Which improvement is better to do?

[Bluepolkadots42]

So, DH and I want to go for baby #2. We live in a modest 3 bed semi- 3rd bedroom is box room/nursery and my toddler is still in it. 2nd bedroom my husband uses for his office- he is studying part time alongside full time job (currently WFH). We were hoping to be able to move however we are priced out of all the areas we would want to go to, so we've decided to stay put and look at some ways to extend the house.
Ideally if we moved we would want a 4 bed property to allow for an office space.
In our current property we have 2 options which we think are financially viable for us:

1. Convert our brick built outbuilding into an office space. Quotes coming in at 5-9k
2. Extend across the whole back width of our house (sacrificing quite a bit of patio space, but we have a raised deck and then a further lawned area) to create a larger kitchen/diner with play area and a separate downstairs office. This will be far more expensive, will involve re-doing kitchen and a quick google suggests cost anywhere between £35-50k

For context currently we have a kitchen diner (previous owners knocked through to kitchen and separate living room.

Thanks for sticking with this if you've read this far!
What do you think is WORTH doing out of these two options?
What will add most value to house (once costs are taken off)?

£35 -50 sounds quite conservative if you are knocking through and adding steels instead of simply adding an extra room or two.

@Letthemysterybe

£35 -50 sounds quite conservative if you are knocking through and adding steels instead of simply adding an extra room or two.

Thanks Letthemysterybe- we are total novices and have never done this kind of project before. I wonder if the cost for this project is upwards of 50k whether we may be better off considering a loft extension instead? Or whether they would be much of a muchness price wise?

You have any sizes or plans you can show? Is option 2 single or double storey? A kitchen will be 5- 15k plus fitting so your estimate is too low.

A loft conversion generally cheaper than extension, if you have the height and can put the stairs somewhere useful!

you'll probably lose the box room for the stairs in a loft conversion, so you'll still have a 3 bedroomed house, therefore not much added to the value.

I would do up the outbuilding for an office just because that's a good idea anyway. Or move DH into box room and put 2 DC into middle bedroom.. But I'd prefer to leave the boxroom available for an au pair

Thanks all for your thoughts. Yes loft extension- when we got someone in before- would mean we lose our box room, so we decided it wasn't worth it. We could create 2 beds in the loft, but that site of conversion was well over our budget and I imagine still would (it won't have got any cheaper to do!).

@Loofah01 option 2 would be single storey- extended back by 1.5-2m and width of the back of our house is around 6.3m so would be max 12sqm. No drawings done aside from my own scribbles. Didn't want to spend money on architects plans for something that we may not be able to afford to do. We are wondering if we could perhaps curb our ambitions on option 2 and extended only half the back of the house. We would still need to reconfigure the kitchen but it would perhaps be simpler extension as would just be an extra room built onto back house.

Even a scribble helps here!

What are the price ceilings on similar before and after properties in your area? Don't want to spend £50k+ and find you'll never recoup it if you move.
Be easier and less stressful to make an office downstairs now. You could always do a loft conversion later if you still wanted to live there?

@Loofah01 excuse terrible drawing skills- never did well in Art or Graphics at school!

@sbplanet

What are the price ceilings on similar before and after properties in your area? Don't want to spend £50k+ and find you'll never recoup it if you move. Be easier and less stressful to make an office downstairs now. You could always do a loft conversion later if you still wanted to live there?

This is a great point @sbplanet I will take a look online and see if I can find similar and think it's worth us phoning local Estate agents and asking their opinion on resell price once work is done.

I don’t think you should spend 30k plus on the extension as you would be eating into your garden and would be unlikely to get it back when you sell. If the office extension includes electricity and internet I would be tempted to do that as then oh would be able to work uninterrupted.

@EasterBuns

I don’t think you should spend 30k plus on the extension as you would be eating into your garden and would be unlikely to get it back when you sell. If the office extension includes electricity and internet I would be tempted to do that as then oh would be able to work uninterrupted.

Thanks EasterBuns- having had a quick snoop online it doesn't look like we would recoup our costs really from doing a large back extension. It is looking more and more likely we will just convert the outbuilding. Bit sad because I had started dreaming of lovely bi-fold doors and kitchen islands and wine fridges and the like

It might be worth having an architect come round and make some suggestions. They often have great solutions to this sort of problem. They might charge a nominal fee to sketch out the ideas but could be worth your while in this instance

My brother worked from home in their 3 bed new build. The 3rd bedroom was tiny so they converted the loft and used the 3rd bedroom as access to the loft and an office space.

If you were to convert the outbuilding, would you have to demolish it at a later date if you then decided to build the extension? If not, I’d go for the former and then wait and see how the future holds. A dedicated, separate home office sounds highly desirable to me right now.

I'd go for converting the outbuilding to a home office.

I'd ring around estate agents and talk to them about it. About the ceiling price if you did it, what they think it would be worth now/if you did it etc

Then phone some architects, builders etc.

You really can't make a decision about whether it's worth it or not until you have more facts

Alternatively it's going to be a good while before a future child needs a bedroom, & then you could move DH's office into the box room & put both kids in the middle room

Dave as much as you can and revise your options at that point - that's what I'd do. Especially right now.

@Loofah01

It might be worth having an architect come round and make some suggestions. They often have great solutions to this sort of problem. They might charge a nominal fee to sketch out the ideas but could be worth your while in this instance

Loofah do you know roughly how much an architect would charge for some basic ideas? Sorry to hijack thread but we are looking at similar options!

I think that a separate, distinct office space (if done properly as PP said) would be very desirable. I’m not sure I’d have said that three months ago, but times have since changed (understatement).

Just in terms of cost of the extension:

The average cost per m2 for an extension outside of London is between £1,200-£1,500. In London and the South East, the average cost per m2 is around £1,500-£2,000+. For two-storey extensions, add 50% to the cost of a single-storey extension. If you want to add a bathroom or kitchen, add £5,000-£10,000.