Extending the kitchen / what do you think and indication of costs

[EmmaSp]

Hi,

We are looking at a house which has already a kitchen extension to the back, and where I believe the side where the garage is has also been extended to the back to create a utility room, and part of the garage was converted into a toilet. 

I’d like to ask for your view with regard to the costs to make some changes, and also your suggestion in what would make more sense (eg once you do make some work, maybe better to do a bigger extension than a smaller one, in relative terms?).

Options we are considering:

Option A 
- extend the kitchen to the side (green area in the floor plan), moving all existing kitchen cabinets, as the kitchen is fairly new (can it be done, or do we need a new kitchen?) and adding an island.
- move the utility room to the small garage, so that the kitchen can be extended into that area too
- close off the side door into the kitchen and opening a front door instead (see blue door), which means the oven and fridge need to be moved.

Option B
- extend the kitchen to the side and back (red area in the floor plan), moving all existing kitchen cabinets and adding an island.
- all other steps same as option A

Option C
- same as B, but the utility room stays where it is. Not sure how bad this would look.

For the costs, location is south east England.

Is option A too small of an extension that doesn’t make too much sense?

Also, do you see this kind of improvements as being a bit of a waste, given the extension is quite recent and possibly this means having to replace the kitchen altogether, which is fairly new? 

Thanks!

[bassanclan]

For a kitchen you already have a good amount of square m. I think you need to define what exactly you want to o in the space and how much space you need for it before you start.

Is it that you don't have enough kitchen cupboard space? Enough room for a 20 ft dining table?

[EmmaSp]

6 minutes ago, bassanclan said:

For a kitchen you already have a good amount of square m. I think you need to define what exactly you want to o in the space and how much space you need for it before you start.

Is it that you don't have enough kitchen cupboard space? Enough room for a 20 ft dining table?

Hi thanks for your answer.

 

we would ideally want:

 

a small snug with a sofa and tv, a dining table enough for 4 but extendable to say 8, plus enough of a spacious kitchen ideally with an island…

other houses we saw with the above, were about 7.5 meters wide

[AliG]

As well as what you want to do with the room, planning and neighbouring buildings will also be a consideration.

 

I would guess thatg option A can be achieved with permitted development. Option B would require planning permission.

 

Before getting into the ins and out of this, I think you probably need advice from a structural engineer. Looking at the skylights you have there, I would guess the kitchen was knocked through the back wall of the house already and there is a steel beam holding up the upstairs wall. This beam will either rest on the wall at the RHS of the kitchen, or a post set into that wall. To remove that wall, you would not only have to put in a steel to hold up the side wall, but find a way of supporting the existing beam. This is going to be a very large and expensive job. The alternative that you have would probably be having a post supporting the beam be part of the island.

 

I don't think option B would work well as a very deep room like that would be dark in the centre. The lounge was would be almost 10m away from the windows. I would guess that it is already quite dark there.

 

If I was going for option A, I might want to explore whether the lounge wall can easily be moved. If you could move it past where the kitchen door is at the moment you could add just over 1m to the lounge which might make it a better sized room. It isn't that large at the moment with a lot of the room being in the bay.

 

Moving the utility room seems like the right thing to do. If it is mainly for laundry I would move it to the front and have the door at the bottom of the stairs. If not you might want to move the WC to the front and keep the utility off the kitchen.

 

Assuming no structural issues, moving the kitchen door should not be a problem. They presumably just left it where it was originally.

 

We removed the kitchen in our last house which was only five years old at the time and sold it, so it should be possible to remove and refit the kitchen.

 

Costs are almost impossible to guess at, you'd be as well just getting quotes.

 

So building a small extension might cost 10k. The structural work, however could be 10K+. Removing and refitting the kitchen will cost a few thousand. New flooring would be a very large cost assuming that the whole area needs redone. That's around 5k.

 

Then there is the new utility and WC and new front wall and new island.

 

I am guessing around 40k in total.

 

[Bozza]

Size isn’t everything…….

 

 

 

 

[Radian]

I know it's already in but the gangway to the front half of the garage takes up too much space. If the partition for the loo (rotated 90^o) was mostly across the width, with a slim basin, it could have freed up over 1m for the utility

[Tims]

Keeping your existing kitchen and reusing shouldn't be an issue we moved ours into our old front room so that we still had a kitchen whilst we took the back of the house off, and its gone back into the new extension with no issues other than having to trim the granite work surfaces back square as the old walls had some undulations. On the size side of things make sure you just do it once as it'll obviously be more cost effective to add the size now rather than doing more work 5 years down the line. Permitted development is pretty generous now, one of our neighbours used it as a bargaining chip with planning (in green belt) along the lines of if you don't pass this we'll build this single storey 6m by 3m full width extension instead, planning backed down and let them have the 3m 2 storey extension they were trying to stop. There used to be nice little pictorial guide to PD on the planning portal/.gov website somewhere.

[EmmaSp]

6 hours ago, Bozza said:

Size isn’t everything…….

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks,
is this without an extension at all (can’t quite tell what it is that you drew outside of the kitchen into the garden). 

under this scenario, where would we put the fridge and oven which are currently where the new door into the kitchen needs to go? 

 

[EmmaSp]

1 hour ago, Tims said:

Keeping your existing kitchen and reusing shouldn't be an issue we moved ours into our old front room so that we still had a kitchen whilst we took the back of the house off, and its gone back into the new extension with no issues other than having to trim the granite work surfaces back square as the old walls had some undulations. On the size side of things make sure you just do it once as it'll obviously be more cost effective to add the size now rather than doing more work 5 years down the line. Permitted development is pretty generous now, one of our neighbours used it as a bargaining chip with planning (in green belt) along the lines of if you don't pass this we'll build this single storey 6m by 3m full width extension instead, planning backed down and let them have the 3m 2 storey extension they were trying to stop. There used to be nice little pictorial guide to PD on the planning portal/.gov website somewhere.

Do you have an estimate you could share, guessing how much it would all cost under the different scenarios? Including all the building work, and everything else required (including tiles etc)? 

[EmmaSp]

5 hours ago, Radian said:

I know it's already in but the gangway to the front half of the garage takes up too much space. If the partition for the loo (rotated 90^o) was mostly across the width, with a slim basin, it could have freed up over 1m for the utility

If I understand what you mean, we’d lose access from the garage into the side of the house?  

[EmmaSp]

11 hours ago, AliG said:

As well as what you want to do with the room, planning and neighbouring buildings will also be a consideration.

 

I would guess thatg option A can be achieved with permitted development. Option B would require planning permission.

 

Before getting into the ins and out of this, I think you probably need advice from a structural engineer. Looking at the skylights you have there, I would guess the kitchen was knocked through the back wall of the house already and there is a steel beam holding up the upstairs wall. This beam will either rest on the wall at the RHS of the kitchen, or a post set into that wall. To remove that wall, you would not only have to put in a steel to hold up the side wall, but find a way of supporting the existing beam. This is going to be a very large and expensive job. The alternative that you have would probably be having a post supporting the beam be part of the island.

 

I don't think option B would work well as a very deep room like that would be dark in the centre. The lounge was would be almost 10m away from the windows. I would guess that it is already quite dark there.

 

If I was going for option A, I might want to explore whether the lounge wall can easily be moved. If you could move it past where the kitchen door is at the moment you could add just over 1m to the lounge which might make it a better sized room. It isn't that large at the moment with a lot of the room being in the bay.

 

Moving the utility room seems like the right thing to do. If it is mainly for laundry I would move it to the front and have the door at the bottom of the stairs. If not you might want to move the WC to the front and keep the utility off the kitchen.

 

Assuming no structural issues, moving the kitchen door should not be a problem. They presumably just left it where it was originally.

 

We removed the kitchen in our last house which was only five years old at the time and sold it, so it should be possible to remove and refit the kitchen.

 

Costs are almost impossible to guess at, you'd be as well just getting quotes.

 

So building a small extension might cost 10k. The structural work, however could be 10K+. Removing and refitting the kitchen will cost a few thousand. New flooring would be a very large cost assuming that the whole area needs redone. That's around 5k.

 

Then there is the new utility and WC and new front wall and new island.

 

I am guessing around 40k in total.

 

Thanks so much!

 

Regarding permitted development Vs planning permission, how would I be able to find out? I know that when they did their extension they submitted a planning application.. I checked the local authority and there is a planning application for a Single storey rear extension.. which I assume what you mean by getting planning permission?

However looking at all the houses on the street, I don’t see any where they have gone past that level of extension into the back.. would it even be possible to extend into the side (it’s a single story building)?

 

 

[EmmaSp]

11 hours ago, AliG said:

Before getting into the ins and out of this, I think you probably need advice from a structural engineer. Looking at the skylights you have there, I would guess the kitchen was knocked through the back wall of the house already and there is a steel beam holding up the upstairs wall. This beam will either rest on the wall at the RHS of the kitchen, or a post set into that wall. To remove that wall, you would not only have to put in a steel to hold up the side wall, but find a way of supporting the existing beam. This is going to be a very large and expensive job. The alternative that you have would probably be having a post supporting the beam be part of the island

(…)

 

So building a small extension might cost 10k. The structural work, however could be 10K+. Removing and refitting the kitchen will cost a few thousand. New flooring would be a very large cost assuming that the whole area needs redone. That's around 5k.

 

Then there is the new utility and WC and new front wall and new island.

 

I am guessing around 40k in total.

 

Indeed I believe there is a beam on the RHS of the kitchen at present.

is this substantive / expensive job required even just to extend to the side? 
 
which is to say, do you guess that 40K would be the total cost of option A?

what about option B?  Double that?  

[Gus Potter]

30 minutes ago, EmmaSp said:

is this substantive / expensive job required even just to extend to the side? 

At a quick glance the bit to the side is fairly benign SE wise.

 

But if you extend to the rear then I think you will have building stability issues as others have mentioned.

 

This can often be resolved using a steel box frame.. but it will stick into the room a bit. That sounds bad but often in practice it lets you still have an open plan space that you can separate into different "zones" say dining room, kitchrn and so on.. still feels open plan

 

if you can post more drawings showing the rear elevation. Initial guess would be about 6.0K for a box frame to open it all up.. but we need to see how the roof works first!

[Bozza]

1 hour ago, EmmaSp said:

 

Thanks,
is this without an extension at all (can’t quite tell what it is that you drew outside of the kitchen into the garden). 

under this scenario, where would we put the fridge and oven which are currently where the new door into the kitchen needs to go? 

 

So this would be keeping your existing structure, inserting a beam across the rear to allow you to glaze it with folding doors or whatever to bring in light & feeling of space.  The brown bit is decking (or whatever) linking indoor space to useable outside space as you’re in the sunny south .  Point being that you might be able to get what you need without an additional extension.  This would involve a new kitchen likely, the fridge can go into the units on the right hand side your oven can go there or into the large island.  
 

I'm suggesting this not because extending again is not impossible, but will be very expensive and you are likely to end up with an oversized dark space and though creating extra sq m you’re not actually creating extra rooms which would add value to your house.  Extending from a corner is always going to be pricey due to structural issues.

 

Space & useable space are quite different things.  I think what you’re proposing extension wise would end up a lot of space but could feel a bit disproportionate for the size of the house, would be extremely expensive easily £50k min, dark and possibly too big & Expensive to heat

 

A well designed smaller space using what you’ve got with excellent materials might work.  Difficultly is we don’t know your budget, don’t know why you’re doing it etc etc all very relevant to give you best advice possible.  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tims]

7 hours ago, EmmaSp said:

Do you have an estimate you could share, guessing how much it would all cost under the different scenarios? Including all the building work, and everything else required (including tiles etc)? 

It's quite hard, I priced up materials alone on ours before we started at £44K, I was reasonably close on materials for the new bits of the build, a 45sqm ground floor extension plus a 20sqm dormery bit with steels. I have done almost everything my self and including extra insulation for the house, some labourers when needed, a couple of retaining walls, MVHR and a Pizza oven and we are up at £95k (but that's got a lot of big ticket items in it that I could easily have saved 50% on with cheaper versions). If you take off the insulation to the main house, MVHR and pizza oven, posh aluminium sliding doors, windows and fascias and two bathrooms which I don't see on your plans we are at more like £65K. I think with labour you'll probably be looking at around 40 to 60K for the bigger extension and 20K for the small one buts that's a wild wet finger in the air guess. Build it magazines website had some good information on estimating your costs, things like skips suddenly add up, that you remember paying £90 for 10 years ago which are getting to be north of £300 at most places in Leeds, the cost of materials has probably increased 20% since we did our structure though luckily timber seems to have come back down to a more reasonable level.

[Tims]

5 hours ago, Bozza said:

Space & useable space are quite different things.  I think what you’re proposing extension wise would end up a lot of space but could feel a bit disproportionate for the size of the house, would be extremely expensive easily £50k min, dark and possibly too big & Expensive to heat

 

  We've got a well insulated, airtight (soon to be ventilated) 40 sqm space in our new bit with roof lights and underfloor heating it uses less energy than a standard double panel radiator to heat and is easily the warmest part of the house at the moment. 

[Radian]

9 hours ago, EmmaSp said:

If I understand what you mean, we’d lose access from the garage into the side of the house?  

 

No, I thought the room for the loo was taking up far too much space. just jiggle the loo around by 90^o, use a compact basin and you free up several sq. m in the utility room:

 

  becomes ->   

[AliG]

12 hours ago, EmmaSp said:

Thanks so much!

 

Regarding permitted development Vs planning permission, how would I be able to find out? I know that when they did their extension they submitted a planning application.. I checked the local authority and there is a planning application for a Single storey rear extension.. which I assume what you mean by getting planning permission?

However looking at all the houses on the street, I don’t see any where they have gone past that level of extension into the back.. would it even be possible to extend into the side (it’s a single story building)?

Surprised they needed planning permission as it looks to me like permitted development. The max you can extend a terraced house is 3m which looks like wet has been done. The planning application may have been to confirm it was permitted development. If you look at the decision it would tell you this.

 

This is probably why all the current extensions are the same depth, it is a bit cheaper and less hassle if you don't need full planning, although it wouldn't add that much to the cost.

 

However, the 3m is from the existing rear walls, so if the utility room was also an extension on the back of an original garage, then to extend it further back will require planning permission. I don't think it would be an issue to get it, but worth mentioning.

 

You need to give people a bit more info so they can help, such as budget, maybe a picture of the rear of the house showing proximity of neighbours or a site plan.

 

A few of us have all made the same point. A massively deep extension will be very dark in the centre of the room and may be an oversized room to be of any use. @Bozzahas shown that ou could possibly reconfigure the kitchen and get much better use of the space for much less money.

 

Do you actually use the "garage" which is presumably just storage. If you sealed it up with a window at the front and a door to the hall it would be a nice little study for example. That would add a lot of value to your house for little expense. You could replace the "garage" with a cheap shed outside.

12 hours ago, EmmaSp said:

which is to say, do you guess that 40K would be the total cost of option A?

what about option B?  Double that?  

My guesstimate was for option A. I would guess that option B would almost double the cost. If you took down the existing rear wall of the extension I would guess that you would have to rebuild he whole roof for example.

 

The trouble with option A is that you are adding only around 7sq metres of space for considerable cost. The cost will be vastly higher than any value added to your house.

 

As well of the possibility of incorporating the garage into the house, adds 5sq metres for less than 10k, you could also build a snug/study behind the utility room but without taking the side wall down. Then you don't need any steel, don't need to rip up and redo the floor, don't need to move the kitchen. You get around 7sq metres for maybe 15k. You could then look at rejigging the whole interior of the side space.

 

For example, this would maybe cost 25/30k and give you more extra useable space. There is plenty of room to add an island etc to the kitchen already.