House extension - how? Totally clueless....

[ThenBellaDidSomethingVeryKind]

We desperately need more space than our 1980's semi is giving us. We're happy with the area, and moving for an extra bedroom/larger downstairs would, we think, cost us a lot more than extending - so we are thinking this should be our plan. But ... Am totally clueless. What are the options for funding this? We've got some savings but not enough, so am thinking of what can be done via our (repayment) mortgage. Do we need an architect? Is this before or after quotes from builders? How long do extensions generally take to complete? Ours would be two-storey, we hope. Does it make sense to wait til the summer?

I promise I'm vaguely competent in other areas of my life, but am totally out of my comfort zone with this one. Any advice/tips from anyone whose been there, done that would be fantastic

we where quoted nearly £100K for a two storey extension.

would suggest you get an architect to come and do a free recky and they can give you a good idea about costs etc of exactly what you want.

time scale will very much depend on how much work, we had our attic converted last year with dormer and ensuite costs us about 55k to get it to a finished state- includes carpets, painting etc.... and took about 3 months was quoted 6-8 weeks orginally - that included also reroofing in slate and quite a complicated dormer so we could have the new stairs over our old staris.

we paid for most of ours by extending our mortagage and the rest from savings.

Prices depends on where you live, we just finished the Shell of a 2 storey and it came into 27K we had all the best materials plus 4 beans and a wind post and move our drains, most of the foundations we did our selves, and we got different trades men for diff things, and brought our own materials, so it took a bit longer and our bricklayer could only do weekends as he was busy with another house, so a few Sundays it put us behind as they could not work due to the weather as they can't lay bricks when it rains... I would call a architect in and see what you can and can't do.. As we were not aloud to build second storey flush to the house, had to go 3 meters back and had to show on plan that we can fit 3 cars on driveway....

I would suggest going on your local authorities planning website - you can search for planning permission applications on your road / local to you if there are similar houses to see what other people have done. Gives you an idea.

Planning applications will have drawings in the "documents" section online, and the drawings will usually have the name of the architect on them. If there is a house with a similar plan to you, maybe give the architect a ring and ask if they will come to visit your house so they can do a similar design. There are usually architects that will visit for a free half hour.

In my experience (and its only my experience) architects' estimates tend to be very high - there is usually a built in high specification. I would be tempted, if you really have no idea how much it might cost, to contact a couple of builders, give them an idea of what you would like to do and give you a ball-park figure. All the websites say around £1500 per square metre depending on specification. Double storey is obviously double the footprint but the overall cost might be slightly lower than a single storey of the same square footage because the roof will be smaller, smaller foundations etc.

Then you need to look whether you can take that out of the equity in your house via a remortgage. Note that lenders will only look at the value of your house now, not what it will be when the work is complete, to decide whether you can extend your mortgage.

Once you know whether you'll be able to get your hands on the likely cost, then you need to get plans drawn up. Architects can do this, or one step below if you're going for something simplistic (think they're called techincal draughtsmen - ask around for recommendations) that you then submit to the LA for permission. Once you have permission, I'd remortgage and get a builder sorted out to start!!

Thank you all, this is really useful!