Extending for 4th bedroom = small bathroom?

[Mandy21]

Sorry, hogging the board tonight!

Dilemma in trying to work 4th bedroom into our tradtional 1930s semi. May or may not be able to get loft conversion so just wanting advice / comments about alternatives.

Have had architect round and he doesn't think we'll get planning permission for double storey extension at the side. Means we'd only be able to extend at the back of the house, and even then, it has to be at least 2m from boundary we share with other semi. So, end result is maximum room size of 4.5m x 3m.

Difficulty with that however is that the landing is pretty central, Bed 1 and 3 at the front of the house, Bed 2 and bathroom at the back of the house. To get to the 4th bedroom, we'd therefore have to create a little corridor between Bed 2 and the bathroom.

Bedroom 2 is currently 12'7 x 12'3 (3.84m x 3.73m).

Bathroom is currently 8'9 x 8'7 (about 2.58m x 2.7m).

How would you juggle the layout?

We could potentially add length to the bathroom if we had to take some off the width, but that would mean a long, thin bathroom and a squarer 4th bedroom (so say 3m x 3.5m).

We have a downstairs toilet but there's no ensuite, so the bathroom would be the only proper bathroom in the house.

Any advice? We plan to stay here for 10yrs+ so not really looking at making it saleable, just to suit us (2 adults and 3 young children) but obviously don't want to make it impossible to sell (e.g. a 4 bed family house with a tiny bathroom?!).

Any comments gratefully received.

How big is your bed 3? If bed 3 is a decent size, I'd probably be inclined to take the corridor off bed 2 (leaving a still very respectable size bed 2) rather than off the bathroom.

Bed 3 is the "box room" - approx 8'10 square. It has built in wardrobes along one wall and you can get a double bed in there with a very small bedside table but no other furniture.

Your current bathroom sounds relatively large (apparently the average bathroom is the size of a double bed!). Do some scale drawings of where everything could go in a smaller bathroom and see if you can fit it all in (square paper and cut outs are helpful - sounds sad, but I did this planning ours and it really helped!) You could think about one of those baths which are wider at one end to incorporate a shower. And remember rooms don't have to be perfect rectangles - ours was wider at the end so the bath could run across, then narrower at the other end - long and thin but when we sold, it was the room the buyers loved! I'd say that bigger bedrooms are much more important and that a smaller, well-planned bathroom is not a problem.

I agree, a smaller, well-planned bathroom is fine. You could make it feel delicious with oversized mirrors and good tiles.

Ok, well if your 3rd bed is a box room, in that case I would take the corridor off the bathroom. I agree you can make a smaller or longer thinner bathroom very nice.

The main thing is to be clever with storage. For example, if you have stud walls (which you will do if you are putting a new wall in between the new corridor and the bathroom, you can build alcoves and shallow cupboards for shampoo etc into the stud wall.

Thanks everyone! Time to get planning I think!