So 3 years ago we bought a 3 bed semi detached bungalow in Surrey. It is our first home and we had to buy at that stage (gifted a deposit and prices were going up in the South East). This house was the best we could get with the best potential. Location wise it is great - just around the corner from a large village green with transport links, lots of shops/restaurants/pubs. Local schools are very good and DD has just got a place at the oversubscribed secondary. Even though we are close to the green and main road we are set back enough that it is peaceful in our garden.
Last year we extended (knocked down the crappy old conservatory and went 4 metres back) and now have an amazing 8x4.5 metre kitchen diner and a 8x3.5 metre lounge. We also dug out the ugly and now have a nice lawn and limestone patio and we are working on the flowerbeds etc. When we got permissions for all that we got permission to adapt the rest of the house. So the kitchen and lounge are next to each other at the back of the house. At the front are the 3 bedrooms and a bathroom. The hallway is more of a corridor which leads between those rooms back to the living areas. Luckily we have a porch area for shoes, coats etc.
However long term it's not going to work that well. DD's bedroom has a window into the porch and since she is nearly a teenager I'm concerned she will need more privacy. DS's room is pretty small and we only have one bathroom which is small. Have attached floorplan from when we bought the house so you get the idea.
So the plan was to add a dormer loft conversion which will have 2 bedrooms and a shower room (plus a good sized corridor with inbuilt storage). DD's bedroom downstairs would become a proper sized hallway, our room would stay but DS bedroom would become our large ensuite. Our current bathroom would become a utility. We already have a garage and a massive shed plus there will be a fair bit of room in the eaves for storage.
However... although this plan will work well for our current family I do wonder if it will be hard to sell one day in the future. Which of course we have to plan for (retirement etc). It's a good area and house prices are constantly rising but who knows what will happen.
Would you change your house just to suit yourselves or would you sell up as it is (we have added £120k to value) and move? Issue there being that we can't find anything with as much room as we will have without spending £200k+ more whereas the loft will cost about £50k (including redoing downstairs and relaying the driveway).
I'm asking now as our neighbour has started the exact same conversion and my husband is thinking we could get our dormer etc done at the same time so we can share some costs and retile together.
Sorry very long but don't want to make the wrong decision!! Thanks :)