Alterations of this sort are very popular. Our lives are organised in a much less formal way these days than when many of our houses were built, and the ability to overlap and connect kitchen and dining, dining and living fits much better with today’s lifestyles.

The key thing is to do it well. Often knock-through works are undertaken without properly considering how the new layout will work and be organised. A good tip is not to think of the space as one open space, but rather as different, distinct zones. This means that you know when you are in the kitchen area or living area even though there are no walls to separate them.

Knowing which walls are carrying load or are structural is clearly very important and I would always recommend that a structural engineer be engaged once the new layout is designed, to work out what structural changes need to be made. Don’t expect the engineer to design your layout for you, that’s not their forte. Use the time efficiently by simply getting him/her to do the mathematical calculations against the design you want. Remember, any wall can be taken out, load-bearing or not. The question is what structural works need to be done in order to do this In terms of value, there is little question that, if done well, opening up ground floor spaces to each other can certainly add value to your property. One of the reasons for this is that where you previously may have had three small rooms, now you can have three zones within an open space, each overlapping the others and therefore larger than before. The sense of additional light and space can be very powerful.