Salvage wooden conservatory or replace it?

Hennymore

The house we moved into a few months ago has a wooden lean-to conservatory (glass roof and one glass wall), built around 15 years ago. It's not in the best shape. Some of the wood on the wall is soft/rotted, though as far as I can tell it's mainly in the French doors, the beading around the windows, and in places like sills, and not in the more structural bits.

We're considering our options here. We really don't like the aesthetics of uPVC, so it's not an option we're keen on. We've looked into aluminium, which would look great and supposedly be virtually maintenance-free, but it would be costly, £15k or more.

It seems like the sensible choice here is to have a joiner restore the wooden bits, and then to maintain it better than the previous owner did. I'm waiting for a quote, but I can't imagine it being nearly as expensive as replacing the whole thing with aluminium.

But I'm a bit concerned about whether I'd just postpone the inevitable, and only eke a few more years out of the wooden conservatory before it has to be fixed again, or replaced.

I should also add that some of the big roof windows have blown seals, so if we don't replace the conservatory, we'd still want to replace those some day, and the remaining ones are not within warranty if they should blow as well. Replacing all of them might be something like £3.5–4k.

So I'm looking for other people's experiences and if there is some important aspect to this decision I seem to have overlooked.

Hoploz

Several times I've demolished this sort of thing without losing any value at all!

Even if you repair what is there its going to be boiling in summer and freezing in winter as I assume it's poorly insulated with thin walls. Demolish it and either rebuild with new, or better still, with bricks, cavity walls and a proper roof. It'll be worth it if you intend to use the room, as chances are as it is it'll be unusable a lot of the time.

Hennymore

Thank you! Well, it's an open-plan space connected to the kitchen, and it's been OK this past winter and so far this summer, too, temperature-wise. Bit cold in winter and warm in summer, but quite bearable. But that's definitely a good point for us to consider, that it could increase comfort and energy efficiency.

Hoploz

If it is open plan to the kitchen I think you'll find you might not be able to replace it this way with another conservatory. Building regs require a conservatory to be separated to meet thermal insulation requirements, due to the amount of glass, it shouldn't be open plan. So it'd need to be separated with a doorway or properly constructed extension.
Have a look on planningportal.gov where you can read the rules.

Hennymore

Thank you! I’ll read up. I think it’s formally an extension and not a conservatory, though that’s what we call it.

AlyHam

Hi Hennymore, how did you get on with this any progress? I'm having a similar issue and have been looking at options.

Working_Mum

Hello everyone,
I have started to renovate an old lean to/conservatory which is attached to my house.

I am selling my house so do not want to spend loads of money I simply want to smarten it up a bit and stop the rot if my house doesn't sell.

I have scraped and stripped the old paint away, am in the process of currently filling in the gaps etc in the wooden frames and will prime/undercoat at the weekend before glossing next week.

I have little DIY experience to speak of but have found by keeping a trug filled with the tools I need (scraper,pointy triangle shaped scraper thing, dustpan and brush, sandpaper, paint stripper, cheap brushes for stripping, an old rag) I have been able to work quite steadily for either 45 mins or a few hours at a time. I scraped and stripped whilst England played last night because I couldn't cope with the tension!

Essentially I have worked on a "little and often" approach, tidying up at the end of each day's work has meant I have covered loads of ground on the project which is smartening up my home!

I know it is not in the same league as you guys but thought I'd share!

Hennymore

I just had a joiner round. Replacing all the beading, the French doors, a window, the fascia board, adding a drip mould (all primed but not painted) and getting the old bits disposed of would be around £1800. This is in the north of England.

Replacing the glass roof isn’t as urgent, but going by previous quotes that would be £2000-4000. So if we factor in the eventual cost of replacing all those bits, we’re looking at a total of around 3800-5800.

The aluminium conservatory quote we got was something like £17 800 (though we did not shop around or discuss corners to cut).

So restoring what we have seems very feasible and at a much lower total cost. Also avoids any planning permission concerns. So that’s what we’ll go with

Hennymore

Thanks for sharing, Working Mum! We have a similar thing going with a summer house that needs repainting but is in decent condition. We’ve put all the tools and paint tins inside the summer house and quite literally chip away at it a bit every evening after work Upside to the lack of rain is that it’s ideal for this kind of thing.