Has anyone made a bungalow into a house?

[Karbea]

sorry... Ongoing saga with our extension plans.

Just back from the architect and one of the options they are thinking about is taking the roof off our dormer bungalow/house and giving it a proper 1st floor.

Has anyone don't anything similar? How long did it take? How much did it cost?
Would you do it again?

Thank you!

Hi,

We have done this sort of thing twice.

1. Took roof off two storey house making it a three storey.

1. Built extension and went into roof of bungalow - we didn't raise the roof as we weren't allowed but there is room for bedrooms and bathrooms in there.

The first took about 4 months and cost about £30,000, but DH did most of it himself. The second took 6 months + and I don't even want to think about what it cost - but that included the cost of the extension.

We are never doing any building projects again. They were both mega stressful (I was pregnant during the first one and had very small child for the second) and DH and I fell out big time.

Don't underestimate the time and disruption it will take if you do go ahead. On the plus side we now love our house :)

Was it considerably over £100k would you think? Wed be doing nothing ourselves, I suspect my lovely princess of a husband would want us to move out.

We planned to do this with our old house - the ground floor was huge but upstairs had 2 poorly designed dormer bedrooms and nothing else. Our plans included dropping the height of the downstairs ceilings (they were something ridiculous like 10ft high) as we were in a conservation area and would be unlikely to get permission to raise the roof. All the quotes were in the region of £130-140k which unfortunately was too expensive for us so we moved! This was 4+ years ago.

The main contractor bill was over £70,000 (including VAT) with things like plumbing and electricals seperate, but as I said this included a sustantial extension.

DH also did a lot of this work himself, e.g. insulation and some joinery.

What will you gain out of in (in terms of new rooms)?

Currently we've a house that's got a large downstairs and upstairs 3 beds. Wed planned on building over the garage and a bit of flat roof at the front to give us 5 beds, but discussing with the architect today he thinks it might add more value to the house if we create a proper upstairs rather than the dormer giving us 5 beds, and because the garage is higher than the main house ( house on a hill) the roof line makes the the garage ext quite complex/costly.

My friend did - she had a large bungalow with two rooms in the roof - she took the roof off and added a full second storey. I've no idea of the cost, but she's a surveyor so was able to use her contacts.

She ended up with a truly massive house (bungalows usually have a large footprint to start with) - good for her, as she has 7 kids. But the house had a large garden and was in a road of large houses, so it "fitted in" - you don't want to end up with an oversized house on a tiny plot, or in a road of much smaller houses, as you won't make the value back.

I agree Cointreau but we are on a road with other 5/6 bed houses, so I think whether we go over the garage or take the roof off we'll be ok with that.

we have a 70's chalet bungalow and are in the final stages of a major extension. Originally we had 3 bedrooms + bathroom upstairs. garage was at the side.
We started by demolishing the double garage, and then rebuilt it + a full width utility room at the back. then we built upwards to form a 2 floor side extension. This had a pointed roof (to match the original pointed roof of the chalet) and then we filled in the gap to make it look like a house. We also extended out the old kitchen and utility and made them into one huge kitchen with an atrium conservatory. Upstairs we now have 5 beds 2 ensuites bathroom + study area.

Costs about £130K

We had our original planning application rejected but won on appeal (changing nothing as the reasons for rejection were aesthetic rather than subtantial)