To rip down a conservatory and build a new, larger one?

[OrangeCrushes]

Our current kitchen situation is dire.

We are looking to turn an unused reception room into a kitchen, but it is not big enough also to accommodate a space for dining.

This reception room looks out onto a very small conservatory. I want to rip down the conservatory and install a well-insulated orangery / conservatory in its place, for a kitchen with attached diner. We would have to retain the current exterior door between the kitchen and this dining room.

AIBU?

We looked into getting a conservatory earlier this year and I was tentatively excited about the idea, then very put off by the number of posts on here and on Reddit where people said despite having got a really good one, it was just too hot/bright in the summer and cold in the winter. Various people said it would put them off buying a house which gave me a real fright. In the end we got a brick extension done instead, which is what people on here suggested. I thought it would be massively more expensive but because it's not very big (within permitted development, so like 8SQM) it was £18.5K (we live in central-ish London). Which is a long way of saying that I would suggest speaking to some builders because if you want a really simple structure, the price might not be much different and it could be a better value add to your home / more useable space.

We’re having a sort of half conservatory/half brick extension built in place of our current very old leaky freezing conservatory. It will have a solid roof (with glass panels in), one solid wall, one half wall, and a glass front. Our next door neighbours have one very very similar that they use all year round as a dining room.

Nice! What made you choose this rather than a proper extension?

Cost. But also because of the layout of the house, the sliding patio doors currently open into the conservatory from the living room and that provides the living room with a lot of its light. An extension would either had cut off all of that, or if we’d left it all open (which we didn’t want anyway as we want an additional separate space) it would have made the living room an odd shape.

I'd really look at quotes for getting a proper exension done. Even a new modern conservatory can just be too bloody or too bloody cold and you end up hardly using it.

Do you have a plan of the existing house

Here it is!

If you build the orangery to the same floor plate as the conservatory you’ll have a long room of about 8.5m. So I’d keep the existing external wall ( as you said ) to

• break up the long space
• so you don’t have the expense of retaining the structural wall

So yes. All seems fine OP

About 11 years ago I had an amazing conservatory built - a Loggia by Ultraframe. It was about 12 ft wide and the full 4m deep under permitted development. Cost about £34,000 at the time. It was never too hot or too cold and we could use it all year. It was triple-glazed with the blue reflective roof. I can’t say if quality has slipped now but I really miss it (had to move).