To better utilise a conservatory?

[TheConstantLurker]

it has a dresser, hard armchair, desk and set of shelves in there and it just gets dumped in. The desk is covered in stuff of all hues, oh and has a litter tray under it. No other place for anything to go really. No answer probably. Anyone got any brilliant strategies for this or done something radical in their own dumping area?

Knock it down and build a proper brick extension ?

Ah AF that made me snort, thank you. Mixed visions of wielding a sledgehammer and robbing a bank. Unfortunately a proper extension is out of the picture.

It depends what you want to use it for, sounds like it needs a declutter and made into a purposeful room.
Ours is used as a sewing room for me, a homework place for the dc, it has a comfy chair that we can sit and read in.
On one wall is a big ikea unit with pull out boxes, so lots of storage.

Hmm just need to focus my mind on it I guess. If it was a cupboard it would be perfect.

Tidy it, ours is DDs playroom and it needs a massive sort out and trip to the charity shop to turn it into a teen space nota store for forgotten baby toys.

Have a look on the Ikea website. Seriously! They have lots of demonstrations of idealistic rooms. They inspired me to sort out our spare bedroom and turn it into a proper, bright office. Alright, so the conservatory has windows and not walls, but get past that and see what a bit of inspiration brings.

I've been house hunting recently and the best conservatories were those with a definite purpose - dining room, playroom, reading room, etc. They felt like they were actually used iyswim. So, what kind of room do you need?

Well the room we need most is another bedroom and at some points we have wondered if it would be at all feasible. Otherwise I like the quiet sitting area idea a lot and possibly a dedicated children's area. The children trash the living room and fill it with toys but I suspect that rather than stop that it would become additional trashed area.
I agree about ikea though. I'm looking for inspiration for a new bathroom and have already used the website and catalogue for that.

AF - nthat's what we're doing right now after nearly 6 years of living with a near-useless conservatory!

Ours is a playroom too.

We had to overcome four obstacles to making ours a usable room:

• hard tiled flooring (so we put down some cheap foam matting)
• coldness (so we bought a plug-in heater)
• too hot in the summer (put in ceiling blinds)
• not enough wall space, too much glass (we decided to ignore the windows on one side and put shelving units in front of them)

We've put a small cheap TV/DVD out there and now find that the DCs stay out there to play as long as they have a DVD or some music playing.

And we have our living room back!

But yes, ideally we'd knock ours down and build a proper extension, TBH!

In my dreams I would knock down the upvc conservatory, get a steel beam across the back of the kitchen and extend it out making a large kitchen/diner with loads of light coming into the currently dark kitchen. With glass across the back and doors onto the garden.
Sigh

We've jusy had a proper roof put on ours (the old plastic panel one blew off) - and it's amazing. It's much more part of the house now, and is a lot warmer and quieter and should be cooler in the summer. Have a big window (velux?) in it for light, would really recommend it.

Ours is a play room. Proper blinds and under floor heating. It's perfect all year round.

We have a TV in there, sofa and all the kids toys.

New favour, can you give more details of how this was done, costs etc many thx

It cost £2500 - replacement plastic sheet stuff was just under £3k - so the insurers were happy! The conservatory already had two brick walls at right angles and the roof pitched away from the main house wall as such, so it was relatively easy to do. It just needed a brick pillar building on the fourth corner to support the roof beam stuff. The pitch of the roof had to be increased a few inches to give the roof tiles enough tilt, then insulated, plastered etc. Sorry for the very untechnical terms.

And it is about 5x3m, and took about 2 weeks, although there was a bit of extra re-inforcing around an old arched window of the hous, to enable it to take the extra weight. Hope this helps :-).