Extension Advice - Living/Dining/Kitchen

4 years ago

last modified: 4 years ago

Hi all,
We are in the process of designing an extension to our 80's brick home in Qld. The front of the house faces north. As you can see our current home plan has a small kitchen and dining which is not functional and quite dark. We are wanting an additional loungeroom and a kitchen and dining area functional for a family of 5 who love entertaining. We are undecided on whether to have the attached carport at this stage. We love what the architect has achieved with the rest of the plan but would love some advice on the kitchen, family and dining area. We have been given 2 plans from our architect and generally they perform well. Both proposals lack a pantry though, I don't require a walk in pantry but definitely require one suitable to a family of 5 who love cooking. Something our current house doesn't have either (nor an oven!).
Option B performs better with interior and exterior aesthetics and letting in northern light but the family room is seperate. With the other loungeroom being seperate we would be looking at having a family more open plan. The kitchen layout doesn't flow well with the walkway being where the dishwasher and sink are but think this could be tweaked. We would also look to extend the patio to the laundry and this roof be able to let in light.
Option C works well as an open plan area but the exterior and roofline are quite boring and the area would remain dark. We do love that the patio extends to the laundry too. We fell in love with the existing house as it had an interesting roofline, skillion with highlight windows etc but this plan removes all interest. We understand that the existing roofline also restricts what can be done.
Leaning towards option B and maybe flipping things around?? Any advice or alternatives would be greatly appreciated. A new set of eyes may be all it needs.
Many thanks, Tiessa

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Paul Di Stefano Design

4 years ago

Would be good to have more of an idea of context, but generally both Kitchen options I would say have issues. It's a tricky one to resolve and you also have to think about the relationship of the entry and flow around the different areas. I reckon Option 2 will more like an apartment, rather than a larger home. Walking past the island every day to get into the bedroom zone is not great. Option 1 has more formality and class but then has you walking in and out past the kitchen to get to the new living area which feels like it's got everything else has it's back turned to it. So I'd say it's continue to explore options

On these projects Kitchen position & configuration are critical & make or break and ideally the kitchen is presenting well to the space and shouldn't feel compromised in terms of either amenity or positioning. Something like option 2 but with the kitchen at one end or the other of the space is probably what should happen, but then you have to think about priorities of aspect and which spaces you prefer to be related to the external areas one way or the other, and then also how the entry comes into play. If you take option 1, & the existing entry is retained, the kitchen could have a pantry where the proposed new entry is and configured on the internal wall, dining in the middle, potentially breaking up dining & living with some form of dividing wall or shelving unit if that's preferred.

Whatever you do don't compromise on the kitchen, it needs to be scaled well to the project overall and if it's falling short or feels like it's a bit of an afterthought (like in Option2) you'll be disappointed. You sort of want something like below (completely different project but similar ideas/layout for the main space

Good luck PD