Kitchen/house extension advice

[Spanz10]

Hello,

Been mulling over our kitchen extension plans (ideas). An architect has just designed a loft extension for us, lowering the ceilings(we have enough space now, but he said it will make it much bigger), dormer to the rear and ensuite. We are now thinking of doing a side extension to the kitchen.
I have lost sleep last night thinking of the following and wondered if anyone had any advice or been in a similar situation:

1. Will removing walls downstairs cause damage to upstairs walls e.g. cracks? Should I hold off doing the bathrooms until settlement?
2. I am not sure I will be able to do my kitchen extension as I want to take out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, then the wall between current kitchen and side extension and finally at the corner of the rear of the house another opening for French doors. I have read about H frame steels....is this possible? We live in a standard terrace - might help you envisage.
3. Will the kitchen extension cost the earth and am I being daft, we will gain a bigger kitchen 4ft wider and join the kitchen to the back with French doors which will give us better indoor outdoor living.

Thank you. My husband thinks I am mad losing sleep over this, but I don't want to spend all this money and get it wrong x

Hmm, I’d say these are questions for an architect/structural engineer, not Mumsnet, particularly without plans!
Honestly, if you’re considering re-designing a house, it would have made a lot more sense for an architect to make plans for all of it at once. I’m assuming you haven’t done the loft conversion yet?
We had plans done for kitchen extension and loft conversion, but chose to do ground floor first as it adds most value in our area and also makes it nicer to live in. The plans were submitted as different applications.
For how the pipes go/wires/structural beams, it is important for the architect to have a full idea of what’s happening. Eg it would be silly if you end up needing more structural support in kitchen extension because architect has put huge loft conversion in, which could have Beene tweaked if they knew your further plans.

Can't help you with the structural stuff but have you thought about a double storey extension rather than a single storey plus a loft conversion? This is what we ended up having done a couple of years ago - our builder said it was much more efficient to do it this way.

You need to pay a structural engineer and get advice about what is possible and safe.

Yes, I agree. We did similar and a structural engineer cost us just under £600. We did not use an architect - our builder just worked from our SE report in order to order the correct size steels etc. We had 3 walls knocked down.

In general yes, those sorts of thing are usually possible and steels are absolutely the way to go but let your architect and structural engineer take the professional responsibility of deciding what needs to go where to stop your house falling down!

Don't do anything without an architect! I've heard builders say they don't need architects and architects are just meddling idiots blah blah; they just want to build what they are in the mood for building, which isn't necessarily what you need. The number of times our builder had to be told to build what the plans said to build was ridiculous.

No need to lose sleep though; just get professional advice and don't be in a hurry. The architect will probably have loads of ideas that you haven't though of, and will know what will get through planning / buiding control etc. Then choose your builder, very very carefully. Did I say don't be in a hurry?

Don't do building work downstairs and upstairs at the same time. It ruins your life for months.

Indoor / outdoor living is lovely if you've got a nice garden (though it's difficult to imagine at this time of year!) Make sure you'll have a nice sofa with a view into the garden and a spot for the barbecue just outside the french door. It's the way forward IMO!

It's worth planning both the ground floor and loft at the same time, because there are areas which will effect both, such as plumbing and electrics, so you will save money by taking both into consideration when starting even if you break the project into 2 stages.
Try to think about how the whole house works through an average week to make sure the additions will give you maximum benefit. To keep control to costs, completely plan the whole project and cost it before starting any building work.
If you can give your builders complete plans with layouts for the kitchen and electrics etc as well as the basic build they can price to that, and you can challenge any changes. It works out cheaper in the long run, even though you'll pay for professional services up front.
A structural engineer is always going to be needed on this sort of job, and are trained to help you find the cheapest way to safely do what you want.
Hope that helps.

Thank you for all your suggestions and advice. Good to hear three walks can come out @rosybell, was it expensive? will contact my architect and discuss the downstairs @footchewer. I agree on electrics and plumbing as I want to get it all right first time @DADesigns.
We don't have space for a double extension @chocolatesaltyballs22
Thanks again everyone

We paid about £10,000 for the walls to come out, and that includes the 3 steels plus making good and a new downstairs toilet.

@rosybell that is great, did that include being signed off and structural engineer? Also where in the UK are you based. Finally did it cause any issues above? E.g. cracks or broken tiles in your bathroom. Sorry for all the questions.

No the Structural Engineer was separate- just under £600 I think. And yes there was a crack in one of our bathroom tiles upstairs. Pretty worrying at the time but normal according to our builder - who knows..!

@rosybell we plan on doing a new house bathroom above and an ensuite in the loft so any cracking would not be good. The downstairs definitely needs to be done first. Thank you for the quick response.

D