Why extend the kitchen?

There's lots of reasons to extend the kitchen. The most practical reason is that the kitchen needs replacing anyway - so if we want to extend, now is the best time. The current kitchen is a bit cramped compared to our old one - Alex wants a big kitchen so he has room to cook things. Thirdly, there's not a lot of room in the house for things - so a bigger kitchen would help there.

Other good reasons are:

Increase the value of the house
To have more room in the house to store things
To fit modern kitchen appliances - dishwasher
Room for utilities such as washer, dryer, cupboards for cleaning stuff
To have more room to work
To make our mark on the house
To have somewhere to eat breakfast

Alternatives to extending

We have considered a few alternatives...

Just replace the current kitchen: We could do this, but we'd probably want to...
Remove the chimneybreast in the kitchen: and the room above, to make more room. But if we're going to make a mess, why not extend?
Just build a conservatory...: but we haven't ever seen one we really liked, and it'd be cold

What features should it have?

apart from the normal contents of a kitchen, we want it to:

Be something we're proud of!
Be sympathetic - it shouldn't look out of place:
- Use local stone - same as the house if poss
- Not overwhelm the garden
- Build in a style similar to the house and local buildings
Provide a useful amount of room
Be well organised - cooking area close together
Be well lit
- Plenty of lighting where it's needed
- Lots of outside light - probably french windows on the end wall, and veluxes in the new roof
Have decent floor - see current kitchen page