Kitchen extension now, loft later - how did it work out for you?

[Makethisreal]

Planning a kitchen-diner extension next spring, it’s a side return wraparound that will give us some desperately needed space to hang out as a family (DC 10 & 13). Currently on top of each other in awkward galley kitchen. We’d also love to do the loft extension at some stage to give us an extra guest bedroom and bathroom - it’s a double dormer so we’d do a main bedroom and full bathroom up there. Finances sadly won’t stretch to do both right now. There’s no doubt the downstairs extension needs to be prioritised because of how we use the space, BUT am I crazy to think we can plan to do the loft extension a year or two later - does this mean the lovely new patio, landscaped garden and redecorated hallway all get wrecked again with builders and scaffolding? Would love to hear from anyone who’s done their extension this way round - how did it work out for you?

We did it that way around although there was a 9 year gap between rear extension and loft conversion so the hallway needed repainting anyway. Otherwise it didn’t make a difference. However if you are having load bearing walls taken down and steels put in for the rear extension, let your builder/structural engineer know you want to convert the loft in case that needs factoring in to the calculations.

Depends what the loft extension involves - mine didn’t require any scaffolding.

Lots of considerations.

financial mainly. My neighbour did their loft extension first as the builder said get that done, then you’re not trampling over your new downstairs as you mention.

then the money that was earmarked for downstairs never materialised, so now they have a top heavy house with no living space.

i think having seen that I’d do downstairs first unless i had the finances in place to pretty much do it all at once.

We did the loft first. We had funds enough for either the loft or the downstairs. I fell pregnant with Dc2, we needed more bedrooms at that point more than a nicer kitchen-diner. We were in a 2 bed bungalow. Now we have a 4 bed, kids bedrooms upstairs and master downstairs. 4th bedroom is the office.

Plan was that we could remortgage with the increased value from the loft and complete the downstairs extension. However, the extension is very expensive. We re-evaluated what we were trying to achieve. We knew we wanted a new kitchen-diner space, utility and ensuite. We have managed to work out that we could achieve these without extending. More modest spaces but they will be lovely. We are going to to reconfigure the downstairs space. Work starts in autumn.

Definitely see if you can reconfigure without extending. I went through a couple of months where I felt down from not being able to extend, to have the amazing open plan space and a breakfast pantry, but with clever planning, the reconfigured plans look great.

We’ve done it this way round with a 3 year gap. The patio has been fine, nothing a brush and perhaps a pressure washer won’t sort out (when we’re not in a drought or borderline drought). The garden was more trashed with the extension than the loft conversion, but I would say not to get landscaping done until everything is done, if landscaping is on your agenda.

Inside, it’s all been fine apart from the hall. The hall, stairs and landing have not come out of it shining, which you’d expect - and we deliberately put off decorating until after the loft was done. So yes, expect your hall and stairs to get trashed, and for any existing carpets/runners to need replacing.

It might be worth talking to builders and loft construction firms now, to sound out potential issues.

Things I would say to consider are:

1. Is your existing boiler in the right location and is it powerful enough to operate an extra shower room? If you have any plans to upgrade or resite it, it would be worth working out best options at an early stage.

2. Electrics. Spell out your plan to the builders and ask them to ensure the electrics will cope with a loft conversion. You may need a new consumer board at some stage and if they will bear it in mind, if could keep costs down for stage 2 of your renovations.

3. Access. Builders prefer to work top down as it’s easier to accommodate scaffolding. Doesn’t mean it can’t be done the other way round but if your extension removes your side access, for example, you may want to consider how that could impact on loft construction plans.

@Notyetthere I'm currently planning to do loft extension then remortgage to finance ground floor open plan kitchen-diner hence wanted to ask: did your loft not increase the value of your property enough to fund the downstairs extension or did you just decide against it because thought it was just too much to spend?

Sorry I hope you don't mind me asking just trying to see if my plan is realistic at all.

I currently only have two bedrooms on the top floor so the extension will add an extra bedroom with ensuite and, a family bathroom (which is currently downstairs)

Not a problem at all. The loft definitely increased the value almost by 50%. But still, the downstairs works were going to come in at £2700-£3000 per sqm. Over £100,000 and even then, we would still need to fund the kitchen, ensuite materials, flooring, etc. It was pushing our affordability to the limit and then interest rates also went up so we really had to rethink the whole plan.

Even the none extended version is coming in high. Over £60k but more palatable and includes the kitchen and all the other materials.

@Notyetthere thank you, really appreciate response. This is similar to my case as I'm also looking at around 100K to first fix only so will definitely take me well over 100K to finish the downstairs.
I was thinking if the downstairs also increases the value, then perhaps remortgaging again could bring mortgage payments down. Is this something you looked into?

We looked at the options of remortgaging and increasing the term to lower the monthly costs but for us, rates increased from 1.5% to 4.5% at the time, it was a big jump even with the extended term. I'm many in pur position will have been reconsidering their options like us.