Nice people thread part 3- Nice as pie

silvercar

@Lydia,

That garage - how is it constructed. A lot of garages are single skin, if the family room was originally outside, the wall between the garage and the family room may also be single skin. Single skin walls are cold.

misskool

LydiaJ wrote: »

Thanks. It's fascinating how we'd all do different things with it. I think you've got two kitchens in that description, though!

I'm not going to convert the garage to anything. I need it for storage.

told you I was tired.

2 kitchens would be ideal for me though, one for outside (garden) bits with mahoosive freezer and then another small prep one. Sadly, in real life I have a kitchen that is 3m x4m with 2 doorway openings so it's minute

silvercar

lostinrates wrote: »

The upstairs still is giving me heebeegeebies. That bathroom is the bit we weren't sure about....its a bedroom now, and no way to master room without going through a bedroom. The thing we worry about is the plans comprimise the bedroom in th middle, which is a very beautiful room. We've tried several other options on paper....but its good silvercar likes this one. Its the bit that worries me most.

It'll all be beautiful by the time you have finished.

The plus points on your upstairs:
large master bedroom
plenty of bathrooms
minimal amount of common walls between bedrooms
natural light in your en-suite.
I would put built in cupboards between the bath and your bedroom in the en-suite. Useful for storing towels, toilet paper and bedding.

Shame the dressing room can't have a window, but you can get built in cupboards that have a light linked to the door opening.

LydiaJ

silvercar wrote: »

@Lydia,

That garage - how is it constructed. A lot of garages are single skin, if the family room was originally outside, the wall between the garage and the family room may also be single skin. Single skin walls are cold.

Yes, that's why I'm having it insulated before I move in.

There are several single skin walls - the original garage walls, and the long walls (facing North & South) of the upstairs. The East and West facing walls are filled cavity all the way up, and so are all the downstairs exterior walls.

I'm told that the way to deal with them is to put insulation board (or whatever it's called - I mean the stuff they put down the cavities of new builds) up against the existing interior wall, and then cover it with plasterboard, and skim it. I'm intending to have that done to all the relevant walls before I move in.

I'm also having a new fuse box and a new boiler, and the radiator network extended to include the family room and utility. At present the family room only has an electric heater (expensive) and the utility is unheated. The sellers haven't minded the electric heater because they've used what I call the family room as a dining room so have only heated it briefly over mealtimes. For a family room, though, I want it to be cheaper to keep it warm all day when the kids are around. I want the utility room heated so I can hang washing up in there rather than tumble drying if it's not convenient to hang stuff outside.

ETA Just read somebody's comment about natural light in en-suites. I so agree. My plans don't show a window in my en-suite, but in fact it's got a sloping roof with a velux window in it. In general I don't like velux windows because I prefer to be able to see out for a bit of a view, even if it's not very exciting, but for a bathroom that doesn't matter, so I'm happy with natural light whichever direction it comes from.

I did have a bathroom in my first year student accommodation in Oxford with a fantastic view, though. It was on the third floor looking out down a slope towards the Botanic gardens and the river. There was no possibility of anyone seeing in, so it was plain glass.

LydiaJ

It's lovely to have people's input on my floorplans - do keep that coming - but what I really need is advice about what kind of boiler to choose. Anyone got any wisdom to share, please?

vivatifosi

LydiaJ wrote: »

Well, what sort of husband is he? It's not naughty if he's the sort who'll say "What a wonderful surprise, I was dreading having to find time to do that" or the sort who'll privately think "I still don't understand why she keeps wanting to change the colour but if it keeps her happy then I'm not really bothered what it looks like" or even the sort who won't notice it's changed until somebody tells him. However, it probably is naughty if he's likely to come home and shriek with horror, exclaiming "What have you done??!! We agreed we'd keep it white and simple and clean. How could you ruin it with all these bright orange and purple stripes?"

The bedroom is awful. It has a shiny painted artex ceiling, maroon shagpile carpet and maroon skirting boards. The walls are shiny cream colour with a horrid border, left over from the previous people. It did have a maroon door, but I had to address that before now.

My plan is to use a very flat emulsion on the ceiling as I've used in other rooms, it makes the artex less obvious and I can't afford to replaster atm, keep the walls a similar colour but matte, get rid of horrid border and paint the skirtings, plus recarpet in a neutral colour with new underfelt. Unfortunately I can't afford to replace the wall of mirror doors, one of which is cracked, but that's phase II. Unfortunately I moved into the house that taste bypassed. I had other priorities first, such as getting rid of the Arsenal room.

vivatifosi

LydiaJ wrote: »

It's lovely to have people's input on my floorplans - do keep that coming - but what I really need is advice about what kind of boiler to choose. Anyone got any wisdom to share, please?

Hang on a sec I'll ask my dad.

lostinrates

vivatifosi wrote: »

The bedroom is awful. It has a shiny painted artex ceiling, maroon shagpile carpet and maroon skirting boards. The walls are shiny cream colour with a horrid border, left over from the previous people. It did have a maroon door, but I had to address that before now.

My plan is to use a very flat emulsion on the ceiling as I've used in other rooms, it makes the artex less obvious and I can't afford to replaster atm, keep the walls a similar colour but matte, get rid of horrid border and paint the skirtings, plus recarpet in a neutral colour with new underfelt. Unfortunately I can't afford to replace the wall of mirror doors, one of which is cracked, but that's phase II. Unfortunately I moved into the house that taste bypassed. I had other priorities first, such as getting rid of the Arsenal room.

I quite like mirror doors. men usually find a use for them. If you are artisitic, I am not, you could get paint and pain choisery type birds and twigs over them.

We have a dark red shagpile in bedroom too ATM. My guess is your artex is better than our ceiling.

michaels

At my old house we had a 'thermal store' system (google heatweb) - basically it requires a small boiler that keeps a large tank of water very hot (80 degrees) which is then used to heat mains hot water via a heat exchanger when you need it. This means that both the hot and water are direct mains everywhere in the house and therefore can be drank and the heat exchanger gives you much more volume of hot water than an instant boiler and you don't need to have a huge output boiler to still have enough output to heat a large house and provide ample hot water. Also with mains pressure you don't need booster pumps for showers. I believe Davesnave has one too as it can also integrate with other heat sources (solar etc)

We will probably do something similar with our extension although we may need an additional cold tank as the mains pressure is not high enough (and you are not allowed to pump out of the mains) to support 4 bathrooms plus a kitchen and utility room.

LydiaJ wrote: »

It's lovely to have people's input on my floorplans - do keep that coming - but what I really need is advice about what kind of boiler to choose. Anyone got any wisdom to share, please?

vivatifosi

vivatifosi wrote: »

Hang on a sec I'll ask my dad.

I called and he said he likes Worcester Bosch, but they are expensive.