If you’ve extended your house, what would you redo again, or do differently?

[Yellownotblue]

We’re planning an extension to our house - the pre app has just gone in (it’s quite a big extension by London standards - not typical side return). Basically extending at the back, side (on two storeys) and over the existing outrigger. We’re not adding bedrooms, but we are making the whole house more spacious and adding bathrooms and a big scullery, as well as redesigning the ground floor and doing a new kitchen.

We’re now at the stage of planning the layout and the look & feel.

I have a lot of ideas, we have a good design team (I think!) but I’d love to know what works and doesn’t work in your extension.

Is there anything you think ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe I went without x for so long’?

And conversely, is there anything you think you wouldn’t bother with if you extended again?

Any idea, big or small, welcome. For instance, are you happy with your glazing, choice of flooring, flow between rooms, lighting?

Thank you lovely mners 💐

Definitely separate utility. We have a pocket door between kitchen and utility (the door is actually an oak 1930s panelled door to match the rest of the doors) but it slides away so that we haven't lost wall space / have to worry about room for door openings.

Make sure you build in storage in your plan - we have a large open plan kitchen diner (with separate lounge & utility) but you still need somewhere for the "stuff" to go if you want to keep it looking contemporary / tidy.

Agree with @S00LA Make sure your budget covers your garden / driveway. Our back garden was trashed really with the build - it when you've spent a fortune on lots of glazing and a lovely big space when you spend most of your time - looking out onto a wreck of a garden kind of defeats the aim. We also block paved the drive too because some of the (admittedly old) flagstones were cracked by the skips.

I'd also say consider budgeting for other things in the house that you'll want to decorate / improve - our extension changed the whole of the rear of the house and most of the upstairs - but then you look at the hall / sitting room at the front and they looked shabby in comparison with the rest of the house. We ended up basically doing the whole house.

Plan your lighting / sockets / radiator placement very carefully. Ours has been done for 4 years now and we've just changed the furniture round in one of the rooms and were slightly hampered by a radiator even though we have the tall vertical radiators.

Oh - and definitely don't bother with a toilet that isn't round / oval. Modern ensuite has a squared off toilet and it drives me mad trying to clean it!

Talk to previous clients and ask if they ran to time?

@Raifa

Can someone explain why two dishwashers? Is it so you never have to put the clean dishes back in the cupboard?

It’s so you don’t have piles of dishes waiting to go in the machine and messing up your beautiful new kitchen. When you have two you can put everything in, such as pots and pans.

We always put our clean dishes away but I guess you could leave them if you wanted.

If you look at the mess in your kitchen, it’s nearly always

1. Dirty dishes
2. Things for recycling / over flowing rubbish
3. Too much clutter on the work top, small appliances likes coffee makers
4. Stuff that your kids / husband dump on the kitchen worktop because they CBA to put it away.
5. Pet paraphernalia

So if you want a beautiful new tidy kitchen ( as many of us do) you need to plan other places for all that stuff.

It’s so you don’t have piles of dishes waiting to go in the machine and messing up your beautiful new kitchen. When you have two you can put everything in, such as pots and pans.

One dishwasher and never piles of dirty plates
Anything that can’t fit, I wash, dry and put away.

Surely two only necessary if a large family?

Things we did in our London refurb and I love:

• Big open plan kitchen/living/diner (with separate sitting room and utility). Lovely big sociable room we spend most of our time in. Doors through to separate sitting room, so the whole lot can open up.

• Spent ages planning the kitchen layout so it works ergonomically. Bespoke kitchen to make best use of every last inch. (Regret choice of kitchen company though).

• Awning. We are S facing at the back and the awning is brilliant to help avoid overheating on hot days and also gives a shady eating area outside. Highly recommend.

• Skylights. We have one above the stairs (opens electrically) which makes a massive difference to light in the hall and also lets heat out. Also two in the kitchen, one opening, these help with light to the middle room and with ventilation.

• Glass box windowseat. It’s such a lovely place to sit with a cup of tea (make sure it has a ledge somewhere) and watch the kids/plants/cat in the garden. Ours is in the kitchen area so isn’t near any armchairs etc that we might choose instead. It has one solid wall and a big cushion to make it comfy to sit in.

• Utility. Godsend, even though it’s tiny. Again planned to within an inch of its life. .

• Underfloor heating.

• New double glazed sashes and serious roof insulation. With this and the awning we don’t feel the need for aircon except in serious heatwaves (maybe one week a year).

• Double layer acoustic plasterboard on our ceiling (DC bedrooms are above) and on party walls to reduce noise

• Enlarged master bedroom. No walk in wardrobe, we chose to have a larger room instead. It feels so spacious and calm.

• Tiles in open plan room rather than wood flooring. Wood would have been scratched and stained so many times by now.

• Using a project manager (in our case our architect) as oversight/second opinion. Really helped on a few occasions when we weren’t sure whether builders were doing something right or being fair on price, and reassured us they were doing everything correctly technically (which we weren’t qualified to check ourselves). Helped avoid conflict and nerves during the build. Cost extra but worth it.

• Playroom upstairs. Works well

• Not doing the basement. We considered it but it was ££££. No regrets, we didn’t need the space and wouldn’t have used it.

Regrets:

• No separate study. We have a spare room/study instead. We considered turning one of the bathrooms (mainly used by guests) into a study and creating a small en suite to the guest room instead, but prioritised having a bigger guest bathroom with a bath in as our en suite doesn’t have a bath. With hindsight, what with the new wfh being normal that was a mistake. We’ve barely used the bath.

• Not using an interior designer. I chose everything myself. It would have made life a lot easier during the build and probably created a more polished look (which would more accurately reflect what we spent!!) if we’d used a designer. Having said that, it would have had to be someone who understood what we wanted which is hard to find... I’m not a massive fan of a lot of “interior designed” houses...

• Not replacing the sash windows at the front.

• Maybe aircon... although as I say it’s literally one week of the year we feel the need. And it would look ugly on the back of our house, and not be nice for the neighbours. So overall no regrets

• Too much open shelving. Turns out we don’t have very many beautiful objets to display! So at the moment they are full of kids art projects.

would do again- millions of plugs half with charge sockets
big skylights
bifold
window in side so light comes into teh central area (not a lot but it makes a difference

drain planning! - we didnt do loft but as putting in downstars shower room needed to redo drainage so structured in a way that works if do it in the future
insulation and more insulation in old bit
utility room - love it

lighting - spend a lot of time working out not necessarily light fittings but thinking about how you will use space.....at different times of the day.
easy accessibililty of 'maintenance stuff ' boilers/fuse boxes etc

would think heating better i didnt fancy ufh as heard some horror stories - but didnt work out radiators properly

not do - I got a big kitchen window but could have got a bigger one ! if I'd really believed the plan..

garden design

For those asking about the aircon need, it does get very hot in London. We have a well insulated loft which still needs the windows opened all evening before bedtime. But I'll only get aircon when I'm able to generate the leccy via panels!
For those with laundry rooms on the 1st floor instead of utility rooms, how do you use a washing line? I use the washing machine to dump dirty football kit (mostly) as the kids walk in the door. Do you carry that upstairs?
Or do you have washing machines upstairs and downstairs?

Skylights out of easy reach (most) or big ones, make sure they are electric remote controlled.

I'd have a) made sure it had much better insulation and b) hired a proper (if more expensive) company to do it, rather than 'Dad's friend Dave' who was a nice guy and got the job done cheap, but it wasn't great ..

We’ve already specified noise insulation, heat insulation and air conditioning in the brief (the loft is a furnace in summer).

Ours was a furnace too, and freezing in the winter, but with new insulation and new double glazed windows that has completely changed. You may not need aircon - honestly.

OP what’s the downstairs shower room for? I’ve never understood the point, unless it’s for retired age people future proofing.

What is a scullery these days? I’m imagining you scrubbing pots out there with boiling water and red raw hands but I’m sure it’s something more glamorous.

2nd dishwasher in utility.

If you don’t have the room in the kitchen, put a second (or main one) in the utility. Especially if you have open plan and / or seating in kitchen. Yes, you have to move dishes from room to room but you can hide the dirty overspill whilst waiting for the load to finish and it’s quieter if you live open plan.

Soundproofing / acoustic wall coverings in open plan rooms.
I’ve found open plan kitchen/living rooms to be very noisy (see 2nd dishwasher!), made worse by hard flooring etc. The noise just bounces off all the hard surfaces.

Don't bother with dimmer switches for LEDs, expensive and pointless. Have more lighting circuits rather than a big adjustable one. I'd would spend a lot more time and fun on this next time.

Two big side by sinks is good too. Then you can 'hide' dirty dishes in the second sink whilst eating etc. That is if you don't have the luxury of a 2nd dishwasher.

@Jroseforever

*It’s so you don’t have piles of dishes waiting to go in the machine and messing up your beautiful new kitchen. When you have two you can put everything in, such as pots and pans. *

One dishwasher and never piles of dirty plates
Anything that can’t fit, I wash, dry and put away.

Surely two only necessary if a large family?

Yes have a large family and cook most meals at home, especially over the last 6 months as we WFH.

And no, I don’t want to be the one who has to “ wash dry and put away “ all the stuff that won’t fit. That’s kind of the point - women end up doing the cleaning and tidying because they want it to look nice.

No one wants to spend all the time and money and go through all that disruption to say “ Look at this place ! It’s a big shithole compared with the small shithole we used to have “.

Noise - we have this soundproofing mat on the top of our dishwashers (under the worktop ) and on top of the wall cupboards.

On energy efficiency we have put a new first floor on a 1970s bungalow. Our current heating is something around 60kW/m2/pa, next upgrade will be an air source heat pump and targeting 35kW/m2. See:

www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/how-much-heating-energy-do-you-use.html

@Daftasabroom

Don't bother with dimmer switches for LEDs, expensive and pointless. Have more lighting circuits rather than a big adjustable one. I'd would spend a lot more time and fun on this next time.

Totally disagree Dimmer lights are brilliant!!

@S00LA

Hence me saying “large family”. So yes great for that i am sure

@Jroseforever

What bulbs and switch inserts do you have? We have vpro programmable led dimmers they make about 20% difference.

Daftasabroom We have Vpro dimmer modules (trailing edge). We can dim our LEDs fully. Perhaps you have some non dimmable bulbs or non dimmable light fittings?

Wow, So many great ideas and recommendations! Thanks v much. I’ve started collating a list to discuss with DH and designer.

In answer to questions:

• the downstairs shower room is for my in laws. MIL is quite frail and can’t go up stairs. They live abroad and we want to have them over for long spells. Part of the ground floor will be a flexible sitting room that will convert into a guest bedroom when they visit.

• the scullery is a massive pantry with a sink. It will have food storage, but also crockery, serve ware, small appliances, storage for tools, cleaning products etc. The idea behind it is that the kitchen can then be smaller as we don’t need acres of drawers and cupboard space for things we rarely use, but love and want to keep. As the scullery is not part of the open space, it doesn’t need high spec finishes, mostly just lots of shelving.

• I would rather have my utility upstairs as we rarely dry clothes outside and it just seems more logical to me to have it close to where the dirty clothes and bedding are.

What sort of recycling storage solutions have you all got in your kitchens? We currently have four bins on show, very appealing 😁. What’s your solution for dealing with food waste in particular? Has anyone got an integrated hole in their worktop, and does it work well or create a mess?

[quote Daftasabroom]@Jroseforever

What bulbs and switch inserts do you have? We have vpro programmable led dimmers they make about 20% difference.[/quote]
Fully.
Gives off beautiful warm low level soft glow

And then gently increases until

Very bright

Recycling

I bought a Joseph and Joseph recycling bin. Brilliant.

I have it tucked away behind a wall so out of sight