johnnettles2-
Yes and no.
The Architect has been booked for the initial consultation and will be here a week tomorrow to measure up and discuss what Mrs Bobbo and myself would like to do with the place.
This time has given my wife and myself time to sit down and come up with a wish list of what we would like, it goes as follows:
- Extend the front of the house out by approx 2.5 m to bring it in line with the front of other houses on the street.
- Add a full first floor to the house and create 4 new bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (one en-suite).
- Knock through the main living / kitchen area on the ground floor to be a large open-plan family room.
- Turn the existing master bedroom into a grown-ups only sitting room (or as my grandparents would have called it drawing room).
- Creation of a home office on the ground floor
- ALL THE STORAGE EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are a couple of other things but that is the main gist of what we would ideally like.
In the meantime the architect has done an initial "virtual drive by" on street view and told us what he thinks is doable for the budget and is likely to be accepted by the local planning authority. This is where the first problem has arisen; my house sits on a corner plot in an area that is a mixture of one and two story properties on the street that our house is "on" there is no problem as we are one of two bungalows; however on the other street that our house sits on there are very few two-story houses near us which could put us in a bind. The architect is of the opinion that we may not be able to get a full first floor and is advising that we might want to apply for a chalet style bungalow in order to be guaranteed to get it through planning. I am not a fan of chalet bungalows, I feel that often they look a bit shit and that the usable space in the first floor is limited compared to the actual floor space that is there. Because of this and the fact that time is on our side (kind of) I'm inclined to say that we apply for the full two stories and try to fight it, with the option to fall back to a chalet style bungalow if need be. But that does mean that this thread could be two years of me bitching about what a bunch of cunts my neighbours and the local planning officers are before any ground is broken!
- Extend the front of the house out by approx 2.5 m to bring it in line with the front of other houses on the street.
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Bobbo
About a year and a half ago my wife and I bought this house:
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/sold-prices/photos/property-53383614.html
The idea when we bought it was that while it is perfectly livable for the time being we would eventually do some work to turn it into a bigger house suitable for a family of 4.
The plan is to extend slightly on the ground floor and add a first floor. I will be carrying out the vast majority of the work myself and we are looking to do all building using a mix of gluelam beams and timber framing. We have found an architect that we like and want to work with who will not be involved in the project management side of things but will help us with planning and appointing an appropriate structual engineer he is shortly going to start work on the site survey and producing the initial planning drawings.
We would like the building to be as close as possible to Passive Haus certification, this will be tricky as we will be using a large amount of existing walls etc that may not be airtight.
I'm planning on keeping this thread updated with what is going on and the work that I'll be carrying out for posterity if nothing else.
Exciting times.