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Design Dilemma Kitchens Dining Rooms

Help with dark, viewless kitchen and dining room

9 months ago

last modified: 9 months ago

We live in a typical 1930s semi. It has a nice garden, but the ground floor gives almost no view of it!

Can anyone suggest a cost-effective way that we can improve the existing structure to allow in light and give us views of our garden?

The view is currently blocked by the outside boiler cupboard and previous owner’s extension that created a downstairs toilet and back porch, but blocked part of the rear bay. The toilet is really handy though, as we can use it both from inside and also when gardening, without traipsing mud through the house. We also need to retain the side access gate for bins etc.

Should we knock through the (supporting) wall between the lounge and dining room? Any ideas would be brilliant as we are totally stuck! Our budget including a new kitchen is about £80,000.

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Comments (4)

Rosy W
9 months ago
Hi Ali, my first thought is to knock through and somehow square off the back for those all important garden views but I see its far more complicated than that! I will think on. Good luck!

Rosy
siobhanmcgee90
9 months ago
I would not knock through the lounge and dining. The extension is the problem. If budget is limited, the best option would be remove the kitchen extension including the boiler. Remove the wall between what remains of the kitchen and dining. Add double doors in the remaining kitchen to garden. Relocate wc & boiler to under stairs if you.
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Rosy W
9 months ago
last modified: 9 months ago
Hiya, I agree about the extra bits on the back. I would remove them including the dining room bay but retain the existing external kitchen wall and square it off with the dining room, knocking through to make a kitchen diner. I'll paste my drawing in below.

- the dimensions made me think you could create a loo and even fit a shower in the kitchen space but looking again at the photos make me doubt the shower idea!

- retaining the kitchen windows and back door would reduce costs

- the new downstairs loo area could have a sliding door that remained open when not in use so that the light from that window reached further in

- you could fit a roof light above the utility space to draw more light into the remaining kitchen area

- it would be tempting to fit bi-fold doors to the new dining room opening but I would research 1930s patio doors in case you could find some more in keeping with the rest of the house

- with the same goal in mind, could bricks be reused for the new section of wall required to square off the utility area and dining room?

You'd need advice on the dining and kitchen doors area, e.g, a pillar might be required (which could be built into the kitchen design?) so I've just left them as is.

I hope this is helpful.
tab darcy
9 months ago
Cheap solution: move loo, remove hall, move boiler into garage?

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