To buy a 1 bedroom house with two children

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Looking at buying a rather small house with 1 bedroom as it has the potential to convert it into 2, possibly 3 with an attic conversion.

It would save us a lot of money per month with such a small mortgage but am I underestimating this?

Anyone with experience living in a partly renovated house with kids?!

Loft extension is easily £50k here

Get a builder to view it with you to see whether a loft conversion is even logistically possible. No point buying it if a conversion isn't possible or doesn't work in the layout that you have trouble selling. For example, a bedroom off a bedroom isn't often attractive to buyers. You might well do improvements then have trouble selling it in the future.

Agree that you might not be able to use the bedroom while building work is going on.

Our loft conversion cost just over £40k to make a staircase going up which took 2 metres off one of bedrooms for stairs, two large bed rooms and a shower room.

Good on you for thinking creatively. I know a family who did something similar and put in a wall to divide a large bathroom to make an extra bedroom. It's a great way to make your budget work for you.

How old are the 2 children?

Do you want to live in a building site with them?

Have you considered where the stairs will be for the loft conversion? This usually eats into a chunk of the current upstairs plus what the actual usable floor size would be rather than to the eaves.

I wouldn't but I can see why you would want to do it. Is the dressing room accessible from the landing or just through the bedroom?

Is there room for a bathroom on the loft floor?

Will you be able to do it so that the new bedroom (existing dressing room) is accessed via the hallway & not through the other bedroom?

If so I’d consider it if it was the only way to move into a better area.

...and ONLY if the loft can definitely be used & wint vist an absolute fortune (as another ouster said, you need to check the structure of the lift and get a builder to have a look, don’t assume it’ll be useable!)

OP you need Kirsty Allsop! #Lioli

Thanks all for your replies! I'll try and respond as best I can.

I'm not going to post a link because I've already shown a couple of people and although it's probably already a bit outing anyway, I don't want to be very outing!

The dimensions are as follows according to Rightmove (no floor plan):

Kitchen 7'7" x 9'10"

Living room 10'10" X 10' 8"

There's also a small conservatory on the back of the kitchen which could fit dining table.

Bedroom is 11'11" x 10' 10" and an extra toilet and dressing area.

There is also a loft hatch to fully boarded out loft with skylight.

The sellers say their intention was to add a loft conversion but they haven't got round to it. We have every intention of properly looking into planning permission/costs etc .. before going ahead but we've been for a thorough look around and it looks possible.

I know it sounds a bit hard to believe but DH actually makes bespoke staircases in his business! He made ours at home and has made a few very clever ones where space is limited although tbh the landing is spacious enough.

The loft probably couldn't include a toilet as well but there is a family bathroom and a en suite so it wouldn't be too problematic.

The house is still £130k so it's not ridiculously cheap. The area its in is expensive hence why we are considering (and only considering right now) this option.

Children are 6&8.

Oh and yes there is a garden at the back.

Is the garden big enough if you need to extend for extra downstairs space at some stage OP?

I didn’t mind the chaos of lots of building work around me, but that’s personal. Several people (the fireplace fitter, the boiler man) looked at me aghast when I said I was living here during the works. I loved being in the thick of it, and my 6yo just found it all a huge game, not knowing which room would be torn up next... it’s fascinating to watch it change. So that wouldn’t bother me.

I’d get a viewing with a paid experienced builder with you, to get an opinion on what would be practical to do, ball park figures and whether you’d get planning. My builder did this stuff all the time, so he could visualise much better than I could - and could call building control any time for a chit chat about whether plans would be OK. In my case, nothing needed planning permission - it was all building regs.

My husband is a mortgage underwriter and he says a mortgage for a family with two children would be declined for a one bed house.

where would everyone sleep? at 6 and 8 I would want to give the children a room (not one each but shared).

I really do not think this is a good idea.

I think you would be struggling for living space. We have a similar sized kitchen (about 810), and an 1810 livingroom with two kids and it's cosy. It only works because we have quite large bedrooms (i.e. two of the 3 are the same size as the livingroom) which helps make up for it.

3 beds with ours already feels a bit top heavy - I think it would be very difficult to sell in future with those dimensions.

That is very small for presumably 4 people and do consider what type of stairs you could fit in and how much room they who take up . The downstairs will also need extending IMO .

11 x 10 is not a big living room for a family of 4 and 12 x10 is certainly not big enough to make into 2 bedrooms
is the dressing area included in the 12x10 space
maybe you could make the dressing area and ensuite a bedroom for kids but you would lose the space again making a fire building regs approved staircase to loft
maybe a 2 storey extension at back instead of conservatory with dining room or large kitchen diner on ground floor and another bedroom upstairs would be better leaving loft as playroom or study

Have you looked at flats in your dream area? A 3bed flat would probably be good value and would have better living space.

Surely it must've been a two bed house in the past which was knocked through to create your dressing area? Can't imagine any builders building one bedroomed houses. Flat, maybe, but not a house.

Sounds like it's definitely worth considering.

How old are your children? Loft conversions are not bad to live through. Splitting the bedroom - I'm not sure. Would there be room to sleep downstairs while it was done?

We converted a two bedroom with only downstairs bathrooms to three bedroom two bathroom house (with two beds and bathroom upstairs and loft bed with ensuite). It wasn't easy and cost £50,000 including decorating, but it was still much cheaper than buying a three bed two bath house in the same area. My kids were 1 and 7 at the time and it took about 4 months in total. While it wasn't always fun it was completely worth it in the end.
Our loft conversion was very straightforward though, because it's a 1920s house and had tall loft.

It’s very small. I don’t see why it would’ve been a 2 bed previously as the one bedroom is small anyway.

It would a nightmare for us tbh. I don’t understand how you’re all going to fit.

You can’t split the one bedroom- it would make 2 less than 6*6ft rooms

That bedroom is pretty small so I think you would struggle. If you bear in mind a small double bed is 4ft across by 6ft 2 long it shows how little space there is.
A living room just under 11ft x 11ft is also tiny. No chance of a dining table and probably only room for a small suite, tv and coffee table.
I think the whole thing would be a nightmare with two children.

I wouldn't split the bedroom. It has a decent size dressing area off it which would be a second befroom. The loft would then potentially be the master once it was done.

Re the dining situation, there is a conservatory off the kitchen which already has a dining table in at the moment.