Moving front door

[9000hal]

Hi all,

Looking for a bit of advice and opinion on what would be the best way around the below.

Basically our house is semi detached corner plot and we want to move the front door from one side facing road A to the other facing road B. This would section off a much bigger, private back garden.

Firstly does anyone have any experience of moving the front door and more specifically from facing one road to another (would my address need to change?)

The first pic is the current layout with the front garden and path up to the front door (marked in red) which is open and not private facing road A.

The second pic is the front door (marked in red) moved to the other side of the house facing road B creating a smaller front garden and much larger back garden which can be made private. This includes bricking up a porch which would create a larger utility and downstairs wet room but create an entrance hall between the kitchen and utility.

Does anyone have any other ideas for the layout when moving the front door (a bigger side extension would be possible but I still can’t figure out how the layout would work with the front door located on road b without drastically changing the layout of the house)? The kitchen is around 18ft long and 7ft wide - would loosing 4ft of the kitchen length to create a hallway for the new front door be an issue? Would separating the utility from the kitchen be a problem in functionality and flow? I’d love to hear people’s thoughts and opinions.

Won't that mean you have to change you address to the other road? Sorry ignore me I did read the post properly!

I would check with your local council and Royal Mail about the address.

I think the first thing you should do is to contact your local planning department. There are quite strict rules about driveways and visibility splays, so you wouldn't be able to add a new access driveway without their approval first.

This, because the driveway would be closer to the junction than it currently is now on the other road and only they would be able to advise if this is possible. Also how would the numbering work if there is already a number 1 or 2 of that road, what would your new number be, unless you are at the top end say 85 and they can add one.

I would phone up and book an appointment, I think they charge these days but only like a tenner for their advice.

I used to live in a Victorian semi on a corner plot. The front door faced the road that our address was on, but the entry to the garden was on the other road. It was built that way - with original metal railings all around the garden. It did used to confuse people sometimes, but apart from that it was fine - the shape and orientation of the house made it pretty obvious which road it was officially on.

If your drive still exits into same road there's no need for address change

Hi all thanks for the replies. We will definitely be contacting the council and sending our application for planning permission. Hopefully there won't be anything's too complicated to overcome. We will also be keeping the existing drive just fencing it off.

What are people's thoughts on the layout? In order to do this we would be loosing a bit of the kitchen but gain a larger utility room and downstairs wet room which we think could be very useful when the DC come home muddy. Plus we have a very small Ensuite in the upstairs master which is already small to begin with so we thinking we could remove this as we would have the downstairs wet room as an extra bathroom.

It doesn't look like the new layout will add much to the house compared with how much it will cost, which I assume is a lot? Also I would be worried about making the kitchen smaller. Is it big enough to fit a table in? Are there stairs anywhere?

Would it be better to extend at the side instead, down the length of the kitchen and at the side of the existing utility room?

No it won't really add much in terms of extra usable space. The main point is that the back garden will be much larger and private. The bit of the kitchen we are taking off will basically be moved to the new bigger utility and we was thinking of putting as many appliances in there as possible, dishwasher, washer and possibly fridge. The kitchen is a galley style and is 7ft wide so wouldn't fit a proper table but possibly a small breakfast bar which could still be possible with the new layout. The stairs are in the middle of the house which seems to be causing the issue, I can't see anyway of doing this without making a massive hallway which feels like not the best use of space. I have attached where the stairs are and marked in yellow.

Extending down the side was another option to make the kitchen and small living room bigger but we still have the problem of where to put the front door.

Another idea was to simply gate off the front driveway or create some sort of pedestrian gate halfway up the drive. Mostly keeping it open but then closing when we want days in the garden. DH isn't too keen on this idea as he think the front will look like a fortress. Plus I'm not sure what issues it could cause with delivery's and visitors (maybe some sort of fob gate system).

The original idea was to just fence the back garden off from the corner of the house to the garage but felt like we would not be making the best use of the garden space.