Talk to me about conservatories

[Carryingon]

I have put an offer in on a house which has an old conservatory. I don’t know at the stage what kind of state it is in or how cold or hot etc but I am struggling to see the point of it or how to make the best of it. It leads off the dining room.
There is a sitting room at the front of the house.
I don’t like how there is no flow into a conservatory and I don’t have the kind of lifestyle which involves sitting with a cup of tea looking at the garden.
I don’t have young kids so it won’t be a playroom.
Apart from putting wicker furniture in it, are there creative ideas on how to best use the space?

Knock it down! Our house already had a conservatory which like yours has no flow with the rest of the house. It’s always too cold or too hot. We’ve tried using it as a play room, dining room, sofas and chairs and it’s just never worked for us. We keep our garden rattan furniture in there so it looks “dressed” and drop the garden furniture getting wrecked in bad weather. I’d knock it down bit DH isn’t keen to spend money on doing that either

Stops not drops

Yes, I take your point. Generally a conservatory wouldn’t be a selling point or benefit for me.
Luckily I like the house for other reasons.
As I understand it, conservatories have to have doors separating them from the rest of the house hence no flow.
It kind of just blocks the view of the garden.
It would help if I could find a purpose for it.
It is a fair size, at least.

Do you like gardening or are you into arts/ crafts?

Ours makes a good store room, and - for a lot of the year - a good drying room.
It keeps things like airers out of the dining room and the recycling boxes out of the kitchen and boots our of the hallway etc.

Try to learn from my mistake we spent a lot of money when we first moved in to make it a useable space (new flooring l, plastering, underfloor heating) and it was money down the drain. If you can put up with it and don’t need the space just leave it empty whilst you settle in and then get an idea of what you like to do (knock it down for more garden space, have an extension instead) my in-laws conservatory is open into the lounge and kitchen with no doors so does feel part of the house. I don’t think you have to have doors but if it’s not a great conservatory it might be a bit draughty!

I imagine it will become a kind of store room but as it is between the dining room and the garden that will spoil the view of the garden.
I won’t have money to replace it with an extension unfortunately but it makes sense not to try to improve it but leave it for the next people to figure it out.
We don’t do arts and crafts and somehow I can’t see it as a teenage hangout area either!

They are as useless as you think they are, always too hot or too cold. We took our "sunroom" down very quickly after purchasing this house. You might find you can get rid of the glass structure quite easily, we sold ours on gumtree and the purchasers took it down themselves. Don't just put crap in it, it'll spoil your view to the garden.

Are they good from growing vegetables/plants in? Maybe you could bring a bit of the garden into the conservatory, grape vines, fig tree etc?

Don’t do anything immediately,

Our friends have one and it’s used constantly, in fact we sit in there more than in the lounge. It’s warm though, and has sofas, so like a second sitting room.

@Imiss2019
"Try to learn from my mistake we spent a lot of money when we first moved in to make it a useable space (new flooring l, plastering, underfloor heating) and it was money down the drain"

Definitely agree. They are utter rubbish. And if you remove the house external doors you have breached the building regulations as they have to stay in place as essentially they are classed as a temporary structure. My neighbour moved in several years ago. They inherited one across the whole rear of the house which cost the previous occupant an absolute fortune. His experience is:

It leaks. Not a lot but it does! To get fixed scaffolding has to be out up at cost.
It's either freezing of baking hot. There are a few weeks when the temp is nice. To cool it you need huge amounts of blinds at cost.
A suggestion was to out a proper roof in it. You can get really light ones but conservatories don't have proper foundations, just a slab and they can sink.
You are not supposed to connect it to your main house central heating as per building regs.

As others have said, it is basically a storage area. They have now decided to knock it down and have a smaller extension built. It is 8 years old

I'm very glad we went straight down the extension route and I think it influenced my neighbour seeing the sliding doors come back in a morning and the room being lovely and warm but not cooking hot. We have a conventional roof with Velux windows

I’ve lived in 3 houses with conservatories (all in place before we moved in).

The first one was really just a glorified lean-to, old, cold, full of spiders, and definitely would have been replaced if we’d had the money.

Next one was huge, across the whole of the back of the house. Great space, bright and airy, but with a persistent leak that just seemed impossible to fix. We could use the conservatory most of the year though as it had lots of doors and windows in summer, and a fan, and two big radiators in the winter. After we sold that house the new owners pulled the conservatory down and put a proper brick extension in its place.

House 3, which we’re in now, has a 3x2.5m conservatory. We’ve removed the doors leading into the kitchen (not planning to move anytime soon so no worries about building regs) and put in internal bifolds. The conservatory itself is really well built with a good solid structure. It cost £25k to put in 15 years ago and is still holding up well. No leaks at all. We put in underfloor heating and a radiator, put reflective film on the roof and spent about £1k on blinds. We use it all year round now, it’s like our daytime living room. There’s maybe the odd really hot summer’s day when it gets very hot but after 5 mins of having windows and ceiling windows open it’s fine to sit in. On days like that I’d rather be outside anyway. Nice sofa, tv, big fluffy rug. Lovely view to the garden.

So you can make conservatories work if they’re good quality in the first place. If not, and you want to pull it down and replace with a brick extension, we were quoted around £30k (SE).