Extension Potential: Who First?

victor2

PasturesNew wrote: »

Yes, need it. No permitted development here. I think the pipe/drain is just mine, not public. That's one of the things the little man will be able to instantly spot/realise. I do have a full set of drawings (that I don't understand at all) that were supplied when the house was new which the last owner passed to me. Never looked though. Never expected to extend at all to be honest.

We were also building over our own "private" sewer pipe. There was a manhole cover there and the builder said we could just concrete/tile over it, or put a recessed airtight cover over it and then cut the floor tiles to fit over that. Even though we've never had a drain problem in the almost 30 years we've owned the house, we chose the latter. It was more work for the builder, but he totally accepted what our feelings were and did a marvellous job with the airtight cover.

Council and water authority didn't care about our private sewer, but did notify each other that we were building over the public one. I knew more about sewer pipes than I ever thought I would by the time the job was done...

System

You really have to get a handle on your total budget, get a total project costcost together, remember that the construction cost is only part of the costs, you'll have vat and professional fees, local authority fees, an engineer etc...
You can't really go to an architect and say you want them to design an extension with no budget for them to work within but you'll see once its designed of its worth doing...
1k a square meter is pretty much impossible these days, I hear it all the time but I've never seen it - unless you plan on doing lots of the work yourself and finishing a shell don't bank on 1k - with an extension you'll have a certain basic cost for work to the existing house which actually increases the cost per square meter as you get smaller.

PasturesNew

the_r_sole wrote: »

You really have to get a handle on your total budget, get a total project costcost together, remember that the construction cost is only part of the costs, you'll have vat and professional fees, local authority fees, an engineer etc...
You can't really go to an architect and say you want them to design an extension with no budget for them to work within but you'll see once its designed of its worth doing...
1k a square meter is pretty much impossible these days, I hear it all the time but I've never seen it - unless you plan on doing lots of the work yourself and finishing a shell don't bank on 1k - with an extension you'll have a certain basic cost for work to the existing house which actually increases the cost per square meter as you get smaller.

This is the initial question really .... until you know how much something will cost, you don't know if you can afford it.... so who best to stand in the spot and say how much it'll cost.... just to have those initial conversations.

So I need a body in that space looking who will say "Ah, problem there..... that'd cost daft money ..... switch it round and it'll be half .... and if you do X, Y, Z it'll come in at about £X. Then if £X is about what I'd consider reasonable I'd then be able to say "OK, so let's design something with all of that lot, and then add/remove the XYZ bit too and that's the budget"

Without a CLUE how much things will cost you can't set a budget, nor start.

meanmum

Why not just get a good local builder round (recommended by neighbours with recent similar work done?) & see what they say - nothing to lose, & they may spot any fatal (or expensive) negatives that might make you rethink.

System

Surely you know if you can spend 10k or 100k?!
It really comes down to how much you are comfortable spending, that sets the parameters for the design and the spec for the build - if you have no idea what you want achieve and no idea of the budget you're setting an impossible task for a designer. If you know roughly what you want and how much money you can spend a designer can then start working within those parameters...
You could pay a designer to do some feasibility studies and have them costed but you're likely to be paying for wasted time without any idea of a ballpark figure for budgets on such a small project.

DavidJonas

You don't know where to start but you have drawings of the existing house. At this stage you can be your own (preliminary!) architect.

Get the drawings into pdf format. You can then upload them to a free planning website (like floorplanner) and easily draw out a plan of your house. You can view this in 2d and 3d. You can then draw out every conceivable extension, adding walls, removing them, adding furniture, windows, doors, toilets...

Have fun! You will soon get an idea of how your house could look and work and/or how you don't want it to look and work.

I think you would find this really useful. It certainly helped us a lot. So difficult otherwise to visualize what something would look like. Once you see it in 3d (with furnishings!) you can then see why a door would have to open a certain way, that you want a glass door there to maximise light and so on.

michaels

I am not sure what the issue is with the current kitchen layout and what would be acceptable? With the stairs where they are it would be difficult to make it bigger without going through the current end wall?

PasturesNew

meanmum wrote: »

Why not just get a good local builder round (recommended by neighbours with recent similar work done?) & see what they say - nothing to lose, & they may spot any fatal (or expensive) negatives that might make you rethink.

Because I know nobody and am new to the area and the houses are new and nobody's built anything and I am the only one who could.

So the best I could do would be to stop random strangers in the town for recommendations. That wouldn't work really would it.

michaels wrote: »

I am not sure what the issue is with the current kitchen layout and what would be acceptable? With the stairs where they are it would be difficult to make it bigger without going through the current end wall?

Layout's wrong, not size. And all the cupboards are wrong and the flooring's wrong ... etc etc...

On the other hand, should the kitchen be another room - and the extension be a kitchen & utility etc etc.

Too many choices.

the_r_sole wrote: »

Surely you know if you can spend 10k or 100k?!
It really comes down to how much you are comfortable spending, that sets the parameters for the design and the spec for the build - if you have no idea what you want achieve and no idea of the budget you're setting an impossible task for a designer. If you know roughly what you want and how much money you can spend a designer can then start working within those parameters...
You could pay a designer to do some feasibility studies and have them costed but you're likely to be paying for wasted time without any idea of a ballpark figure for budgets on such a small project.

I know how much I've got. I don't know if it'd cost £10k or £100k though. And before I get 'excited' or plan I'd like to know the choices/options/price ideas so I can choose what to build. If it costs £10k I can do it, if it costs £100k I can't start...

It's important to know roughly what sort of figure you're starting with, and what you'd get for that. Then you can decide if you can afford to keep talking.

michaels

I would have thought it would be cheaper and easier to keep the kitchen in the same room unless the 'wrongness' is the result of something that can't be changed. Is the kitchen big enough to be sensible as a different sort of room if you did decide to move it?

From what I can see the only real change you could make to the structure of the kitchen would be to move the door along the wall into what is now the downstairs toilet. what would make an ideal kitchen - What if you had a run of units all along the window wall (I know there is a bay but you could probably work into that or straight along with a wider section of worktop where the bay is?

PasturesNew

michaels wrote: »

I would have thought it would be cheaper and easier to keep the kitchen in the same room unless the 'wrongness' is the result of something that can't be changed. Is the kitchen big enough to be sensible as a different sort of room if you did decide to move it?

The kitchen, as is, and the potential new kitchen, could/are/would be about the same size. Current kitchen is mostly "wasted space", no need for one that big.

It'd make a nicer "evening room" getting the sun. As one idea.

There are too many variables really ... like, what if I took the wall down to make an open plan kitchen/breakfast bar/living area at the back of the house.... not sure I'd want a room that big though. Another thought to mull, I've mulled it many times before. I think, on balance, I don't want a room 16-18' wide and 11-12' deep. Too big....

michaels wrote: »

From what I can see the only real change you could make to the structure of the kitchen would be to move the door along the wall into what is now the downstairs toilet. what would make an ideal kitchen - What if you had a run of units all along the window wall (I know there is a bay but you could probably work into that or straight along with a wider section of worktop where the bay is?

Can't use the window wall - due to poor design the brickwork is too low. I'd put a window seat in there (and a table if it's a kitchen - and nothing else if it's not a kitchen). Another bug bear of mine is I can't stand at the window and look out.... the horizontal strip in many/most windows, for me, is precisely at eye level... so I can stand on tip-toe, or stoop, to stare out. Not going to change the windows for that though! There's also a radiator in the window space.... that I'd like to move if it stays as a kitchen and lots of other stuff's moving. Not sure if I'd move it if it were "just a room".