Thanks lynneannie. Unfortunately there will always be additional expense whatever decision you take. We spent a good deal of time looking into peoples habits during renovation projects. As dundrum16 mentions above, the novelty of the adventure soon wears off and you find yourself ordering takeaways and eating out which for a family of 4 is more than a temporary kitchen and thats just for 1 meal a day. Equally if you ask for your builder to rig something up they will invariably charge you and its unlikely to be as well equipped as ours. Finally there is no doubt that hiring a temporary kitchen is a great saving for a family who decides they can now stay in their home rather than go to the disruption and expense of finding a short term rental.

Wow - I can see that you have some lovely ideas - however, if you want to design this sort of renovation yourself, you will need to research building regs to make sure your plan is compliant (as they are mandatory here in UK, not optional) - also I’d suggest you look up fire regs too as you will need to protect your family’s route out in the case of an emergency. Then I’d suggest you research opening sunrooms into the main part of the house that will be under thermal values part of building regs and then look into walkway spaces required in a kitchen and space required infront of an appliance and then look at informal planning guides for distance of table to wall and best equation for choosing the right size tv for the distance away you’ll be seated. Add to that some knowledge of the heat produced by the gas fire and how heat rises and there for it might melt your tv which would be a fire risk. ... Hope I haven’t bored you with all that ! With a little bit of research and some drawing changes - maybe a few more days required . Then it will be lovely AND safe for you and your family !

We were planning a kitchen reno 1.5 years ago. We needed to knock down a load-bearing wall between kitchen and dining room, built over a side door, remove all old flooring and install new laminate and kitchen units. The first quote a mate gave us was for £25k. Two others quoted £10k but were impossible to get hold off. Apparently, our project was too small for them. Finally we found a fab local family, who quoted us £7.5k for everything excluding laminated floors&kitchen install. We were to hire a carpenter separately and found a decent one which was charging £1.5k for kitchen installation and £1k (I think) for laminated floors.

Hi there, If its over the island, then you have a bit more space to play with, as you arent walking under it. And you can always adjust the drop on them if needed. -Xenas Interiors