Knocking down a conservatory

[TinyGlassOwl]

We are buying a house with an incredibly ugly and depressing conservatory which takes up a huge area of the south-facing patio and sucks the life and light out of the kitchen. It is so horrible that when our offer was accepted the EA actually said 'I was so pleased when you said you're going to knock that thing down'.

I have a vision of replacing it with a lovely wooden pergola, with some tasteful lights and climbing plants and a comfy seating area with a nice big table. It would give us some shade in the summer but hopefully wouldn't block the light in the same way.

Has anyone done this? Did you pay someone to knock it down and take it all away? It's divided from the kitchen by glass sliding doors - I assume they'd be ok to keep until we can afford to replace them too Would I need to lay decking as well?

Any experiences of getting rid would be helpful!

We've just removed the conservatory to make way for an extension on the house we bought in February.

I listed it on Facebook marketplace, it sold within a week and the buyer came with his mate and dismantled it. He only needed the windows and door for his own new extension, so gave me an extra £20 towards a skip to get rid of the roof/guttering/trim. I listed the polycarbonate roofing sheets on Facebook free for collection and they went the same day!

We have reused a bit of the guttering temporarily across the back of the house where the conservatory used to be, and paid someone £10 to drop the remaining plastic trim at the tip for us .

I then dismantled the cavity dwarf walls, brick by brick with a lump hammer and bolster, and cleaned all the bricks, so we can reuse them elsewhere in the garden in future (this took several days and was quite hard work!), and then arranged for the rubble and insulation to be removed with the trim.

All we have left now is the concrete pad, but our builder is going to lift/break that up when he starts work on the extension in a couple of months .

It was a relatively labour intensive process, but not too expensive. I did only put the conservatory up for sale for £250, and sold it for £200 - on the condition that the buyer dismantled and collected it themselves!

It was a win win situation - I hated the conservatory - pointless IMO - and he got cheaper windows/door, and we didn't have to pay to get rid of it! .