Garden or Living space?

[AhBiscuits]

We moved into a 3 bed semi about 7 years ago. 2 kids, currently 7 and 9. The location is absolutely perfect, we love it. We have two off road parking spaces, which is beyond rare in this area, we're in a quiet cul-de-sac and have lovely neighbours, excellent schools etc. We don't want to move.

The house is small. We converted the loft into a big bedroom with ensuite shortly after moving in. The kids have a good size bedroom each and I have the boxroom as my office. The problem is living space. We've remodelled downstairs and taken down a wall. The kitchen / dining area is OK. The only other room is the lounge and it's just too small. We now have plenty of bedroom space but the living space is mismatched. DH wants to extend, just a few metres to give us a bigger lounge. We'd probably have pretty much the whole new wall as glass doors overlooking the garden so we could open it right up.

I'm torn. The garden is already small and I'm loathe to reduce it even further by extending into it. DH thinks the lounge space is more important and all the houses round here have tiny gardens anyway. We're in a built up area a couple of miles from a city centre, not out in the country.

Is it worth it? The lounge is OK for the 4 of us, but there isn't really space for guests and it just feels cramped. The garden is currently quite nice, we have a patio and BBQ area, which we would have to sacrifice, and grass which is currently nearly all taken up with a large trampoline, swings, a den and a shed. We could swap it round, reduce the grass and make a new patio area, but I'm just worried we'll regret the loss of the garden space when summer comes round.

Similar dilemma buying a house at the mo, in fact I had a thread on it. Great house tiny paved garden or great garden house not ideal - decided on neither and we have now found great house and garden has space and could be wonderful! But what's pertinent to your situation is there was a lot of advice (on thread and IRL) to take the great house and make the best of the garden being too small. But I couldn't. Even my adult daughter thought so - until she saw it, then she agreed.
So my advice is, if the garden is important to you, don't sacrifice it. You'll be sad. I was so bloody sad at the thought of the bad garden house even though the house was, in many ways, magnificent.
I am so glad we're not buying it, I'm so glad I let myself be sad and voiced it and dug my heels in.
Best of luck OP. I don't know what you need to do, but I suggest sacrificing the garden isn't it. 🌳🌷🍂

I would extend, if I could afford it. We looked at several new builds at one time, a lot of which were 3 story. One in particular had 5 double bedrooms and 4 bathrooms upstairs, it was lovely! But downstairs it had a really small living room and dining room, maximum seating 6 people, and I thought how on earth do you fit everyone from the bedrooms into the downstairs space? It had a tiny garden as well.

I'd leave it for another couple of years while your kids are young enough to still get a lot of use out of the huge garden stuff. Then extend and get rid of absolutely anything in the garden that's not getting a lot of use by that point so that you get some of the garden space back. Add a small patio back in so you can still have BBQs.

We extended our 3-bed small garden semi a while back. We used the footprint of the old conservatory and the patio, so we haven't actually lost any grass. And we put in a little patio where the rotten decking used to be.

I will be real: despite following loads of tiny garden Instagram accounts, there isn't enough space to have everything in the garden that I would like to have (although what I would like ideally includes a fruit Orchard, thousand year old oaks and a walled garden). There isn't much outdoor space for dc to run around.

But there never was, really, even before the extension, so it feels daft for me to get upset about it. Like yours, all the gardens round here are pretty small. Luckily we are very well provided for with beautiful communal outdoor spaces (a big part of the reason for living here).

What we do have is a big (7x5m) indoor space, which is great for parties and also great for dc to run around in bad weather. And bad weather is a lot of the time. There have only really been a few days this year when we've really wanted to be out in the garden. Climate change forecasts seem to be for the UK to get rainier, so I think having more indoor space is worthwhile.

I note your dc are 7 and 9. Rudely assuming you won't have any more, it's probably only a few more years they'll be using the trampoline and swings. I would leave things as they are for now and revisit the idea in 3-4 years. Although I am terminally indecisive.

We found out children outgrew the play equipment around age 10 and have barely set foot in the garden (except for meals) since. But not all children are like this.

It does sound like a good investment, as long as extending the living room would make it a pleasant, functional room and not a corridor. One of my pet hates is people taking a room that was clearly designed as a lounge diner, say 22' x 10', and trying to style it as a single living room. It rarely works. Think about where the sofas will go, don't just add length without a plan.

And pick sofas that are proportional to the room. Oversized sofas can make most British living rooms feel cramped!

Living space, definitely. All the bits in the garden are temporary so you’ll gain space when they outgrow them.

Thanks all. Some useful insights.

Yes, the trampoline and swings have a shelf life and we'll ditch them as soon as they fall out of use.

We have quite a wide path along the side of the house as access to the garden. It's a bit of a dumping ground and I feel like there must be some clever storage ideas we can come up with to maximise that space and mean that the garden doesn't need to have anything in it.

I’d choose living space but dh would choose garden.

He refused to extend further than we have, due to potentially losing a lot of buyers because of the garden, if we ever sell. My argument was, we’d gain as many because of the extra living space.
We compromised on a smaller extension.

Could you do something clever with the internal space like they do on those TV shows where they get a clever architect to make the space work better? Could you post a rough floorplan on here and see what people suggest to see if there is another way of doing stuff? I love gardening so I would hate a house with a tiny garden but they do get less important as kids get older, but they also spend more time in their rooms, so communal space is less important.

How often do you actually entertain indoors, to need the extra space for guests?
Would extending make any of the existing space lose natural light?
Do you have a garage you could convert into living space?
Is the living room at the back already or would you be creating an extra room? If it’s at the front could you extend into a front garden?

Personally I would avoid extending into a small garden as much as possible.

How often do you actually entertain indoors, to need the extra space for guests?
Very infrequently! Maybe we would more if we had more space? DD wants a few friends for a sleepover for her birthday and I'm already wondering how we'll deal with that many extra people in the house.

Would extending make any of the existing space lose natural light?
No. It would increase the light inside as we'll replace virtually the whole back wall of the lounge with glass.

Do you have a garage you could convert into living space?
Nope

Is the living room at the back already or would you be creating an extra room? If it’s at the front could you extend into a front garden?
It's already at the back. It isn't possible to extend forward.

I think we need to knock up some plans, try and get more of an idea of how it would actually all look and work.