What would you do to the living space in this house?

27col

dander wrote: »

Oh, and I just wanted to add that to me a bathroom with no windows is something you put up with in a modern flat, but I'd find it very off-putting to find one in a three-bedroomed house.

It all depends what you are used to. We built our house in 1977 and did not put a window in the bathroom. Cannot say it bothers us in the slightest. If a potential buyer was bothered, it would be easy to install a light tube. Not the same as a window, but providing natural light all the same. You cannot see out of bathroom windows normally, as they usually use frosted glass anyway.

Doozergirl

Your proposals are very expensive, even for a builder. With that layout you're redesigning it for you as there's no point doing all that for someone else as it's too bottom heavy.

I am almost entirely in agreement with andrew b about layout. I would only extend single storey to the back of the existing kitchen and have a big utility with everything tucked away and just a really gorgeous but simple cooking space with the supporting wall to the existing back removed. Introducing Roof lights will create a lovely light rooom. No need for a bigger hall when you walk into a large kitchen diner through the existing dining room door.

A one double, two single bed house would not be sought after, let alone with a massive downstairs space that would rival that of a decent four bed. 3.1x3 is really not a sensible sized double and the proposed bedroom created from the exisiting second bedroom is far too small and you would never even consider using it as a double!

I would convert the loft if possible and resite the bathroom to the small bedroom. If you extend at the back on top, how does that actually end up fitting with the existing house, design wise with the roof?

It's really hard without seeing the house but I'd be very careful about overdeveloping it. To me it is not a four bed house, it should be a nice big three.

R&C

Thanks Doozergirl.

It seems a common thing to put the bathroom into the 3rd bedroom, this is what our neighbours have certainly done. As have many victorian/edwardian semis in the area.

The reason why we have discounted this is because moving it into the 3rd bedroom will obviously only leave us with a 2 bed house. Although not ideal as my parents come to stay with us reasonably often, we could live like this for a little while. However, our priority really is the kitchen extension, so the loft conversion would have to wait until we'd extended that and could save a bit, so we're talking 3 years minimum. Within that time we'd probably like to have baby number 2 so making things even less ideal.

We could ofcourse plough all the money into upstairs/loft conversion but that would leave us with a very dire small kitchen downstairs (but 3 very good sized bedrooms and a large family bathroom ofcourse) and to us the kitchen is probably more important. When we were looking to buy we always said we'd sacrifice upstairs space for downstairs space as it's where we spend most our time.

I guess you're right in that we're doing this for ourselves, but to us I guess 2 bedrooms measuring 3.3x4.7m each plus a single 2.1x2.9 would be perfect for us right now and if we're in the house a few years we will no doubt make it into the loft at some point, which will make the house both large downstairs and up, so more balanced. I admit the most unbalanced thing in the house will be the small bathroom but I'd hope the 2 en-ensuites and downstairs loo would make up for that?