Do you need a second full bathroom. I'd change to a shower room with a cloakroom / storage area. Go lengthwise. Change also the Kitchen to where the second living area is. Swap the second living area to living / dining. Much nicer to sit and relax over looking the garden. I don't know what type of flooring you currently have in the dining room. If it's floorboards then you should be able to have the kitchen left and plumb out to the right under the floor. Obviously if it's concrete this won't work and you'd have to have a further shuffle about! I presume also that you can't just fit in a toilet under the stairs as the meters are preventing this? ( I know that moving those can cost a fortune! ) Opening the front door and being able to see front to back makes the house seem a lot larger. So, yes I'd sacrifice the layout of the bathroom if a larger square bathroom is not needed. If you can't plumb the water drainage from the kitchen across from left to right then you are better off with this type of layout. Personally I think you suffer from lack of counter space even with a long island, but it's do'able with careful planning. Plus, I also think it's odd having two living areas back to back. I'd take the advice of a builder and see if you can sort out the plumbing. Go for the first plan with the bigger kitchen in the middle and the living / dining area at the back. Good luck!

Hi Keswing, I had exactly the same problem with my hubby!!! Haha! The great thing with concept planners is they will pass their trade discounts onto you! We actually used Gina from Create Perfect on here (but she does exactly the same as OnePlan) who I would highly recommend and the fab thing was that even after her fees it saved us money because she passed on all the trade discounts! I highly recommend getting in touch with OnePlan and Create Perfect and getting quotes from both of them. If you ask them both to send you the list of companies they get trade discount with then you can show that to your hubby and knowing you're in the market for some serious spending on a kitchen and presumably a bit of new furniture then you'll be able to show it's cost neutral! :) We saved over £1,500 in our kitchen alone through Create Perfect getting us discounts with our chosen suppliers (probably worth noting that it doesn't limit your choices as the kitchen company we chose from her concept plan she'd never dealt with before but she set up a trade account just for us, the same for our underfloor heating and actual floor) Hope it helps and good luck!

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.

You need to consider lots of things when designing overall floor layouts - walkway space, where the sun comes in from, how many inhabitants live here and how many likely guests etc - your kitchen dining for example doesn’t look to have enough walkway space around it and looks too small for six as you’d be overlapping plate space etc etc For projects like this, if you plan to live here some time, it’s worth booking a pro ( like a concept planner ) to either check things through with you, ie working with you to get things right - taking on board all of the info available and coming up with a viable safe design. If you click on my name or icon, you can have a look at the sort of design I’m talking about - as we have some past projects on our pro page. Nb. If this is just a house flip then what ever you do will probably be redone by new owners anyway, so not so important !