How would you extend?

[hummingbird14]

Hoping to buy this house but it's the garden that is selling it to us at the moment.

This house is quite small and we can't figure out how to extend. It would need to be double storey as we have two children and plan to stay a long time.

The whole house needs a facelift so we're thinking it would be best to get the main extension out of the way before decorating properly.

Anyone have any advice on how you'd extend both floors? It's the hallway upstairs that's throwing us off

It's detached but there isn't space for a side extension really

Thank you for any tips 🙂

Ah, just figured out that the top floor is rotated 180 degrees, so it's the bath and middlesized bedroom at the back - is that right?

First thing I'd do is get rid of that total waste of space ensuite so at least you could have a reasonable sized second bedroom.

Do you have any room to add windows to the side of it? My big concern would be trying to get any light into any middle rooms if you extended backwards upstairs. The house is so narrow, you'd probably have to lose the bathroom to create access to anything new at the back - though you could perhaps widen the back bedroom ever so slightly (if the cost is worth it).

I suppose if you can't get a window in you could turn that back bedroom into an internal bathroom, plumbing dependent, and add two bedrooms at the back, slightly staggered for access like the current layout. You'd end up with a 4 bed, but probably with two small singles.

Personally I think you'd have to get the house as it is pretty cheap to make it worthwhile.

Trying to add image, but can't figure out how

Double height out the back. You can't add a bedroom but you can get a decent sized dining room, kitchen, get bedroom 2 up to a decent size and possibly give it an ensuite behind the current family bathroom.

One of the children is going to end up stuck with the pokey third bedroom though. Unless you can do a partial extension on the front to extend that bedroom over a porch and maybe get a downstairs loo in.

Second attempt at image

I'm not convinced that a double storey extension would gain you much. Can you convert the loft? If so then I think that would be more practical and then do a single storey extension across the back to give you a good sized kitchen/diner/living space. Pricey for all that though, I think you'd need to do your sums carefully to check whether it's worth it.

Thanks everyone!
I think you all confirmed our thoughts but wanted to make sure we weren't missing the potential.

There doesn't seem to be an easy solution. And it's smaller than what we have now but the garden is amazing.

We have a second viewing at the weekend.
It really is too small how it is now. We will see. There's always another one 🙂
Thanks everyone

I’d get rid of the conservatory - they’re so outdated now and add no value.
Extend out on the ground floor knocking the existing dining room and kitchen together to make one large space - could get a downstairs loo too..

With upstairs - you could configure the back half of the house to create additional two bedrooms with the extension. Move the windows to the side of the existing rooms and create a corridor…

You’d be looking at least £125k for this work though. Is it better just to buy a house that already has the space you need, just modernise it??

The conservatory would be absolutely first to go!!
Yes we're thinking the same now as financially it wouldn't make a lot of sense and it would come with lots of renovation stress.

The trouble is we're limited to a small area for school reasons so it is probably just waiting and hoping another one will come along

Extend across the back ideally do the loft but if you haven’t the budget double height extension at the back but planning may be an issue for that

If you were happy to lose the ensuite to and if possible enlarge that side window you could get three bedrooms in a row like this.

As pp have said, it will be expensive.

How much garden space at the sides and back?

Excuse my awful diagram

The black is the house. The blue lines would be our garden. The red is neighbours. The green is trees lining a beck then farmers fields.

There isn't much space down the sides about 2m either side?
The garden is enormous so plenty of room that way.
They are a fairly new row of houses built in 2000 I think. I can't understand why they'd make the upstairs so small with all that space 😩

So any side windows you add would need to be frosted but adding windows would mean that you could add lots of light into the middle of the house. I would take down the conservatory and do a full height rear extension. You could definitely add a bedroom and a downstairs utility and loo.

It's a big project though. I would guess around £100,000 depending on where you are in the country.

Definitely second getting rid of the conservatory, we got rid when extending the ground floor and went from a sunny junk room to a lovely kitchen diner. If you're in London we used a company called Home Tales to design our extension, they were very good and gave us a good idea of the costs and timescales before we committed to anything

What do you want from it in terms of bedrooms?

It won't be cheap so I think you're right to discount it really.

Potentially you could sell some of the garden to the furthest neighbour without noticing too much.

I would do a downstairs extension and have a lovely big kitchen/diner space. Keep the lounge separate for quiet or grown up space.

Instead of an upstairs extension, go for a garden room as you said the garden is huge. It can be easily made into an office, guest sleeping area, teenage hang out etc, so has lots of potential uses as your family progresses. They are usually cheaper than a house extension too. The kids still have a bedroom each in the house for privacy and you will have a decent downstairs living space.

If money allows later on and you feel you need more space, go up into the loft. Then you can spread the cost over time.

Minimum 3 decent size bedrooms as we have 2 dc. A 4th but be great but as pp suggests a garden room could be an alternative to that

This looks good actually!!

We can't work out what kind of offer to put in.
The house sold 18 months ago. It's on the market for 3% more than what they paid.
But we do think they paid a bit more than it's worth when the market was crazy

I think if you add 2 bedrooms on the back, they're going to be quite narrow, so might not actually solve your problem of having decent sized rooms.