To ask if you’ve managed to turn your conservatory into a useable space?

[Ethelfleda]

South facing garden - conservatory is stupidly hot in summer, cold in winter etc. I’ve read different methods from cheaply lining the ceiling up to total roof replacements/ extension.
Have you used any of these, what was the cost and rough size and was it worth it?

This was at our old house. South facing. We used it as a second sitting room, mainly for our teenager children, we used it all of the summer and during the winter they holed up in there with the heater on. We didn't build it but by choice I would have hexhagonal and I would have under floor heating.

Wouldn't have hexhagonal!

Sorry the ceiling was just the normal glass with filters in.

I think a lot depends on how big the rest of the house is. If you an extra sitting/dining room / study then an extension is better.
If you already have a large house then a conservatory is a different room.
I adore my conservatory. It's huge, south facing and I virtually live in there from March to October. It is heated in winter but I usually just close it off for 4 months. When DC were little we had table tennis/ pool tables in there in winter.
I have a dining table and sofas in there. Yes it gets hot but with doors open it's just an extension of the garden.

Ours gets way too hot so once lockdown is over we are planning to get a solid roof and use it as a playroom

Our conservatory is off the kitchen. Gets the sun in the morning for a few hours, I really like sitting in it during the summer, we use it as a second sitting room.
But I would never have another. It's unusable during cold winter days, the roof drips with condensation, the blinds went mouldy and had to be binned, and I'm regularly wiping down the white plastic, gets dirty easily. It's too high maintenance.

We pulled down our conservatory and had a proper sun room built proper roof with skylights. It’s east facing so gets lots of sun in the morning but is nice and cool in the evening - the front of our house is west facing so gets hot in the evenings.

Like JustSew said, ours is like an extension of the garden with all the doors opened out. It looks a lot nicer than my picture when it's a nice sunny day (dull and miserable up north today) 😕

No - had every intention but over a year later it’s still a garden extension same as with PP!

How much does a new roof cost ?

Our house has an old conservatory on it. Like yours either too hot or too cold. Previous owners put a radiator in it but told us not to bother as we’d be wasting our money heating it: it just escapes. We use it primarily as a drying room. Use clothes horses in summer and tumble dryer in winter

We had a conservatory with a polycarbonate roof. It did the too hot / too cold thing.
We changed last year to a glass roof. It has a special coating to reduce the too-hot factor. It is thermally efficient. It has tinted glass. It self-cleans. It lets in more light.
We have had a winter and have started a summer so I can confidently say that the too hot / too cold has gone.

We pulled ours down last year. South facing in SE, totally unusable apart from for storage and clutter. We built and extension and it's fab.

What did it cost to put in the glass if you don’t mind me asking sen?

They'll never be as useable as a proper extension, but we've done a few relatively inexpensive things to our small conservatories which have helped a little. We replaced the blinds with blackout curtains, carpeted the tiled floors and I made some shade sails for the ceilings. We already had internal doors and raditators in there, so we just shut off the rooms if the weather is very hot or very cold.

I got a solid tiled roof put on mine it cost me £1700 works a treat, candles used to melt in mine I love it now

Nope, because is freezing cold unless the sun is shining. Thought about having heating put in but there's only the two of us now and we rattle around this old house as it is. Birds shit bomb it too. It's metal frame, probably 1930's, so you have to maintain it. There is a rather strange paraffin thing in there, which I'm told is the original heater, but not sure that safe to use . Thought of selling up but location is fab and I can't find anything else I like. Cats like it and my son keeps his plastic skeleton in there. . My daughter tied a dildo to it. Where did I go wrong, they were so sweet when they were little.

Cats like it and my son keeps his plastic skeleton in there. . My daughter tied a dildo to it. Where did I go wrong, they were so sweet when they were little.

😂

What did it cost to put in the glass if you don’t mind me asking sen?
Our conservatory is 4.3 x 3.8, hexagonal.
Glass rooves are heavy old things so we had to have the structure replaced, too, to carry the weight. We kept the foundations, floor and walls; we replaced structure, french doors, windows/openers and roof.
Supply and fit cost just over £10k.

The only downside is that there are reflections all over the place. The roof lets in extra light. The hexagonal means that there are angles reflecting off each other all over the place. We get reflections twice over, due to double glazing. If I was doing it again, I'd ask if they could do that trick I've seen on Your House Made Perfect where glass is slightly off the vertical and therefore cuts out the reflections (not sure if that is possible IRL or only on TV programmes!).

Depends on the rest of your house layout/ floor plan - ours is used as the main entrance to our house - essentially a side door - and we’ve turned it into a boot room utility. One of the most useful spaces in the house! Would like to replace the roof tho as they do look better...

Our house had the conservatory already built when we bought it. It is south facing and covers the whole back of the house so both the dining room and kitchen doors feed into it. It does get quite hot in summer, but it has fitted blinds on the vertical windows to keep the sun out, and we have a large radiator in here for winter. The outside door is annoying as it's 1 door at the side of the house, not gorgeous french doors leading straight into the garden. I would prefer french doors. Would also like to get some coverings to hang on the ceiling to keep it cooler in summer. My parents did that to their conservatory and now they use it all the time.

We used it as our main living room the first year we lived here but then slowly migrated into the front room and it became a room for storage/to dry clothes.

On the first day of lockdown my husband gave it a massive clean, rearranged the furniture, put foam mats down, bought a little table and chairs and turned it into a playroom. My toddler loves it as it's his space, we can sit in here to keep and eye on him and enjoy the sun, but we also have our front room and dining room back. I hope we still use it in winter.

Oh, and thanks for the people saying about melted candles - I've now moved all the crayons out of the conservatory so they don't melt.

£75k to replace!!! We replaced our conservatory as after the putting in of heating and changing the roof it wasn't viable. Replaced with a 12m x 4m extension, opened up the back of the house, 8.5m bifold doors, 8.5m x 2.5m roof lantern, £15,000. Best thing possible for us as it's now usable all year round for all uses. I hated the old conservatory as we just couldn't do much with it

£15k was very cheap! Our builders were £48k including VAT. Had three quotes all very similar. The rest was flooring windows doors building control kitchen etc etc.

South facing and used as our main living space. When we bought the house the living room was tiny and the kitchen even smaller. We knocked the wall down to give us a large kitchen diner. So the 15ft by 20ft conservatory became out living room.

We keep the doors open all summer and and have two fans. A radiator keeps it warm enough in the winter, maybe because we use the room all the time it dosnt get cold. View from the kitchen. Excuse the garden DH is turning out the shed.

I used to want one - Mumsnet has totally put me off