help! double storey rear vs single storey rear+loft conversion?
Heather
6 years ago
Hello! We are still in the “pipe dream” phase of extending our house and would love some advice!
We currently have a small-ish 1950’s 3 bedroom detached house which had a small double storey rear extension put on in the 1980’s
Upstairs: 2 decent sized doubles, and one box room with irritating bulkhead over the stairs meaning you can’t even fit a single bed in there!)
1 gorgeous big bathroom
Downstairs: kitchen and separate lounge/diner (which is annoying when you have to walk through the lounge to get to the dining room from the kitchen!
Garden is fairly decent size but not enormous. Also have big ugly garage taking up half the rear garden - really useful for storage but our rear garden is south facing and all the sunlight seems to fall on the garage roof which then shades the whole garden
We would like (have separated into what we would definitely like and what we would like if possible)
Definitely want:
Open plan living/kitchen/dining
Utility room
Downstairs toilet
4 bedrooms
2 bathrooms
Garage GONE but still decent garden storage (our current garage is 16m2 internally but we would be fine with 8m2 of garden storage for all our garden stuff)
What we would like if possible:
1 bedroom to be master, with dressing area and ensuite
Other 3 bedrooms to comprise of box room and then 2 good sized doubles
We would love to still have a decent sized family bathroom with space for bath and separate shower as our current one is lovely and spacious (and I hate shower heads over baths)
Our current vague idea for downstairs is to do rear extension into the garden (would have to knock down garage to not make garden look minuscule), little side extension to create a bit more downstairs space, rebuild wall between living/dining areas, creating a snug at the front of the house then knock through rest of walls at the back to create living/dining/kitchen open plan (with the usual bifolding or sliding doors etc) plus utility and loo. (I assume there may still have to be some supporting columns that stay but will cross that bridge if we come to it)
For upstairs - we initially thought we would just do a loft conversion to create the extra bedroom and bathroom, however - due to the height of our roof we would HAVE to do a roof raise loft conversion (can’t lower the ceilings for the rooms below) which I gather would be ££££ and require planning permission (trying to get it all done on permitted development if poss)
An alternative that has been suggested (that would be cheaper) to us is to do the little side one storey extension plus a double storey rear extension and reconfigure the 1st floor to create the 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. We could technically do the rear within permitted development if it was 4m from the original rear wall on the ground floor and 3m on the 1st floor. However I am concerned that a) a double storey extension would look too imposing on a little garden and b) that would mean only 1metre of ‘roof space’ in the downstairs open plan area (had my heart set on roof lights, lots of light flooding in etc) - and the more internal part of the open plan would look dark and dingy.
Have attached the current plans showing dimensions etc - garden plan is horribly not to scale but the other ones are!
Would appreciate anyone’s views!
We currently have a small-ish 1950’s 3 bedroom detached house which had a small double storey rear extension put on in the 1980’s
Upstairs: 2 decent sized doubles, and one box room with irritating bulkhead over the stairs meaning you can’t even fit a single bed in there!)
1 gorgeous big bathroom
Downstairs: kitchen and separate lounge/diner (which is annoying when you have to walk through the lounge to get to the dining room from the kitchen!
Garden is fairly decent size but not enormous. Also have big ugly garage taking up half the rear garden - really useful for storage but our rear garden is south facing and all the sunlight seems to fall on the garage roof which then shades the whole garden
We would like (have separated into what we would definitely like and what we would like if possible)
Definitely want:
Open plan living/kitchen/dining
Utility room
Downstairs toilet
4 bedrooms
2 bathrooms
Garage GONE but still decent garden storage (our current garage is 16m2 internally but we would be fine with 8m2 of garden storage for all our garden stuff)
What we would like if possible:
1 bedroom to be master, with dressing area and ensuite
Other 3 bedrooms to comprise of box room and then 2 good sized doubles
We would love to still have a decent sized family bathroom with space for bath and separate shower as our current one is lovely and spacious (and I hate shower heads over baths)
Our current vague idea for downstairs is to do rear extension into the garden (would have to knock down garage to not make garden look minuscule), little side extension to create a bit more downstairs space, rebuild wall between living/dining areas, creating a snug at the front of the house then knock through rest of walls at the back to create living/dining/kitchen open plan (with the usual bifolding or sliding doors etc) plus utility and loo. (I assume there may still have to be some supporting columns that stay but will cross that bridge if we come to it)
For upstairs - we initially thought we would just do a loft conversion to create the extra bedroom and bathroom, however - due to the height of our roof we would HAVE to do a roof raise loft conversion (can’t lower the ceilings for the rooms below) which I gather would be ££££ and require planning permission (trying to get it all done on permitted development if poss)
An alternative that has been suggested (that would be cheaper) to us is to do the little side one storey extension plus a double storey rear extension and reconfigure the 1st floor to create the 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. We could technically do the rear within permitted development if it was 4m from the original rear wall on the ground floor and 3m on the 1st floor. However I am concerned that a) a double storey extension would look too imposing on a little garden and b) that would mean only 1metre of ‘roof space’ in the downstairs open plan area (had my heart set on roof lights, lots of light flooding in etc) - and the more internal part of the open plan would look dark and dingy.
Have attached the current plans showing dimensions etc - garden plan is horribly not to scale but the other ones are!
Would appreciate anyone’s views!
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Heather
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