What would you do - extension or fancy patio? Also - loft.

[littlepeas]

I'm going to do bullet points to prevent waffling - trying to decide what to do:

• Mid terrace 3 storey house - kitchen diner on ground floor, alongside a small sitting room (snug) and a study. Main sitting room is on the 1st floor.

• Kitchen/diner is an ok size - 6mx4m - plenty of room for a big dining table, but not for a sofa, etc.

• Garden is not very big. Currently have a horrible decked area that will either become extension or patio. It's about 1/5 of the whole garden BUT the rest of the garden is sloping and tricky, so if we extend there won't be anywhere for a table, etc in the garden.

Would you:

A - Add 5.5mx3m extension - bifolds and atrium - a bit like an orangery but the sides are walls. The kitchen and dining areas would stay as they are and the extension would be a downstairs sitting room - all open plan.

B - Don't extend but landscape the garden to create a really gorgeous outdoor room style patio/terrace and make the rest of the garden more useable (next door have stepped their garden and it looks amazing). We are prepared to spend quite a bit to make it really special.

Both options will involve a new kitchen. Total budget is £100K.

I can't decide whether it's better to have more room in the house - it's biggish, but not huge - about 2000 sq ft - the extension would add about 200 sq ft. I get a bit lonely when I'm cooking, as everyone sits upstairs! But then, we don't use the garden as much as we could as we don't have anywhere nice to sit. If we did the extension we wouldn't be able to afford the landscaping work for quite a while.

Second question - would you bother converting the loft if you already had 5 decent sized bedrooms and 3 floors? Another thing we're pondering. It would probably be a workspace/studio for me, but could be a bedroom if we sold the house.

@muddledmidget

I'd do the extension and some basic landscaping of the garden to enable another flat area to be created for a patio, but not the full landscaping if it's not affordable at the moment. Wouldn't do the loft as 5 bedrooms is more than enough and building regs/fire safety will probably be prohibitive especially with a large open plan kitchen, requiring a sprinkler system throughout the house if you go to 4 habitable floors

This is exactly what I would do. The machinery for the build will destroy your garden anyway. So budget for getting some basic earth moving / drainage / type one done at the same time.

Pay a garden designer / landscape architect to draw up a design for you. Do not let any kind of builder or landscaper do this or you will end up with something hideous.

IME a large kitchen / dining / living room ( separate utility room) with plenty light and lovely garden views is the biggest luxury and best selling point in a family house.

Garden sounds lovely but realistically you will only get half of the year to enjoy it. That would be my main decision making factor. You can still get some work done on the outside but I would spend the bulk on the interior renovation.

What is the floor structure? If it’s suspended on joists and the joists run side to side, it may be possible to move the WC to the back end of the study, where the cupboards are. Then you can open up to the snug.

If the subfloor is concrete then not possible (or at least not worth the cost).

@Ifailed

So for the later part of the day, even in summer, the proposed patio area is in shade?

It has sun for a lot of the day and we’re potentially looking to put something at the other end too (next door have done this). I’m not a sun worshipper tbh and actually favour the shade when it’s hot, so not the biggest deal. We’re planning to put in a fire pit, etc, so we can use it in the evening too. We haven’t spoken to the landscaping people in any detail yet. Ultimately I’m not sure it matters - do people with shaded gardens not deserve somewhere nice to sit outside?

If you want the upstairs sitting room to stay a sitting room, what do you want the extension to be for? If it's literally to fit in a sofa, could you turn the study into a utility room and free up kitchen space that way? Could the family room do dual-duty as a music room and study?

@InescapableDeath

If you want the upstairs sitting room to stay a sitting room, what do you want the extension to be for? If it's literally to fit in a sofa, could you turn the study into a utility room and free up kitchen space that way? Could the family room do dual-duty as a music room and study?

We have a separate utility room - it’s upstairs!

But yes - we mainly want to fit a sofa and have a sociable space so people want to gang out with me while I am cooking!

How about a flat roofed extension with a balcony on top, coming off the lounge for extra outside space 😬 no idea if that's possible with your layout but friends of ours have a balcony and use it a lot in the summer

Can you get rid of/move the downstairs WC to open up it better connect the kitchen and the snug?

From that floor plan it looks like you have several rooms that don't necessarily join up very well in terms of usage...?

My brother has a house with an extension with a special manhole in the floor of the extension. So it can be done.

Next door didn’t bother moving their manhole and just built over it and now when they get a blockage have to come and rod from our manhole as we’re on the same run.

Neighbours on the other side moved the drain.

We’ve decided that we won’t bother extending unless it’s as close to the full width of the house as possible, so we’re going to look into moving the manhole. The guy we’ve had a quote off has come recommended, but he only does the orangery style extension and I suspect it may be a case of won’t move the manhole, rather than definitely can’t. We also had an architect round quite a while ago, who didn’t mention drains, but I don’t think our job was big enough for him and he wasn’t that interested. I think we just need more investigation before we can decide.

Thank you for all your suggestions! It really helps me to get my head around things.

Just to say that it is usually very possible to extend where there is a manhole. Every house in my old street did it. You can either build on top of it and then have a sort of hatch in the floor (usually tiled in the same flooring) or move the manhole further back. Occasionally I think you need to get consent from the council depending on what the manhole leads to but it’s definitely possible. In your example and having seen your floor plan I would definitely focus the money on rejigging the ground floor as that layout would definitely put me off living there and would annoy me if I did live there. If you can extend the kitchen, great, but if not I would open it up. For example could you move the study upstairs, maybe to the existing utility, or a bedroom/ corner of a bedroom, then turn the ground floor study into a utility and loo and (once the loo is removed) knock through the existing family room and kitchen? Then even without an extension, or with a smaller extension, you’d have a lovely open plan family room which leads to the garden which would be beautiful.

We put our conservatory over the manhole, with a cover you can lay flooring into (see picture).
I wouldn't do it again I'd move the manhole. Would have cost us a few hundred extra, was advised it probably wasn't worth it.

Not sure whether anyone is interested, but thought I would update this thread anyway! We now have an extended and redesigned kitchen that is almost finished! We didn't move the manhole, but built the orangery/extension as close to it as we could and have a really lovely area for a sofa and an extremely beautiful kitchen. We will also be doing the patio - to the side of the new bit and extended to the front - but not sure when that will happen, as landscape gardeners are so busy at the moment. We were very lucky to manage to squeeze in with the orangery people and the kitchen people as it was.

I am now trying to decide how to repurpose the two smaller rooms at the front of my house (currently a -hideous- fitted study and snug/music room). I think the latter will stay as it is (I really like this room) and the study will be ripped out for a boot room/storage (we don't tend to sit in there to work), but it has a nice view and it feels a bit wasted on a boot room. We do need the storage though - family of 5, 3 pre-teens! And a massive dog.

I wonder if you'd be able to move your front door to one side or the other, to create a new hallway and then a larger living area downstairs? Maybe turn the study area into the new hall as you have cupboards there and then have a door into the larger living room which will incorporate the previous hallway?

I'd do a posh conservatory coming off the kitchen - small - that opens onto the outside and landscape the outside. Or open up the space with big windows.....

Friends have a tiny glassed room that has 2 chairs and a table - but it's beautiful, wow, they can see the garden, they use it loads.

like this

I think a boot room would be ideal, never mind the wasted view, you can see that from the other room at the front presumably.
I would love a room to store all the paraphernalia that normally accumulates around the front door.