I would take the wall down between kitchen and dining room and combine them. An island replacing the wall is a good idea but you are going to lose the main kitchen wall and a lot of storage. Plan it out to scale and then decide. I think it's a bit tight to squeeze in all your wishlist. Think about where your compromises lie.

As you have such a lovely big dining room, would you consider putting the kitchen in there if budget allows? Then remove the walls and put your dining table in the old kitchen in there? I think your idea of knocking through to the outside toilet to square off the room is a great idea too.

I’ve definitely considered that Sonia, it’s trying to convince the husband!

Isla- was thinking of having a U-shaped kitchen as the area next to the utility space will then all be walled up so you could have tall cupboards on that side. But thank you for the comments. I think it’s very interesting to think about it. I will definitely try to plan it out to scale.

Of course putting in a new kitchen, or moving the current one into the dining area, will entail work and more expense, so not an easy decision.

As you have a lovely large dining room why not plan some not so often used storage along the left hand wall? You could co-ordinate the style with the kitchen cabinets and it would look cohesive. You could always put wall units on legs so the depth is reduced to 300mm instead of 600mm and hide the legs with a kickplate. Very handy to store serving dishes, platters and glasses. There are so many options that it's dazzling. Think about resale or if it's your forever house go wild :)) well as wild as the budget allows of course...

That looks amazing, Jonathan! What software did you use to put that together? Would love to have a playground with it. My only issue is obviously the water & gas are already in the kitchen area so the cost may mean we have to keep everything to the right hand side. We also have a large piano and three saxophones that will take up quite a bit of room in the dining room 😬

Play around, not playground!

Would anyone have a rough idea of how much it would cost to take out a chimney stack and chimney breast across the first and second floor as well as taking the wall out, and of course supporting it all? Anyone had a similar project recently. We’re in the south coast of England..

Chimney breast removal is about £1,500 for just one room and so you should budget £3k if you want to take out the one on the floor above. Don’t forget to get a party wall agreement.

The chimney runs inside the house so my understanding is I don’t need a party wall agreement. I hope I’m right 😬

A party wall agreement is used if you work on the wall that you share with your neighbour.

Great, that’s what I thought so we won’t need one for this project. Thanks for clarifying.

Semi or detached?

Where is your soil pipe?

Great spaces! If the dining room has other uses, eg, as a music room, I think your U shaped kitchen could fit. Especially if you can move lesser used things to the dining room side so that it isn't an L/two walls of units. I get that the existing services are on the right. Will you want the back door into the new utility or into the kitchen? I think the utility makes sense in terms of access to the loo from the garden and that would give you that bit more space in the kitchen.

PS. The money you 'save' on not moving the kitchen to the other side of the house might be needed to move the side wall kitchen window...🤔

HU It’s a semi detached so no neighbours to the left-hand side. The soil pipe is under the left hand kitchen window.

And yes, we would lose the doorway out into the garden on the left-hand side but I think that’s fine as we still have the nice hexagon shaped double doors out into the garden by the dining area.

So perhaps having the kitchen like this using the new wall between the utility room and the kitchen has a lot of storage.

What about this? I would centralise the side window in the wall and limit full height cabinets to the utility room wall, the former WC corner and if needed, the LHS of the original kitchen window. I would rather any island came off from that side, one, because I'd want to look at the garden as much as poss while cooking but also, two, so it doesn't block the way to the kitchen from the dining room door.

I would absolutely retain the external door to the utility for ease of access to/from the garden and for not letting all the heat out of that main room in winter.

Any one of the sheds' kitchen design teams could knock something like this up for you so that you can make sure you can fit in everything you need. Tho' don't let them suggest the dishwasher goes in the utility... 😅

WW

I took out the toilet in the end. Now need to figure out how to fit a kitchen in.

Just realised your other post is a continuation of this one. So you’re not removing the wall then! It would make an amazing kitchen diner.

We’re hoping to extend in the future, so thinking long term we decided we wanted to leave the wall. Took out the WC to give the kitchen more space. It’s not 15x8 foot, so just trying to work out the best design.

I didn’t take out the wall between the kitchen and dining room in the end, but I did take out the external toilet giving the kitchen more space. I’m really pleased with it. The dining room is just next door so still lots of space for entertaining. Thought you might appreciate an update to see how it actually looks.

It looks great. I love the colour. Can't quite decide if its dark green, blue or grey? Love the worktop working as a windowsill too. You must be so pleased:))

It’s blue, yea so pleased. Still lots of work to do in the house but nice to have one room finished. The window was we had to take the windowsill out but I really like it, funny how the problems sometime turn into you best features.

And a bit of extra colour with a glass splash-back