that do this and they are all glazed. I would like a solid door for the mess and privacy reasons! French doors i also don't think can be considered due to the narrowness of our kitchen and the proximity of the dining table to the opening.

Does anyone have any thoughts on whether it is worth knocking through or other door suggestions? Any ideas gratefully received!

Featured Answer

Wumi

last year

I personally would try to incorporate the conservatory into the kitchen /diner, rather than knocking through to the living room.

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Comments (8)

Sonia
last year
From your drawing where is the wall you may or may not knock down?
CWD
last year
Once you knock down a wall you lose the ability to have furniture right up against that space. There's also the issue of the doors as you've mentioned. Not sure if you have a radiator on the wall or not, but that's also an issue. It would be useful to see a floorplan of the whole downstairs. My initial thoughts would be to keep the wall though. You've already said you'd have doors closed a lot of the time, so seems like an unneccesary cost to open up for occasional use. I also prefer a house to have more than one room and as the children get older it's definitely better to have separate spaces. There's probably other ways of creating more of a feeling of space rather than removing a wall. Perhaps a different style/size of sofa, or just pulling furniture away from the wall by a few inches - seems mad, but furniture having some space around it actually makes the room feel more spacious.
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I'm running a free 5 Day Get Ready To Redesign Your Home Challenge in the first week of December which you can join using the link below. This will help you start to design your vision for your home, which will help you figure out the answers to your design dilemmas! It's helped many previous participants in the week save tens of thousands on their house extension project and is the best way to start your house extension project in a way that will avoid you making an expensive mistake or regretting a missed opportunity. You also get access to me daily for Q&As so I can help you with further questions during the week. Here is the link to join the 5 day challenge: https://www.i-architect.co.uk/readytoredesign.html
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Deborah
Original Author
last year
Thank you, thats really helpful. The existing stud wall is the thick line on my very rough floorplan below!
User
last year
I got some made to measure full height shutters for the existing opening between my lounge and what was the dining room (now a kitchen/diner) since I couldn't find any folding doors the right size. Although the top half of mine are louvred, they can be completely solid.
Deborah
Original Author
last year
Thank you!
PRO
ALUMINIUM TRADE SUPPLY
last year
Once you decide, get in touch and can help you with product advice on intenral doors. There are more than bifolds available and the slide and stack may also work quite well. You don't need double glazed doors as they're inside so you could also get doors on a triple track that all stack very neatly to the one side. Don't go with products designed for external use but fitted inside, there are better alternatives out there.

Hope this helps

Kind regards,

Nick
Lucy Williams
last year
i also think it makes more sense to get more use out of the conservatory - could you remove the glass sliding internal doors to the conservatory and put the dining table there? i'm not a designer but having a busy family and 3 young kids - i think it's better to keep the living room and kitchen separate. ps. having a separate utility room is great! good luck

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