Any builders out there who can say whether my latest crazy idea is viable?

[mumoverseas]

Several years ago I had a 2 story extension on the side of the house. The kitchen used to have a door out the side to the side path/garden but now there is a dining room/family room there.

We hardly ever use the dining room and I've been thinking recently of having a breakfast bar built in the kitchen but have suddenly wondered whether it would be an option to knock through the wall between the kitchen and dining room to make one large room which would give us a large open plan kitchen/dining room.

Obviously that wall used to be the main 'outside' wall and when the extension was done certain vents and other bits were moved but I wasn't sure whether we could knock down that wall, or even part of it to make a large archway? Also, would we need planning permission to do this?

Grateful for any expert opinions?

Building regs approval I'd have thought

You will need an RSJ & someone like a structural engineer to do the calcs - but if you get a good builder he should have someone who does that

Don't see why you can't do it. Is our plan for our new place.

You'll probably need to involve building control and you'll need to make sure the person doing the work has the relevant insurances in addition to what Katymac said.

We opened up quite a large part of our kitchen in our last house to a side extension and it was fine to do with a proper RSJ put in place and supports whilst all that happened. We did get some cracking upstairs when it all happened but nothing more than cosmetic and I think in all honesty some of that could have been avoided if we had better builders....they failed to install any support initially when they first knocked part of the supporting wall out!!! Once they returned that evening on the insistance of building control to make sure the building was stable we had no further problems. We did get a structural surveyor to look at it at the time to ensure we didn't need to chase the builders for more serious damage.

thanks for your replies. If it needs Building regs might give it a miss. Have had too many stressful meetings with them previously.

I am in the middle of having a small single storey extension put on the house - basically filling in an L shape and then knocking through the longer wall of the L (previously the outside wall).

We have gone right up to the ceiling, so although I have a small pillar on the outside wall where the old wall went across (needed to support the RSJ) the ceiling is flat through the room and the other side to the pillar didn't need a pillar as all our internal walls are breezeblock and the rsj's could rest on this.

I needed a building notice (small building works) so basically just submitted the notice online and then the builder has dealt with the council guy to get him out to inspect at each stage. As long as what the builder is doing conforms to the regs then the council guy will approve it. Council guy has apparently been quite helpful to builder in ensuring compliance.

Mine is under permitted development so didn't need planning, and I haven't had plans drawn up - discussed with the builder exactly what I wanted and he was happy to go with that.

Thanks for that ChasingSquirrels, really helpful. Will try to get a builder around for quote and to talk through the practicalities of it. I just can't bear having to deal with building regs/planning having gone through it all twice before.

You won't need planning, and it's a fairly straightforward job so your builder will be abel to deal with building inspector if you don't want to!

thats the answer I was hoping for titchy thanks for that. I just can't bear the stress of dealing with it all again.

When I had a 2 storey extension years ago we had a nightmare with PP and a 12 week building job turned into a 26 week job as we hit problems half way through.

We had a loft conversion 2 years ago and BR insisted we had new doors internally due to some new regs the loft company had not told us about. 8 new doors was not cheap

We had the same with the doors - internal fire doors are now needed. They were only £25 each though. Thank God the self-closing door requirement has been removed now though. No more fingers to get trapped!

you'd have thought the loft conversion company would have known that!
It wasn't so much the cost of each door that was expensive, it was getting the decorator to prime, undercoat and gloss them!