Hi Matt, I don't think the new position of your fridge and new door will work regarding your kitchen flow. My suggestion would be to actually remove the wall between Kitchen and dining but leaving the sections of wall that cover the side of your fridge and end of bench. Doing this will give you a sense of having more room in your kitchen living and dining as well as giving a better social connection between these rooms and your kitchen.

Hope this helps,Malcolm.

Hi @Compass Kitchens,

thanks for your feedback.

Do you mind elaborate a bit what will be the actual issue that you see with the kitchen flow?

So that I can get a better understanding.

Your idea is something that I honestly didn't think about it and is another option to consider, however by making the change as my original plan I wanted to end up swapping the dining area with the living area as the below.

Think the new fridge position is not good, I’d find it really annoying just having it sitting there. Would be better to put fridge where pantry is and extend along the wall(where your thinking of putting fridge) with a lot be of cabinets.

I'd suggest some pictures would be helpful . Why I say that is that there are several options that may work , but they all cost $$$ and some will suit better than others , and one thing no-one has mentioned is power -- there will be power cables somewhere in the walls , so some plasterboard may have to be removed and wires re-routed and new plasterboard erected , as well as cutting and reinforcing the framing .

One suggestion may be to move the cooktop and presumably oven , to the wall you want to put the fridge at . You may even move the sink there instead . That way you could have a smaller 'hole in the wall' than what Compass Kitchens suggested , have a serving shelf ( so eat at the table or in front of the TV ) and feel more a part of the conversations / keep an eye on kids / I don't know your lifestyle haha .

That means you could have huge cabinets and the fridge on the wall where the cooktop is now -- change the whole orientation of the kitchen .

But there would be possible problems , and depending on what could be re-used , may be expensive , but it may 'fall into place' and be an improvement !

Will the body corporate be OK with this? Personally, I would just remove the door off the kitchen.

Thanks for the feedbacks/ideas.

Ideally at this stage I would like to do minimal work on the rest of the kitchen, however is in my mind that in a few years it will need an upgrade. So I wouldn't mind sorting out this door now and possibly upgrade the rest in a few years, but still having a functional kitchen until I do that.

As mentioned before the main reason for me doing this work is to gain space in the living room, by keeping a door/entrance that wall is mostly unusable while for me the corridor seems like a natural place where to put an entrance and don't interfere with the living room layout.

@User the electrical switchboard is currently hidden inside the pantry, I don't mind if it gets exposed but is probably a bigger task to move it somewhere else and rewire all the electrical parts. As you can see from a couple of photos below I don't have cabinets next to the rangehood, something that personally I don't mind as I avoid banging my head on those when I cook lol but that makes the pantry very important for me as it's my storage space.

@me me I had a chat with strata about it and of course it needs to be approved but they don't see much issues with me doing this work, I'm a top floor so that gives me a bit more freedom with the walls.

One other thing that I'm thinking based on some of the feedbacks here like @K s, is to possibly redo the lower cabinets of the kitchen and move the pantry or have extra cabinetry on that wall?

I don’t mind your proposed solution moving the door to give you more wall space for the living area. It seems fairly low fuss and achieves your goal. A totally separate kitchen worked well for me for a few years (until kids) so it’s down to how you live your life.

my suggestion would be to wait until you're ready to renovate the kitchen and move the door to the centre of the hallway allows for a new fridge location, a dishwasher, wide base corner cabinets 900 x 1050 and full width wall cabinets and drawers for pantry storage and keep a wider than the door backsplash "window" overlooking the living room so you can keep connected to the living area while cooking ..and where does the door on the other side of the living room lead?.

thanks @oklouise, that is also a good option.

I like the idea of that backsplash window overlooking the living room, however I only saw examples of it being used like a breakfast bar with stools. Wondering if is still going to work and look good with how I have my furniture in the living area?

I think the position of the fridge as you place it should also work, just need to make sure to leave enough space for the door to open correctly.

The door on the other side is the entrance to the apartment.

But sounds like in general I should probably wait to move this door to when I'm actually ready to update the rest of the kitchen.