We are finally, after almost 20 years in this house, in a position to do the work we have always wanted to. Sod’s Law re timing, means that the work we have spent years thinking through and hoped to have done is now almost definitely going to be too expensive, thanks to all the current problems with builders and supplies, etc. We spent years putting a lot of thought into how things could work and what we could afford to do and now it’s all up in the air.
We’re early on in the process anyway - just approaching architects - but can’t decide if we should just scale everything right back and not pay for plans for something that, if things don’t settle on the building works front, we may never afford - or may have to wait years to be able to release enough equity to afford.
We definitely need an extra bedroom and bigger kitchen. We currently have a downstairs bathroom and the plan was to do a two-storey extension and loft conversion, retain a downstairs shower room, install a bathroom upstairs and hopefully, if feasible, fit an en-suite into the loft-conversion. To do the loft/stairs and first-floor bathroom we will lose a first-floor bedroom, hence the need for the two-storey rear extension as well, to replace the loss of that room. That extension would also significantly improve the size of our kitchen/diner and essentially free up the current kitchen area to become a second reception room.
The absolute minimum we need is an extra bedroom (disabled ds who needs to stop sharing with his sibling) and ideally a bigger/improved kitchen. We can manage with one downstairs bathroom, but it is a pain with two adults and three teen dcs. (We have two disabled dcs and are expecting to have them at home indefinitely, hence the need for an extra bedroom to give everyone their own space.)
Option 1 - Go ahead, get plans drawn up for the two storey extension, plus loft conversion and see if things have settled down once we’re through the planning stage. (I’m thinking this is likely to be 2023 anyway.)
Option 2 - Staged approach? A ground floor rear extension to provide a stop-gap bedroom for ds, plus a small extension to the kitchen and retain the ground floor bathroom. With one eye to the future, plan to have footings/foundations of the extension made suitable for a potential second floor sometime in the future. So we still have the possibility of option 1 at some point, incorporating ds’ new ground-floor bedroom as the new kitchen and shifting him upstairs into the first-floor extension.
Moving isn’t an option for multiple reasons I won’t bore you with, so we need to decide how best to improve our living space in the house we have and whether to do it in stages or just completely rethink/downsize the whole plan and live with whatever we can afford, which will still be better than what we have now.
Fwiw, we aren’t likely to move on and dh and I see this as our forever house. I jointly inherited the property with a sibling, so have effectively only paid half of the value for it, leaving us with 50% equity to do the works. The staged option won’t increase the value or saleability of the property, but will make it much easier for us to live in. The initial/dream plan would significantly increase the value and saleability (it is essentially the cheapest house in an expensive area at the moment) so any investment in building works would provide a return above the amount of equity released - not that we ever plan to sell.
I have been going round in circles trying to work out the best way forward. Do we wait and see what happens with the building works situation and hope we can implement option 1 in 2023 or do you think the situation is unlikely to improve that much, so we are better off just doing what we can to make living here more comfortable?
If we had been able to do it a couple of years back there wouldn’t have been a question. We could have afforded option 1 via releasing equity and would have not only improved our living situation, but also significantly increased the value and saleability of the house - win/win.