Moving a door

lo1979

13 years ago

Newbie here. :) We've recently purchased a house and need to redo the kitchen. We're in the very early stages of figuring this out so I'll post a layout, etc. later. But I have one preliminary question I'd appreciate some feedback on. The kitchen size is on the small side, 9x12 ft, which is enough space for us except that in it's present form the space is not used effectively. One barrier to it's functionality is the placement of doors and windows. The kitchen was an addition on the back of the house and has three walls that border the outside. One wall has a door to the outside while the other two have one window each. The placement of these, particularly the door, make the workspace choppy and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around how to layout the kitchen. One idea I have is to remove one of the windows and move the door to that location. The old door space would then be sealed up. This would give us a continuous 12' wall to use as a workspace.

Has anyone done this sort of thing before? Presuming there is no electrical wiring that would need to be moved (I know, a big if), any ballpark ideas on how much this would cost? The door and window have the same width so the current window frame would just need to be extended to the floor. The exterior is vinyl siding. We're planning to get estimates from potential contractors but I was just looking for a general idea whether this is a $1-2k kind of project or more like $5k (or more).

Thanks!

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Comments (6)

melissaki5
13 years ago
I can only take a guess here but I am going to say in the 2-3k range, maybe less. We did something similar to our garage and installed a smaller window (from a larger window) in our kitchen. Dh and his brother did the garage themselves. It took them about half a day to cut an opening where there was none for both the door and the window - and frame in where the overhead garage doors were to make the openings smaller. I told Dh of your plan and he says it is fairly easy to do.
threegraces
13 years ago
We did pretty much exactly what you are describing although our contractor kinda tried to talk us out of it. It's hands down the best decision we made about the kitchen. Our former kitchen was of the same dimensions as yours and now it's more than double that size but also much more functional because of that change.

The cost of the door change will be around 5K. I say "will" because the exterior patch and paint is not yet done. We have a stucco exterior so I would imagine that would be more expensive than siding to repair. We also moved the exterior light fixture. It does not include the cost of new steps or of removing our old cement steps. We're keeping our "stairs to nowhere" for awhile and pretend we like it that way.

Being the frugal person I am, I was almost talked out of the door change but am so glad my DH stood firm. It was about 15% of our budget but made it 100% more functional than it would have been trying to design around the old placement.
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sombreuil_mongrel
13 years ago
I moved a door for my kitchen. I have an old house. The kitchen space as originally built did not have a single free corner. There are six doors, two windows. So I took out the back stairs to get one corner back, and moved a door to the DR 2 feet to get another valuable corner.
The original layout of the room was such a hurdle, it literally took 7 years of thinking about it to come to the realization of what had to change. It was more work to take out the stairs. Moving the door was easier.
Casey
rosie
13 years ago
You have a presumably one-story addition and want to move a door into a space currently occupied by a window. The door may be wider, but even so it's unlikely that there is any plumbing or electrical that couldn't be shoved over a few inches.

Some exterior finishes might push the cost up a bit, but $2-3K? Absolutely ridiculous!

Hire an independent carpenter/handyman, preferably one who can do the finish work too. Buy the materials and pay by the hour. This does not call for a contractor.
dilly_ny
13 years ago
I would start by selecting a door. Exterior doors vary greatly in price.
threegraces
13 years ago
Casey - it took us 5 years to finally realize that it was the placement of the door that was holding everything back too. Once we got over that, the design fell into place and we have everything we wanted we didn't think we could have in one room (7 ft island, 36" sink, extractor hood, room for a table).