Kitchen Extensions in London, Adding a kitchen extension
Kitchens used to be the social centre of the average house, but between the wars their function changed to that of simply being a place to prepare or cook food. More recently, however, the kitchen has reverted to its former role, that of being a secondary eating area as well as a meeting place. Because of this, and because of the increasing use of mechanised equipment, many people are finding that they want to extend the kitchen area of their homes. There are various ways of doing this.
You could, for example, add on a laundry and utility room where everything except food preparation and storage is carried out. Or you could convert the existing kitchen into a utility room and add on a new kitchen—perhaps with space for eating. This last alternative is often a good solution, especially when the existing kitchen is rather small and would not accommodate the full kitchen equipment, space for eating, and people too! It probably would be better suited for converting into a utility room, containing a washing machine and drier, space for ironing and storage for ironing board, brooms, packets and bottles of cleaning materials and so on.
Utility rooms also normally contain a single-drainer sink which is very useful for hand washing and preparing flowers for arrangement. You might like to house your deep-freeze unit in there if space permits. If the utility room adjoins the kitchen the dishwasher could also be put there though perhaps it could be more conveniently put in the kitchen.
Again, this all depends very much on space. With all washing and associated activities (storage of cleaning materials and so on) catered for in this way, the new extension can be given over to preparing, eating and storing food. Is it realistic? Before making any final decisions about the feasibility of such an extension, you will have to find out whether it is going to get formal approval from your local authority, if you don’t qualify for permitted planning development, or the property is located in a Conservation area.
Although any physical difficulties will normally be easily spotted there may be some hidden ones—associated perhaps with underground service pipes. But generally it should be a simple matter to assess whether or not you have room for the extension, and how it will affect the other existing rooms. If, however, the only available site is some distance from the existing kitchen or utility room, the project may be impractical. It would mean either separating your new kitchen area from the old one by perhaps a considerable distance, or reorganising the functions of your present rooms drastically.
Neither of these alternatives is very realistic in terms of convenience or expense. Assuming, however, that you do have the right amount of space in the right place, you can provisionally earmark it for your extension and investigate other aspects of the work. The possible existence of any underground or other hidden services should be checked out, since they could cause complications later. A small water pipe can usually be re-routed without much difficulty, but if, for example, you discovered a sizeable drain or sewer at a fairly shallow level, then this could lead to major problems.
If the deeds of the property do not throw much light on where underground services are (and often they are sadly inaccurate on these matters), the local authority may be able to help, although in some districts their records may be incomplete or out of date. Since a kitchen is bound to include at least a sink, you should find out about the location of the drains. Sinks, dishwashers and similar appliances must discharge into a drain connected to a suitable disposal point, that is, a public sewer or some form of private disposal plant such as a cesspool. Any infringement of these rules could land you in trouble.
Before submitting any plans or drawings for formal approval, you should decide on the layout of the extension. Robuild London – Kitchen Extension Builders can offer you more advice. Kitchens can, after all, take various forms—’kitchen’ covers a multitude of planning sins—and the choice of shape and size may be dictated simply by the space available.
