Kitchen and Side Extensions in Streatham: Where to Start?

Introduction
Streatham's streets are full of Victorian and Edwardian terraces with generous room heights. Many of their kitchens, though, were never designed with modern family life in mind. It's why we see the same two requests come up again and again from homeowners here: a kitchen extension that finally opens the back of the house up to the garden and a side extension that reclaims the dead space running down the side of the house. Both try to make the kitchen a key space and the centre of the home.

Both types of house extension are achievable in the vast majority of Streatham properties but this doesn't mean what you're looking at needs to be identical for everyone. Which one makes more sense, or whether some combination of the two is the better answer, really depends on your specific house, garden and how you want to use the space day to day. It's exactly the kind of decision we help clients weigh up early on, before any design work begins, so you're not guessing at it alone.

With this in mind, a few things are worth understanding early:

Kitchen extensions Many Streatham terraces share a similar rear layout, which means a rear kitchen extension is often one of the more straightforward projects to plan for (though straightforward doesn't mean the design needs to be boring). How far you can extend, whether you need planning permission or can work under permitted development and how the extension relates to your garden and neighbours all depend on your specific plot, orientation and the conservation status of your street. Streatham has several conservation areas and rules that apply freely on one street might not apply at all just a few streets away.

Side extensions The narrow, often redundant space down the side of a typical Streatham terrace, sometimes called a side return, is often the single most wasted piece of space in the house. Extended well, it can become the difference between a galley kitchen and a genuine kitchen-diner that drastically changes your ground floor. Side extensions tend to raise slightly different questions from rear extensions. Party wall agreements with a neighbour, for example, are almost always part of the conversation, since you're building close to or on the boundary.

We've worked through exactly this combination for a rear extension we recently received planning for in Streatham, reopening the back of a period terrace to bring in light and connect the kitchen properly to the garden. It's a useful reference point if you want to see how these decisions play out on an actual Streatham house.

Before the design even starts
Long before an architect draws a single wall, there's groundwork worth doing yourself and it makes every conversation afterwards more productive.

Collect images Pinterest is the obvious place to start and it's genuinely useful, not because you need to arrive with a finished vision but because "I like this" is far easier to point at than to describe. Save anything that catches your eye: a kitchen layout, a type of window, how an extension meets a garden, even just a colour or material you keep coming back to. Patterns tend to emerge once you've got twenty or thirty images saved and those patterns tell an architect more about your taste than a long written brief would.

Know your budget Get a realistic sense of it early, even if it's only a rough range. Kitchen extensions and side extensions in Streatham vary hugely in cost depending on scale, the level of finish and how much structural work is involved. Removing a chimney breast or opening up the full width of the back wall costs very differently to a modest side extension and the difference between a fitted kitchen from a mid-range supplier and a fully bespoke one can easily double the overall budget on its own. Having even a broad figure in mind, rather than an exact one, helps an architect design something that's actually achievable rather than presenting options you'll only need to scale back later. It's also worth thinking about what matters most to you within that budget, whether that's the finish and materials, the scale of the space or building in room for a family that might use the house differently in ten years' time. Being upfront about this from the start saves time for everyone involved and it's a conversation worth having before you meet an architect rather than during the first meeting itself.

Ask around It's also worth having an early, informal conversation with friends or neighbours who've been through a similar project, particularly about builders. Word of mouth is still one of the most reliable ways to find a contractor you can trust and hearing honestly how a project actually went (timeline, communication, how issues were handled) is worth more than any number of online reviews. You don't need to have a builder lined up before you speak to an architect but knowing who's well regarded locally puts you in a stronger position once the project moves from design into construction. This is also where an architect can help.

None of this needs to be formal. A folder of saved images, a rough sense of your budget and a couple of honest conversations with people who've done it before is enough to walk into a first meeting with a much clearer sense of what you want.

Once you're ready to move from ideas…
If you're at the stage of wondering what actually happens once you appoint an architect, from first sketches through to a finished building, our piece on how the RIBA Plan of Work stages come together walks through the whole sequence, stage by stage.

And if you're still weighing up which type of extension actually suits your house, kitchen, side extension or something else entirely, our earlier piece on choosing the right house extension is a good place to start narrowing that down before committing to a direction.

Or if you're planning a project and would like some initial advice, please get in touch via our contact page.