Our house has a flat roof extension (done by previous owner) at the back which extends the living room. It has patio doors the entire end width and a side window on the extension bit, but even so the room is still very dark. I went to a house yesterday with a very similar arrangement apart from the fact that the previous owner had put a sloping roof on the extension with two velux windows in. The entire room was light and airy. It didn't look odd having a regular shaped part of the room, then an added bit a different shape, so in effect the ceiling doesn't go straight across (not explaining this very well), but you've got part of what was previously the outside wall, all done in white and nicely finished exactly matching the regular ceiling bit, then the sloping interior bit also in white with the two windows. It made what had been a long room into a really interesting and light room.
Has anyone done this?
Any obvious pitfalls or advice?
Presumably I'd need to speak to an architect about getting plans drawn up? Haven't ever used an architect before so not sure if this would be 'small fry' for them and we'd end up paying what feels like an exorbitant amount in relation to the project size. I look in the online riba directory and for where we live the lowest project price bracket was 'up to 30k' and no architect matches!
Although we're not adding a room, we're changing the shape of the house so presumably we'd need planning permission, or has this relaxed now? And is this the bit the architect also helps us with?
TIA