How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

Nice, we had plaster and electric fittings in the last week.

Don't ever by bathroom stuff from we love bathrooms though absolute joke of a company. Took 3 times as long for them to deliver than they said ans when it finally arrived yesterday they'd clocked up the order so my bathroom fit is pushed back yet again. Fun, fun.

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You calculate the required radiator capacity by roughly working out the heat the room requires then matching your radiator/s to it. Look for the BTU ratings on each product. There are plenty of room calcs out there.

One big floor standing rad should do. If you are fitting two in a room the room had better be bloody massive….

Better, Fit wet underfloor heating - radiators shouldn’t determine room layout and furniture etc. and your future self will thank you.

Thanks, I'm aware of the calcs for output - it was more where to locate it - wet ufh is a no- timber suspended floor - 1930s house

managed to roughly draw it out - couldn't give the extra windows for the bay (lol)
so where the sofa is by the door is where the current radiator is situated - the wall adjacent to the bay windows was my initial place of choice

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Looking at buying this in Wanstead:

https://www.stowbrothers.com/property/wanstead-park-avenue-wanstead-2/

We would want to knock down / rebuild the lean-to kitchen, as pictured here, and build it up on the same footprint, but to the height of the property next door:

We would move the kitchen into the morning room, and have sink, fridge, dish washer, washing maching tumble dryer, in the new extension.

Any roughly indicative costs?

Costs would be enough to make you think twice about rebuilding something that’s kind of silly anyway.

It will also limit your options to redo the ground floor later.

Better to go big and fully extend the ground floor. Disruption will be greater and there will be more decisions that need to be made but you’ll end in the right place after all the effort.

Or just leave the lean too as is until redoing the ground floor is practical.

What would you do with the conservatory lean to?

Ball park including new kitchen £40-60k

If that’s where your sofas are gonna go - which is incorrect but I’ll forgive you ;) - then rad/s in the bay window.

If you think you are going to rejig the layout later then a fuck off massive vertical radiator opposite the far alcove to the left of the sofa.

Knock down the conservatory lean-to, and just have french windows to outside from the dining / reception room.

At some point in the future when cash flow permitted to a westbury garden rooms type extension, but that wouldn't be an immediate priority.

I don't really want to do the full width extension off the back. I think it would destroy the charm, and robs light from the reception room and morning room.

Aww thanks ;)
We will need to change the seating plan at some point

I was favouring the rad column easier to connect with the pipework. If I put a rad immediately next to the sofa then all I need to do extra is move the plug socket into the bay window side wall. Easy enough

Can you not just leave it behind the sofa?

Finally, I also have new stairs. Oak cladding over existing flights. Joiner just needs to make false oak strings to hide the originals . Didn't have the heart to tell the joiner I wanted Matt oil.... Very happy with 5hem though. And much cheaper than new flights

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I don't really want to do the full width extension off the back. I think it would destroy the charm, and robs light from the reception room and morning room.

If you mess it up, then yes I guess that's what will happen. Trick is to do it and design it so that you get what you want :)

We would move the kitchen into the morning room, and have sink, fridge, dish washer, washing maching tumble dryer, in the new extension.

I hope you would do this in such a way so that the dishwasher and fridge are auxiliary and the primary appliances are in the kitchen in which you'll cook. Otherwise the usability of your kitchen goes out the window (nearly literally!) as you are moving to a different room to load your dishwasher and get ingredients from the fridge. You know that, though, right.

If it was my place and I really didn't want to have a larger extension to the rear I would make sure the kitchen I put in to the morning room has every essential appliance in it - fridge / freezer / dishwasher / oven / hob / sink. Then I'd have the the lean to extension as storage & utility, washing machine, dryer (stacked on top I guess), storage freezer if required in there too, and I'd keep the sink if I could as well as storage space for boring shit.

I wouldn't bother re-doing the lean to because by the time it's been re-built to regs the internal area will be possibly be even lower than it is now (insulation, heating) and it will have a felted flat roof which will probably fail in ten years time. There's something to be said for a pitched roof with tiles. I'd just accept it will be cold and uncomfortable in there.

I think it will be really tough squeezing a great kitchen out of the morning room. You'll probably find you need to take the chimney breast out so that stuff will go in and of course that means removal elsewhere and reinforcement. You can't knock a big portal through to the extension either without reinforcing the external wall too, so that's not going to be cheap. Maybe knocking through the two rooms at the back is the way.

It's a lot of time / money / effort to get something that will probably feel OK if done well. This is the thing with that house - nothing will be cheap and unless you go balls deep it could be weird.. Like, do you want a downstairs loo that you don't have to leave the building to access? Good luck...!

I think this is a great point and often overlooked, I saw far too many houses that felt like dark aircraft hangers due to big extensions when I was looking.
Ours was designed to have minimal impact on the middle room and therefore the light throughout.
Full width extensions are great, our kitchen literally is for dancing. Or was. When we had lives. And friends. And did things.

When we had lives. And friends. And did things.

Wait. I didn't know you had kids!

6 months in.
All jokes aside I have no idea how single parents cope.

No way…congrats. I’d like to say it gets better but I’d be lying

Thinking a bit more I’d say that would cost 6 figures as no one is going to fuck about with someone else’s half done foundations.
Imo there is plenty of floor space there, get creative in moving things about. I’d also consider half redoing the conservatory with a wood frame with lots of glass as that would not need deeper (or as deep) foundations.

Thanks! It’s been a long road… I should drop you a PM really, you’ve always been great during my whinges.

Which bit would cost six figures?

I’m just guessing, but a proper knock down and rebuild as it will be more work than starting from scratch. I bet the foundations will need to be dug up and redone if you want it a proper brick building which is why I suggested timber frame.

I could

What do you think indicative cost of full extension across the back would be?

£160k including a great kitchen, appliances, downstairs bathroom / loo / utility corridor thingy, some kind of nice glasswork / vaulted type thing, bit of time with an architect, custom storage stuff, removal of existing structures etc.

might be hopelessly naive here but that feels about right. You could probably get something basic / OTP done for £120k but then that's going to cause you heartache I think.

Reckon the way to sidestep that is to join the morning room and the dinning room. then have the existing lean to rebuilt as a kind of utility / shower / bathroom thingy might get that in for £80k at a fairly good spec?

I think the existing lean to kitchen has to go in any scenario. It looks like it is isn't far from falling down anyway.