Bedroom opening into a kitchen?

[Deleted User] · 07-07-2021 12:16am #1

Hi folks.

Some of ye may be familiar with me posting here over over the years arguing about whether or not an extension i had built requires planning permission for going down the side of my house (albeit not seen from the street).

Anyway, I've a short while to go yet before I get in touch with anyone about retention as, although I'm fairly sure I'll be fine, I also tend to be unlucky, and knocking an extension isn't my idea of fun. So I'm waiting out the 7 years.

Anyway..

The extension was built primarily intending to just house a downstairs bathroom, which grew legs and turned into a bigger job with a kitchen extension/utility room all working their way in. The general idea is that my dad lives in the house, and although he's grand to get up and down the stairs of an evening for bed, doing it multiple times a day to use the toilet was getting to be a bit much.

So the ground floor bathroom (sink, shower, toilet) went in and all is well in the world.

However, now, about 3.5 years on, getting up the stairs in the evening (and down them in the morning) is also becoming a bit of a struggle for him.

Our kitchen extension is quite wide (slightly wider than the house) and with a bit of re-jigging it, I reckon a couple of partition walls could make a usable bedroom out of half the kitchen extension (kitchen extension is just one open space, so pretty much the plan is to divide it in two).

This would give me an internal room space (for the bedroom) of approx 9x8ft. Bedroom would have it's own window big enough to escape out of in the event of a fire, it's own lightswitch, it's own radiator.

What's throwing me off is this: can anyone clarify for me if I'm allowed to have the bedroom door open into an existing room (in this case, the kitchen)? Although I can't see any 'real life' reason why this would be a particular issue, I can't help but feel like it's not something you see a lot of, and so I'm not sure if it's allowed or not?

The eventual plan is to get someone (who knows about building regs) to come and look at the place (extension as a whole) before I put a bedroom in (and then pretend it was there all along and go in for retention with the bedroom in place), but finances mean it could be a few months down the road, so I'm just trying to get an idea in regards to where I stand, roughly speaking, before I invent plans in my head (as that turned out badly the last time with finding out I required planning permission after-the-fact).

Cheers to anyone able to help out here, it's appreciated.

Darc19 · 24-07-2021 8:39am

I've seen bedrooms open to a kitchen before. Usually older rural houses.

Can't see what regs would prevent it - mostly it's because it's just not an ideal scenario from a privacy point of view.

And many have done similar - we did it for our dad several years ago. Made the dining room a bedroom and built a bathroom into the garden with access. It was next to the kitchen, but didn't open directly into it.

The small extension was built in a way that we could close up the access from the dining room and create a new access from the kitchen and change it to a utility room (60's house in Dublin)

Panthro · 24-07-2021 8:49am

Just thinking out loud here. If you'd the bedroom off the kitchen, and a fire were to happen in the kitchen, how does your dad get out of the house?

I'd consider having a door that opens directly to the your garden or whatever so he has a means of escape should the worst case happen.

[Deleted User] · 25-07-2021 12:11pm

Hi Folks,

Sorry for the slow reply. New boards layout had me confused.

In relation to a kitchen fire, one wall of the bedroom would be an 'external wall' that would have the back garden on the other side of it. The plan was to put a decent sized window here, but upon reading the above, a door probably does make a bit more sense alright (especially as I run the risk of him not being physically capable of climbing out a window).