WWYD? £20k extension or £40 / 50k and move.

[WAD]

I like our current house (Edwardian) but kitchen is tiny. For £20 k we could enlarge kitchen and add family / breakfast type room. Current house has large other rooms and 3 beds and is non-estate - area is not great - but not too bad either.

Or we could spend £40 - £50 k and move to a 4 bed detached new build on an estate.

WWYD?

runningforme

Sorry to hear of your experiences with a modern house. I think it's worth repeating (OK I do rant a lot on here about this point but) most developer-built estates have very little or no involvement from architects and I think it shows (but then I would)!

As regards quality, I have seen a few (developer) new builds that were reasonable well constructed but I'm afraid they were in the minority.

Please bear in mind however that even period homes were not always well built and most have also experienced the dubious pleasures of generations of DIY for decades!

Pendeen - sorry to digress slightly - but I've had very poor experiences with architect snobbery. I am not saying this applies to you in any way!

But my brother is an architect and when he was doing his work experience year, he suggested making some aesthetic improvements to a small new build they were designing for a local developer.

His boss said - 'nah - waste of time - it will be wasted on the kind of people that will live there' - !!! I was appalled at the time and still am. Maybe attitudes have changed and / or he was in the minority, but it didn't feel right. Surely the whole point is to improve living spaces at whatever end of the market? Sadly my recent experiebces - calls not being returned, emails not answered etc - does tend to bear this out. They probably google the area - think - no it's too downmarket would be wasted on WAD - and move on.

By the way, in case anyone is wondering why I don't 'employ' my brother, he is abroad and not available. He has however, made some good suggestions regarding layout / materials etc.

WAD

I'm afraid you are right, there are those amongst us who display the most awful attitudes to clients and contractors. Arrogance and snobbery has no place in our profession.

Rest assured we are not all like that.

In fact, some of us are even nice to the (minority) of awful clients / contractors. :)

my extension cost A LOT more than £20k - and was the best investment I could have made.
))))) New Build Houses (((((