Nice People Thread No. 14, all Nice and Proper

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

There'll be a small one of those too. I do want/need a shower. The space will be used as a clothes airer/drying area by me, a shower would be handy, so it makes sense to put in a shower (that's of sufficient size/access to fit my folding airer into).

Building regs will, in any case, require me to retain an accessible loo, which means the loo space needs to be a bit bigger than "squeezing one in".

All new builds have to have an accessible loo - which means, for smaller houses, they've been shoe-horned into inappropriate spots just to meet the regs. Mine's turned into a huge/unused space slap bang in the middle of the house that clogs up the space.... which is where all this extension idea came from. Top left image shows current layout and you can see that all internal journeys involve walking round the big/unused loo.

Of course, I could simply take down the internal wall and refit the existing downstairs loo to include a shower, freeing up the whole of the extension to be "space for what you want". But that doesn't "feel right" to me, having a loo/shower in what'd then be "slap bang in the middle of the house" still. If I did that I could just have a conservatory, full width, coming off the front door, with the room/extension behind it facing onto the back garden.

What looks doable on paper is different to how it "feels" in real life.

Sticking a shower in the existing loo and building a lightweight extension without any plumbing is likely to be a lot cheaper than what you have planned.

If you ask a couple of architects to come and talk to you now, that is good. They won't charge for an initial consultation, and you can pick their brains without any obligation. You might benefit a lot from getting their views before you have more or less decided exactly what you want. They can also give you an idea about how different approaches to this project will affect costs.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

Lashing it down now. Rain's beating against the window so much I've just gone round all the windows and looked outside to see if it's flooding out there at all!

Windy, raining, overcast, grey/very dark, cold.

How badly affected are you by the noise of heavy rain? If you have an extension with a lot of glass in the roof, would that be a problem for you?

Generali

Oh well, I forgot to add that I've got another week off next week.

silvercar

Generali wrote: »

Oh well, I forgot to add that I've got another week off next week.

Hope it is holiday rather than sickness or unemployment!

Generali

silvercar wrote: »

Hope it is holiday rather than sickness or unemployment!

Haha, yes. It's Australia Day on Tuesday so I thought I'd take the week off as vacation.

The kids go back to school too so I will have the house to myself.

Work want me to go up to four days a week slightly annoyingly so I need to have a good holiday first.

Generali

PasturesNew wrote: »

Blimey .... didn't think we were allowed to say stuff like that any more
Top tip: don't post in Discussion Time.

It's a pithy comment on the shocking state of race relations in twenty first century America.

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

I need the plumbing. The primary driver for this is to get the washing machine outside of my habitable space

The plumbing is all on the wall I'm adjoining to, so it doesn't have to be brought from another part of the house in order to get to that outside wall.

Drivers, in order of importance:
- washing machine out; loo out to open up space and expose the loo window that's on the south side.
- better porch/entranceway, to reduce wind across the whole garden that makes it unusable except about 3 days of the year when there's ZERO wind whatsoever.

Then it all started running away with itself.... and I thought "got this far, that's a major expense, so just adding on a bit more space is proportionately cheaper, so it makes sense to nail a few other niggles.

Could you stick the washing machine in the overly large loo? That sort of thing?

A bit of fencing to stop the wind.....

Maybe an architect will think about things differently from you, and you can take that on board more easily if you haven't already decided exactly what you think you should do.

GDB2222

Today's bread - specially for Michaels!

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

I don't want it anywhere in the house. Petrified of them


I've already got full fencing; that doesn't stop wild coastal winds in Windy Corner. I'm just in one of those spots. Ever been walking down a road, turned a corner and been knocked off your feet? That's where I live.... and the wind never lets up.



I need to know what I'm thinking/wanting in order to have the discussions with him; need to think ahead. Can't ask for "build something" ... then start having thoughts after he's started.

Mostly, people have preliminary meetings with more than one architect, just to discuss the sort of things they might do. And that's before the architect is hired, let alone started work.

I hadn't realised that you were petrified of washing machines. You probably said it once, but I'd forgotten. That's the sort of thing you would discuss with various architects, to see what solutions they suggest - use the launderette might be one!

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

If any ever don't work out ... you can send them to me as hardcore

They are quite soft inside.