Beginner to House renovation help please!

[nickinoo]

We have an open plan kitchen/dining room at the rear of our house. We also have what the Agents call a " Sun room" Bascially not an conservatory and not an extension! It brick built half way up, single glazed windows all round and a crappy plastic/corrugated roof!

Our plan is to knock the wall down between the kitchen/dining room and the Sun room and then rebuild the sun room ( new windows/doors and a roof with sky lights The wall to be knocked down is an outside wall.

Do I need a Architect? Or just a builder? I have no idea where to start! Just lots of expensive idea!

Any information you can give would be thoroughly appreciated.

another option - cheaper than architect, is an architectural technician - they are generally the ones who do all the technical drawings. If it is straightforward design as it sounds then they should be fine for that (we used one for out extension).

Draw out your ideas, get a few to come round and give you a quote - they should also be able to give you an idea of building costs. Then once you have plans sorted (and know if you need to go through planning permission), you can then get quotes from 3 builders.

Thank you for your help Throckenholt.

Depends on your budget. We had a similar room that we wanted incorporated into the rest of the house, but waited a few years and did that together with a whole load of other stuff that needed doing to the house as well. It was well worth getting the architect as he had ideas we would never had thought of.

If you're pretty sure of what you want (which you seem to be), I'd get a builder in. They've seen it all and done it all, and may possibly be able to point you in the direction of an architectural technician should more serious plans be needed. Something like you're proposing doesn't need an architect and I don't think would justify the outlay.

We did something similar recently and because the wall we were knocking down was structural (which yours would be too by the sounds of it) we had a structural engineer to check the loadings etc, specify the steels necessary and do drawings for the builders to work from. Other than that I just did drawings for how I wanted the rest of it to work/look and didn't have an architect.

I wouldn't recommend just getting a builder if you're knocking down an outside wall - don't want half the house to fall down (I had nightmares while ours was propped up before the steels went in!)

thanks all for your advice. Next step find a builder I think!