Does anyone have experience of extending a 1930s house?

[WhereIsBlueRabbit]

Would be really interested to know if any of you have experience of extending a traditional 1930s semi - the kind with two double bedrooms and a box room at the front and a bathroom at the rear, then a living room, dining room and rear galley kitchen.

We are in the process of starting to think seriously about how we want to extend ours - we'd like an eat-in kitchen, utility area with drying space and a downstairs loo, as well as an extra good-sized bedroom.

We are considering a part double height extension to the rear (there is side access but not enough to build a side return extension - it's less than a metre). We were wondering whether it was feasible to create access to a new rear bedroom without moving the bathroom. All the 30s semis I've seen online which have added an extra bedroom without going for a loft conversion appear to have the bathroom at the front and to have remodelled the rear of the house to create a box room bedroom and access to a new rear bedroom.

Do any of you have extended 30s semis and, if so, how did you extend yours?!

I have exactly the same layout you described. We discussed plans for both a single storey & double height extension with chartered engineer. They were really clear there was no financial value in relocating or extending the (tiny) bathroom. The main issue was that extending the back called for a corridor to be made out of the back double room, effectively making that room even smaller. So I can see why people rejig the space.

In the end we went for a single storey extension - kitchen into kitchen diner & separate utility. We already had a loo downstairs. It’s a huge utility really, and given my time again I’d put some more thought into rejigging underneath the stairs as well, because now we really need a home office!

Thank you! That is my concern: that without relocating the bathroom, dog-legging the existing hall would take a chunk out of the existing bedroom and leave it potentially very small and very dark.

Did you decide you could live without the extra bedroom, then?

I haven't, but I really like the way this one has been done: www.rightmove.co.uk/s6p/75496523

That is lovely! Thanks for the link. One of the problems I've had is finding suitable ones to peruse online as there aren't that many roads where we live with 30s houses on - so any other links would be most welcome.

Here’s the floor plan of ours (extended before we bought it). It is slightly unconventional & has been extended / reconfigured a couple of times, but works brilliantly for us as gives us an upstairs study that is away from the main part of the house (in one of the back bedrooms).

We’ve since knocked through the kitchen / diner / family room more whilst sectioning off the part that has the sink in the floor plan as a utility.

Thank you - I see what you mean about unconventional!

We have a preexisting 8ft full width downstairs extension (the usual - kitchen diner which is open plan to former "back room") already and are thinking of adding an upstairs to it.

Our thinking would probably be to take 3ft out of the double back bedroom for access, but knock the room through to the extension, so we'd go from a 12x11ft room to a 20x8ft. Then add a smallish room (8x7ft ish) behind the bathroom, lose the bathroom window (we'd add some glass bricks at the top to borrow light from the rear bedroom, and a stonking extractor fan. We'll do this to create our forever home and have decided a windowless bathroom is better for us than a windowless bedroom).