Converting a Conservatory into a Kitchen

Doozergirl

Building regulations!

You are going to haemorrhage heat out from the entire house through the roof. If it's worth being freezing cold and having extortionate gas bills for a kitchen island...

The opening will need building control approval. An open space to a conservatory is not acceptable. It needs an external quality door in it.

gazfocus

Doozergirl wrote: »

Building regulations!

You are going to haemorrhage heat out from the entire house through the roof. If it's worth being cold and having extortionate gas bills for a kitchen island...

The opening will need building control approval. An open space to a conservatory is not acceptable. It needs an external quality door in it.

As said in the first post, the roof of the conservatory is going to be replaced with an insulated tiled roof. Our old house was opened up to the conservatory and wasn't particularly cold (no more so than any other room without any heating).

Doozergirl

I'm a great believer in doing things once, properly.

Dan-Dan

You say that a single storey extension is looking at 21k upwards, is this a finished price?
Just wondering , as you might find fitting a tiled roof on a conservatory (how would this affect 3 walls of glass?) plus ripping out and installing a new kitchen comes remarkably close to the 21k...

I am another vote for enjoy the planning of the extention..... whilst enjoying your new home as well , dont rush straight into major works unless you absolutley HAVE TO , then do it once , and do it properly , 5 years is not a long time at all , and with a bit of scrimpin and saving , you may well get there quicker anyway

gazfocus

Doozergirl wrote: »

I'm a great believer in doing things once, properly.

It's quite a common thing to open up the house into a conservatory so I don't believe it won't be 'done properly'. Quite the opposite. If it has an insulated roof, it will be a perfectly habitable room.

Pennywise

Don't overlook the better quality conservatory window and roof materials that are available these days.

We had a "cheap" one which was there when we bought the house and we hated it as it was unbearably hot in the summer (even if it wasn't a particularly sunny day) and freezing in winter. We basically couldn't use it.

We went through the options of knocking it down to build a "proper" room but did some research about other options. We ended up replacing the poly roof with self-cleaning/tinted/filmed glass and replacing all windows with more efficient ones with a film coating, all now reflecting the sun/heat away. Now, it's as good as a proper room. Fully insulated, so that it doesn't let heat out in winter and keeps heat out in Summer. We now use it daily all year round. It's also far better for soundproofing - the old poly roof was really loud if it rained, but with the new glass one you don't hear anything, however hard it's raining, unless it's hailing. It also keeps out the traffic/railway noise that we used to endure.

We don't have any door between it and the house - it used to be a problem with the old cheap one, but with the new one, it makes no difference anymore.

Before you replace the roof, I'd strongly suggest you explore the options of updating the poly roof to glass - it makes a massive difference.

gazfocus

Dan-Dan wrote: »

You say that a single storey extension is looking at 21k upwards, is this a finished price?
Just wondering , as you might find fitting a tiled roof on a conservatory (how would this affect 3 walls of glass?) plus ripping out and installing a new kitchen comes remarkably close to the 21k...

I am another vote for enjoy the planning of the extention..... whilst enjoying your new home as well , dont rush straight into major works unless you absolutley HAVE TO , then do it once , and do it properly , 5 years is not a long time at all , and with a bit of scrimpin and saving , you may well get there quicker anyway

The £21k is based on £1k per sqm suggested on these forums and will be for a finished room but not including the cost of the kitchen. So it would be plastered, with electrics and plumbing, etc. We would then still have to fork out for a new kitchen. We would also have to pay for the architect, planning permission and building regs.

The kitchen we're looking at is approx £4,000+fitting so not an expensive one and would presumably be a cost on top of the extension price.

We absolutely cannot use the kitchen as it stands. There are no drawers, the cupboard have had it with the coating on the doors coming off, there is very little worktop space and there's a hole in the ceiling where the cooker hood used to be. There's also no cooker so we're going to need to buy one anyway (but not enough worktop space to have an integrated hob that we want).

So, either way, we're going to need a new kitchen whether we have it in the current 'kitchen' or whether we open up the kitchen in to the conservatory.

gazfocus

Pennywise wrote: »

Don't overlook the better quality conservatory window and roof materials that are available these days.

We had a "cheap" one which was there when we bought the house and we hated it as it was unbearably hot in the summer (even if it wasn't a particularly sunny day) and freezing in winter. We basically couldn't use it.

We went through the options of knocking it down to build a "proper" room but did some research about other options. We ended up replacing the poly roof with self-cleaning/tinted/filmed glass and replacing all windows with more efficient ones with a film coating, all now reflecting the sun/heat away. Now, it's as good as a proper room. Fully insulated, so that it doesn't let heat out in winter and keeps heat out in Summer. We now use it daily all year round. It's also far better for soundproofing - the old poly roof was really loud if it rained, but with the new glass one you don't hear anything, however hard it's raining, unless it's hailing. It also keeps out the traffic/railway noise that we used to endure.

We don't have any door between it and the house - it used to be a problem with the old cheap one, but with the new one, it makes no difference anymore.

Before you replace the roof, I'd strongly suggest you explore the options of updating the poly roof to glass - it makes a massive difference.

Hi Pennywise. Thanks for your post. We had a conservatory built in our old house just before Christmas (now we're renting that house out having bought the new house) and we had a glass roof with a blue tint on that conservatory. That conservatory doesn't have a door between it and the kitchen and we sat in there Christmas day to have dinner and it was fine.

The main reason for choosing the tiled roof though is that it can be plastered inside and we can have proper lights, etc, but we will consider the glass option.

Out of interest, what size roughly is your conservatory and how much did it cost to replace the glass? Did you replace the UPVC as well or just the glass panels?

Bluebell1000

We're having our conservatory replaced with a 2 storey extension inc kitchen, and the builder quotes are around £30k for the whole build. Admittedly it's a lot cheaper than we were expecting, but we just happened to find a builder who has an available slot at the exact time we wanted the work done, so he's very keen! Depends on where you are too though!

Doozergirl

gazfocus wrote: »

It's quite a common thing to open up the house into a conservatory so I don't believe it won't be 'done properly'. Quite the opposite. If it has an insulated roof, it will be a perfectly habitable room.

Whether it is common has nothing to do with being done properly. You stated early on that you were not concerned with conforming to building regulations.

A conservatory is an outbuilding. No part of a conservatory needs to conform to code - foundations, roof, windows, insulative properties of the floor slab, nothing. When you open up a house to a conservatory that has no controls applied without applying for building control approval, you are not doing things correctly, neither is the builder doing it who has no concern for abiding by law or, subsequently, maintaining a professional reputation. Not a good thing for customers and a terrible thing for building professionals.