Modernise a conservatory

[Abblebee]

Just looking for ideas on how to make this look attractive?

We plastered the brick walls, painted it a light colour, brand new tiled floor and new lights and it has made the world of difference. We will probably eventually do am extension of the same footprint but no way can we afford that yet as it will be about 25k so a much cheaper fix of less than 1500 to get it all looking so much better.

Possibly but i imagine fairly easy to get with the same footprint. Hopefully someone else will know?

this is a useful article. It would likely be more building regs than from scratch planning permission
www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/replacing-a-conservatory-with-an-extension

Why would it cost so much more than an actual house roof? You wouldn't even need scaffolding. I'd have got more quotes... they may have quoted high as they didn't like the job.

Often the foundations/walls of a conservatory aren't sufficient to support a proper roof, so that cost may well include an element of improving the support system / foundations.

OP - I have a old/cheap conservatory with a plastic roof and I can echo what pp's have said. It's utterly unusable apart from during a small window in spring and autumn. It's an oven in summer, freezing in winter, and it would be far too expensive to try to heat it to be usable in winter.

We are busy renovating that rest of the house at present, but when we come to deal with the conservatory we will either demolish it entirely or replace it with something more substantial. There's no point throwing good money after bad.

It sounds as though the two brick walls and thermal panels in the roof are what makes this room work. What aspect does it face?

@Octomore it's south facing and we are in the south west so we don't get very cold winters. We do run stand alone fans in the summer mind and the doors are always open.

We find it warms the kitchen ( which it leads off of) in the winter as well.

The answer is probably not but you might
You will need to check out the planning status of your house and area (can do this on the planning page of the local council)
I have a client who has a fairly standard 20yo house but due to the terms of the original planning permission we had to apply for planning permission for even changing the front door or awful shaped fascia to a plain one.

Meant to say we are also pulling down the conservatory and building a proper extension in the exact same footprint - we've just got permission. It wasn't a hassle apart from requiring drawings and paperwork.

I would avoid spending any serious money on it. It won't be usable all year round..they are either freezing cold or boiling hot. Messing with the roof will cost a fortune. Save the money for demolishing and building a proper extension as you envisage

I had an old style conservatory on the house I bought. It was useless. Freezing in winter and boiling in summer. I looked into sorting the roof but the roof needed was too heavy for the structure.

I took it down and built an extension. Best thing I ever did! And no planning permission was needed. It was built within permitted development.

If you're banking on using the room all year round OP, I'd recommend finding out exactly how the conservatory has been constructed. Otherwise you could be sorely disappointed.

We knocked ours down, sold it and built an extension.

It was just a storage room, useless for anything else.

We're in the north west of England if it helps.

@LadyEloise10 we are having a tiled Supalite roof being put on our conservatory in just under a couple of weeks. The conservatory measures 4m x 6m and is costing £15k for just the roof. We are also changing the windows adding lights, building a side access, insulating and replastering all the walls, bifold doors, and a vista glass panel to let some light in and that's costing an extra £9k. Could be wrong of course, but I doubt I could get an extension done at that price for that size.