Basement conversion advice needed

[blossomsarepretty]

Hi everyone

I am pretty clueless about anything house/building/DIY related so after some advice..

We have a basement floor in our house with access to the garden. It's already converted with carpets, radiators etc all in place, but it's not really working for us at the moment. The big room mainly gets used as a utility room/storage at the moment, and I would like to make it a living space/guest room. The ceiling height is too low for it to be an actual bedroom.
We would like to make the storage room accessible from the inside, and put a shower and toilet there, and make the smaller room (room 1) into a utility room. The wall between the two is brick and load bearing, we don't need to remove this completely but would like to open it partially.

My questions are:

• Is this doable?
• Rough cost/ballpark figure? £10k? £20k?
• Who do we contact to get started; structural engineer, basement specialist company, architect?
• Do we need planning permission? Building regulations specialist?

Thanks

Anyone?

My parents did something similar in our former family home, and it has really added to the usable space in the house. (Though as you mention, the main room can't be officially listed as a bedroom, that is functionally what we used ours for. How low is your ceiling?)

Are the doors at the back opening onto garden? If so, same set-up here - in the main room, my parents opted for a glass door to get light in. If the storage room door could be replaced with a high frosted window in the new bathroom, that might be worth considering for light / ventilation reasons? Depends on ceiling heights too though.

Regarding the works side, obviously my parents were managing this rather than me and as we're in ROI the regulations do differ. As you have a load bearing wall I would expect you will need an RSJ put in, which can be costly. If you're talking about these works, plus fitting out a utility & bathroom, you would be doing very well to get this between 10k - 20k. One consideration for cost is access - is there easy access down there from outside the house?

For structural work, (especially under your house!) I think an engineer would be the bare minimum and a good starting point to figure out what else is needed? Guessing here, but I think building control would need to be notified, but planning permission probably wouldn't be needed.

One other point; my parents did have foam insulation pumped in; this went a long way from making it feel 'basementy' into actual cozy pleasant home space. (We had a similar starting point of carpeted / radiator heating, but it was still not as warm as the rest of the house.)
If there is any sense of dampness / coldness you'll have spent money on making something that isn't nice to be in! It also helped with soundproofing.

Thank you so much for the responses, much appreciated!

The ceiling is reasonable height, definitely high enough for an extra living space/guest room/music room, unless you are a particularly tall person, but not official bedroom height.
And yes, the doors lead to the garden. The main room already has a frosted glass door, it has so much potential so it's a shame limit such a big space for storage/utility space.