Would you extend just for a loo?

[Boredinthehouse12]

I’ve just bought a tiny 2 bed in the SE. It’s has a small upstairs bathroom and no downstairs loo. I think it would be a good idea to extend the hallway to include a Simple toilet and basin, but the other half thinks not.

Any thoughts? I’m not sure what the cost would be but the job would involve knocking down the hallway wall and extending into the garden, about a metre or so.

Is this a complete waster of money?

Thank you for you ideas, because of the shape of the house we’re really limited. We can’t go under the stairs because that would mean a loo in the front room (lol). I’m not keen on moving the front door either.

The hallway is an extension that was created by the previous owner. The house was built with a small porch and they just extended it a bit further. Essentially I’d be increasing again by a tiny amount.

Hopefully the pic will make more sense.

We are about to start building work and are having various small extensions in various parts of the house. For something like that we are paying about £2,200 a square metre for a room without plumbing (but we are having lots done so getting a good rate). It’s a pantry so we don’t even need a radiator

The obvious solution is to move the front door though. You then have the loo to the right in that dead space

Can you move front door left a bit and then put toilet there?

If you were knocking down the hallway wall that would be load bearing, the cost of the beans to support that while the work was ongoing would be high, pouring foundations is expensive, roofing is insanely expensive, external walls to meet fire regulations are expensive.
As it’s so small the builders will charge you a fortune as they won’t have the economy of scale they get to work with on larger extensions, all in all it would cost you significantly more than the value it would add . If you wanted to sell any time soon I really really wouldn’t.

Could you put a turn in at the bottom of the stairs so that they end in the living room. Could then block off what is bottom of stairs now and put cloakroom at that end of the hallway - would also be closer to kitchen plumbing.

No, not in a small 2 bedroom house.
People expect a small 2 bedroom house (bless its new build) to have 1 bathroom with loo. They don’t expect 2. That’s why you won’t get your money back.

When you sell, you might sell a bit faster with the extra loo but not for much more money.

If you were asking this for a 3 bed, it would depend on the cost and location. For a 4 bed the answer would definitely be yes and 4 beds should always have 2 loos and ideally at least 2 bathrooms/shower rooms.

I don’t think a downstairs loo is a deal breaker for a small 2 bedroom house. We have a 4 bed and are doing an extensive renovation to get a downstairs wc/utility/bigger kitchen without extending (we are almost finished). We asked our builders about putting a small extension on the side of the house for a wc and it was going to cost at least £20k, for about 3 sqm of extension. Just didn’t make economic sense.

You have to consider where your services are too. Our new wc is directly below the main bathroom so the soil pipe/drain is already there (and the pipe itself needed replacing).

Where is your bathroom in relation to your floor plan?

Like other posters suggested, the obvious thing to do would be to move the door further back and use some of that hallway space at the front for a wc.