Please critique my extension plans

[QueenofWhatever]

I recently bought a three bedroom one bathroom that needs some fairly major modernisation. I bought it with a view to extending it to a four bedroom two bathroom house that I’m looking to sell on in 3-5 years time.

My target market is young family with working parents ish and it’s in a popular village close to a regional city with good primary schools, range of shops, public transport etc.

What would you change or want to see that isn’t included? The builders are coming to cost it upon Tuesday before I go for planning permission. I want to get the right balance between keeping costs down, but not skipping things that will make it saleable. Thanks!

Storage cupboards. There’s only 1 under the stairs. Nothing upstairs. Were will towels etc, go ?

Perhaps a porch downstairs to hang coats/ for shoes and to wipe your feet inside.

There is not enough kitchen at all
If i saw this i wouldnt buy it based on the kitchen.
Get rid of the two bifolds - just have one in the open plan and run/ extend the kitchen down and round maybe? into the family room and have it as kitchen diner going into a snug.

Honestly studio apartments have kitchen this size. Where do the pots pans, larder, fridge freezer, food?! go???

I would put the kitchen at the back of the house in one of the larger spaces with more light.

Upstairs I would have a walk in shower in the ensuite rather than a bath.

I agree the kitchen is far too small/no where near enough storage space. The home office looks really tiny and the 2 windows and door mean there is little usable space for shelving. I would maybe lose a window, or put a high picture window in instead on the right and run the desk along that wall. It isn't good to face a window anyway due to glare.

This reminds me of a house nearby, newly done up by a developer and stuck on the market, small kitchen, but opened up to the room next to it to create an open plan feel. A couple of year later, it was renovated and put on the market again with proper big open plan kitchen dinner and a small extension in the back with a price tag of 80k
higher.

Have you tried overlaying scale furniture? The master bedroom in particular looks like it could be awkward - try fitting in a king or super king bed with bedsides and enough room to actually walk up the side. I have a feeling it might be tight. Is there an alternative to the corner en suite? Whenever I've seen this kind of cut off corner layout it always looks a bit awkward in real life imo.

How do you get in to the livingroom?

The lack of direct access from utility to kitchen might bother people. I think this will be ok if you have lots of kitchen storage so the utility is really a laundry but (like a lot of people) my utility holds all sorts of kitchen overspill and it being so far away would be a pita. I'd actually think at this point about how you want the kitchen laid out as this might change everything and it looks a bit of a chucked in afterthought just now.

The kitchen is too small for me, with very little work surface.

There don't seem to be any wardrobes or an airing cupboard.

Have you thought about making it more eco-friendly - ground source heat pump. Upgrading the insulation etc.

Kitchen far too small for 4 bed house. Cloakroom and utility room need to be separated into individual rooms for me.

Agree the kitchen is small. Looks smaller than originally in terms of worktop & storage space so would be a no from me.

I would also not want the WC/utility with an external door so would have them separate.

Bedrooms look good, assuming there's enough space for a king size to fit in the master + wardrobes. I would've probably went for a shower rather than bath in en suite

Strongly agree with what everyone says about the kitchen.

Though great you’ve got a utility.

Agree with pp...no idea why you've created all that space and kept the tiny kitchen in the corner?
The extended utility room just looks kind of awkward to me as well, just kind of tacked onto the front, and I don't really like the idea of a WC and utility together.
Bifolds are nice but you're basically losing 3 whole walls there which limits where you can put furniture (or kitchen units).

Why are you getting rid of the fireplace and chimney?

Thanks for the comments. Yes, the existing kitchen is tiny, but the knock through shown on the second picture shows it would be 5 metres or more deep and then a knocked through L shape for a dining/sitting area which will be over six metres wide. The kitchen hasn’t been planned in yet and I would put in far more units than he has initially suggested. But trying to work out where exactly to put more units and maybe an island breakfast bar is trickier.

Good point about the utility not being accessible from inside the kitchen. At the moment it’s a standalone storage area that you have to go through the back door to get into. The idea of knocking it through with the downstairs toilet is that you can have a sort of boot room/dirty entry apart from the front door.

@8misskitty8 good point about somewhere to hang coats and leave shoes. There’s nothing at the moment and it’s driving me nuts. It’s quite steep from the parking area to the front door, so need to talk with the builders to see if there’s space for a porch. I’m a big fan of them.

Also what you can’t get from the plans is that the house is a bit back to front. The main garden is at the front where the bifold will be. It’s up in a bit of a hill so has nice views over the hills and woods. Where the kitchen will be up is north facing and has a back garden where you’d hang your washing, have compost bins etc.

@FudgeFlake the fireplaces are bricked up and have 1980s gas fires in them. The house was built in 1960, so nothing really worth keeping from an architectural POV.

Is this a better way to describe the kitchen?

I like the utility/boot room separately entrance for wellies and pet. Something I compromised on my renovation due to limited pace. But with a toilet in there, it’s a bit odd. Potentially, one can come back into the house with someone else on the toilet?!

@QueenofWhatever ah I get you! I replaced with a wood burning stove, but I have an unfair advantage of access to endless supplies of free timber.

I think, possibly, you're just trying to get a bit too much in. By my (rough) calcs your going to be about 125 square metres? You're trying to get 4 bedrooms, a large open plan kitchen diner family room, separate lounge, 2 full bathrooms, a loo, a home office and a lootility. It's a lot to get in and I can't help thinking you might be comprimising a lot as a result.

Do you really need/want two sets of bifolds in the same space? It's a lot of glass!

Are there three bifolds + 3 normal external doors on the either side? That’s a lot.

I will start by saying this - I hate it when people are prescriptive about their market. You have no idea who will buy it, I am single in my forties and just bought a large four bedroom house that was marketed as a large family home. The lady showing it to me basically said this isn’t for you.

Don’t design it for an imaginary family. Design a good, spacious home.

I appreciate I am not your target market but I wouldn’t buy their layout because the kitchen is way too small. Also is the utility room accessed through the toilet? Is there a door?

The office is also tiny. Having worked from home for a year I realised there is nothing worse than a tiny home office.

Also dislike the front door at the side. Is there any natural light is the hall downstairs? I would remove the tiny home office and have a more impressive entrance hall. It looks a bit pokey for a house of this size.

Interesting what you’re saying about the size of the home office. It’s 1.8m x 2.6m, which is bigger than a lot of third bedrooms in houses that I’ve seen and certainly bigger than the room I’m currently working in. Good suggestion from @Wingingitsince2018 about putting in a high picture window so there’s room for shelving. I don’t have any paper or files for work, just laptop and large monitors so it’s not something that had occurred to me.

Yes, there’s always a risk of trying to do too much and sometimes less is more. That’s partly why I’m asking for feedback as the downstairs flow isn’t quite there yet (and he forgot to put a door into the living room).

Because it banks steeply at the back, it’s hard to get a more impressive entrance. I’m also not sure about having three doors, but thought you had to have one out the back of the kitchen for fire regs. Undecided about three sets of bifolds and may switch to sliding doors in the living room. Friends who’ve seen it in real life think it should be bifolds because of the views.

Would you be able to extend the right hand wall of the home office so it lines up with the utility on the ground floor, then upstairs extend the wall in the main bedroom to the right so it lines up with the bedroom 4?

This would mean you'd have to put the windows on the side of the house, but it looks like you've already got some there, so should hopefully get through planning.

The en-suite could then go in the extended wall bit, as it looks quite intrusive in the room. I also agree with PP that this should be a shower room, rather than full bathroom.

What is in the area that the utility and kitchen doors open to?

How do you access the small living room?

Agree kitchen looks tiny.
I don't mind a kitchen dining room but I like less open plan.

OP first of all what's the plot like? It looks like it's got various steps and you mention a hill. If that's the case, does it have a flat area for children playing out (once the extension is done) because if not, it won't appeal to a family. We moved from a house with sloping gardens with toddlers because the garden was pretty much useless.

As pps have said, the master bedroom doesn't work as it looks too tight for a bed with the ensuite as it's drawn.

I also think the kitchen is far too small, I'd run cabinets down the whole of the wall. I think if possible you should have access to the utility from the kitchen.

What are the dimensions of the office? Looks a little too small.