How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

We went sliding for ours - bi-folds just seem too prone to breakage unless you go for the expensive ones, French doors are fine if that's the style you like but I guess you'd want a large patio to open them into so wasn't suitable for ours.

We got our doors from 1st Sliding Doors - they were pretty good to deal with. I assume they're just a reseller rather than a manufacturer but who knows? The glass comes from someone else anyway.

Hold up, are you knocking Stone Island?

Number of panels is a great point, ours are triple, Maxlight too, like @Tenderloin but ours are just a little bit bigger and considerably more expensive.

It sounds counter intuitive but a smaller opening 3-4m may be better off with more panels so you can open them up more.

For instance, 3x1m = 2m opening vs 2x1.5m = 1.5m opening.

Cheers all. This is useful info.

My OH is wondering about opening up part of our back which would also involve switching doors.

At this stage I'm mainly trying to get a rough gague of cost - £5k, 10k 20k etc.

TBH much like redoing our flooring I can't help that it's all a bit of a waste of money which we should allocate to doing a loft.

Although it would be nice.

When I looked at those a few years ago they were way down on efficiency because it was tricky to get them to seal well. They may have moved on of course.

Purchase of anthracite grey bifolds in 2023 gets you banned from this thread / could be a blessing tbh

Okay not banned just bullied a little bit by team max light

sorry poorly written - just saying the Maxlight triple is slightly fancy (thin frame and slides in both directions).

"anthracite grey bifolds" nearly made me sick in my mouth a little.

@Hefty for Maxlight doors you are prob looking at around 10k for about 3m. I'd guess building costs would be at least the same.

Another option could be a massive fixed window and French doors? Fixed windows are relatively quite cheap? Edit: Your sketch hadn't loaded before I replied, yeah that could be bang on, and relatively affordable. Kitchen window seat would be lovely too.

I really wanted a pivot door, but even IQ Glass were hesitant to recommend their own product.

Hold up, are you knocking Stone Island?

Don’t start something you can’t finish m8. I’ll pull that little label off your sleeve and smother you with my Canada Goose coat.

I'd wager you spend a decent amount of time in the space above - personal preference ofc but I'd spend the money that way. Would turn that into a lovely family space especially with your garden etc

What I hate about all this shit is that as soon as I start looking, I'm like "oooh, we could do that, and this would be improved if we took that out, but then we'd need to redo the kitchen" and by the end of it you're wondering why you wouldn't just move somewhere that's bigger where some other poor sod has done it for you.

Lol yh tell me about it.

We got them on ours from Sunseeker back in 2016 because they seemed to merge the benefit of bi-folds (ability to fully open which of course we rarely do) with the benefit of PPC aluminium sliding doors and slim sightlines. From memory they were bi-fold moneys rather than fancier products mentioned in here. Thermally they meet all the relevant standards and we've had no issues with seal/drafts. They do have a bizarre opening mechanism which seals te panes together when closing which no-one can figure out so there is that...

I think that's a fair point.

We would also redo our patio, so that would change the space and how we interact with in, in and out.

I guess there is also a middle ground with the kitchen where we could replace the fronts and counter top.

U WOT M11?
Getting flash backs to the good ol days.

JT makes a great point around family space, you spend most your time downstairs so making it as nice and light as possible is always wise, unless you really need th extra space of a loft (which we do now).

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why are the bricks/breeze blocks not staggered?

Tenderloin wins the 30p prize. Basically had to force the brickie to do it, now everyone's like "ooo actually it looks quite good..."

They'll be painted. Cheaper than plasterboard etc, and plasterboard is shite.

I'm unsure if IQ Glass do pivot doors and if they focus on sliders instead.

Maxlight who are commonly mentioned in here are well known for single pivot doors and I've never known of issues with them. Below is from mid-00's and still going strong.

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Maybe it was Maxlight? Is that yours? Lovely if so and pretty much exactly what I wanted.

Ha, if only!

Actually just double checked, think it was IQ!

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We paid 20k+ to have similar done last summer, there were other bits but that was the general job.

Must have been, it's been a bit since I've worked with IQ (they typically get valued-engineered out of projects) but I'm not sure if they specialise in pivot doors, unlike Maxlight who definitely do. The system I mentioned upstream (slide and pivot) is different again and more aligned with multi-sliders/bi-fold as opposed to a single door.

sorry poorly written - just saying the Maxlight triple is slightly fancy (thin frame and slides in both directions).

I’m getting a bit confused over who’s replying to whom now! I don’t have Maxlights, but did want to be able to slide ours either way.

I ended up with Cortizo. They’re all black aluminium, so a bit cold feeling from inside compared to the Internorm stuff I have elsewhere, which is dark wood inside, but I reasoned that was OK in a kitchen.

It was 2 years ago, but a 2.4 x 1.4 sliding window was <£1000 and two sets of sliding doors 2.2 x 2.3 were ~£1200 each.

ETA - the Maxlights of this world were value-engineered out of mine before the architect had a chance to engineer them in.

I’ve just remembered the best thing about the Cortizos - I put my name as an order number and they printed it alongside the various codes on the seal inside the triple glazing. Like Cristiano Ronaldo putting his CR7 on his electric gates. I’m immortal.