It has become abundantly clear that the current kitchen design won't work. The (I thought) very clever idea to build a staggered stud wall between the kitchen and cloakroom looked really good on the plans (see here) but on the ground it doesn't work as well.
This is mainly to do with the toilet and the amount of space you need in front of it to errrr do your business! I remember having a similar problem before when we installed a small cloakroom under the stairs in our last house. The conversations that follow are quite formulaic in their style.
It involves a succession of people (always seems to be blokes) who stand in front of (or sit on) a real or pretend toilet and work out if there is enough headroom if fitting under the stairs or leg room if you are trying to position door as close to the toilet as you can get away with. Nearly everyone get's involved in the discussion even if they are somebody unknown who has just delivered a load of plasterboard to the house. After plenty of sitting and standing the usual toilet humour (sic) starts along the lines of
"Well mate I am sure it is ok for you but as a larger gentlemen I would stand further away"
and
"Have you considered where to put the newspaper rack"?
……and so on. I am sure you get the idea!
Anyway the long and short of this analysis is that the door needs to be further away from the toilet and slightly wider. This means that the "kink" shown in the plans on the stud wall ends up being a reasonably deep recess which in a kitchen of this size just doesn't work at all as the space is completely wasted. As a result it compromises the rest of the kitchen.
The only thing to do is to have a straight stud wall and design the kitchen to that. I shall go back round the house this morning to measure yet again (how many times have I done this?) and then I can do another kitchen design. Whilst the kitchen will be one of the last things to be completed I suspect I need to order it before Christmas to stand any chance at all of hitting the deadlines.
5 comments:
Our downstairs loo is 1.4m long - it is amply big enough. If my scaling of your plans is correct, you have 1.4m between the front of the washing machine and the side wall. So turn your loo round, and you have space. (If you don't believe me, pop round and try our loo for size).
Indeed. you could then make the kitchen bigger, by having the wall go across in a straight line, rather than the odd stagger you have now. This would also reduce build costs.
From memory, this toilet is about 10cm shorter back to front. http://www.doblebathroomsdirect.com/PRD_ProductDetail.aspx?cid=618&prodid=1750&Product=Space-Close-Coupled-Pan-Only. I fitted them in my last house, where space was tight. Although they are more expensive, you might get a bigger kitchen as a result, in which case it would be money well spent.
We did consider moving the toilet but the additional expense was quite high.
The current waste pipe goes through the floor rather than the wall so we would have to add another complete run. This would mean digging a new connection into the drain. On balance I was not sure it was worth doing.
The kitchen wall will be straight though. The kitchen plans in full 3d will be up later today (fingers crossed).
At work we have flexi-soil pipes that come out of the back of the loo and twist round into wherever ye olde soil pipe happens to be. Would that be useful?
Presumably you still have to make sure your flexible pipe run doesn't head upwards at any point!!
That might be a little unpleasant.
I think there is some merit in moving the toilet around and I will certainly look at that again.
I don't think it will make much difference to the size of the kitchen though beyond a few centimetres
Yes, it attaches to a horizontal outflow pipe from the loo (i.e. you need to make sure your loo has a horizontal outflow at the back, not a vertical one going into the floor), and then the flexi bit goes into the floor wherever it has to.
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