Aesthetics of extension adjacent to garage

schuey87

Our house has quite a lot of land to the side of our garage/house. We are hoping to do a ground floor extension soon and the best ideas we have had for internal layouts extend with a semi wrap around extension to part of the side and rear. I am concerned of how the aesthetics would look with something “bolted” to the side of/behind the garage. Anyone have any ideas for how something like this could work aesthetically? 

EssexExile

Personally I'd make every effort to put a pitched roof on. The roof angle on the house is pretty low so it may be possible, depending where upstairs windows are of course. I have an aversion boxes bolted to the sides of houses with no thought given to aesthetics.

Martin_the_Unjust

As EssexExile said, if you tie it in with a pitched roof then it will probably look pretty good, a flat roofed extension will, in all probability end up looking like a carbuncle!

FreeBear

Paraphrasing a report done of this area when planning permission was submitted for a housing development - The property is of little architectural merit - A wrap-round extension isn't going to look out of place, and a pitched roof at the same angle as the garage will help to tie it in. You are going to end up with quite a dark kitchen  unless you plan on knocking down the back wall and fitting some velux type roof lights (with or without light pipes)..

If you are going for the expense of submitting a full planning application (which you will need to), do consider a two storey side extension - You'd then get extra space upstairs for not a huge amount more.

Doozergirl

I always advocating designing from the inside out, so what is it that you're trying to gain internally from those four lines that you've drawn?    It's not giving away any clues.  

Do you have a proposed floorplan, as well as the existing floorplan upstairs? 

I wouldn't even consider what it looks like from outside before addressing what's needed inside, but whilst doing it, I would give consideration to whether a big white garage door should be the house's main architectural feature.   

Rdwill

Do you use the garage? apart from for storing a load of cr*p in.

I think I'd convert the garage and then build a stand alone garage off to the right hand side if you have have the room. Keep your house as the house.

The garage could make a nice living room or open plan kitchen dining room. Water and waste is not to far away because of the WC. Big windows where the garage door is, bifolds out to the garden on the East side, something like that.

Make the existing kitchen diner in to some kind of boot room / laundery room.

But like Doozergirl says, what do you want to do with the additional space? 

schuey87

Doozergirl said:

I always advocating designing from the inside out, so what is it that you're trying to gain internally from those four lines that you've drawn?    It's not giving away any clues.  

Do you have a proposed floorplan, as well as the existing floorplan upstairs? 

I wouldn't even consider what it looks like from outside before addressing what's needed inside, but whilst doing it, I would give consideration to whether a big white garage door should be the house's main architectural feature.   

Thanks, this is the internal plan idea.

We wanted to create a nice kitchen diner possibly with a couple of chairs or small sofa that may or may not go where it is marked bookcase instead of a bookcase depending on space. There would be a lot of glass across the back and some roof lights at the very back to bring extra light in, we would be opening up space in the wall at the back of the kitchen to hopefully bring more light into the dark hallway and potentially opening the porch up into the hallway with some porch storage stolen from the corner of the garage. We also wanted a little more space in the playroom. 

We do use the garage as a gym and a workshop and it gets a lot of use for both of those functions so wouldn’t want to lose that.

Rdwill

Blimey!!, I think I'd move!

Rosa_Damascena

Ooh a grand plan...I like it!

Not swayed by the bookshelf room divider in any way, shape or form. (Slinks off to P'Interest with ideas in her head).

Doozergirl

Have you spoken to a structural
engineer about how you're going to keep the house standing up?  You're wanting to remove the entire back wall, plus remove most of the existing internal ones.    Fine to engineer if you're building a brand new house, not if you're trying to keep an existing one standing.  

It looks like it would be a very pretty space, but the engineering (read money) required to extend by what looks like about a metre and a half is immense.    Tens upon tens of thousands of pounds and digging up the interior of your house to start underpinning it for upright steels.  

You do have a great big space already built at the front.   I would not be looking to extend the back.  Open up part of it for big windows, sure, but just let the kitchen run to the back wall and reduce the island a bit so you can walk around it.     You can still have fun with glass - an oriel window even.  

The existing side door opening could feed a small hallway with doors to left and right - creating you a bigger 'playroom' to the rear, utility to the front...

or any combination of rooms if you reimagine the current layout instead of keeping the status quo. 

I really would be looking to build further forward to try and balance the huge projection at the front and also lose the garage door because it is not doing the house any favours.  Converting the garage and building a new one (workshop/gym) on the side is a no brainer to me as it will save money and make the house look more attractive.  Two birds with one stone.  

The existing garage would
make a huge room, or two.  It's an expensive piece of real estate that you already own.  

I think you can still get a very special layout but save an awful lot of cost and stress of massive scale building work if you
a) extend to the side only
b) make a list of the rooms you want to have at the end and consider playing with the way they are laid out rather than building the new rooms being added to the list onto the side of the building.   

c) reconsider the logic of taking small rooms and opening them up into much bigger ones at great cost, only to tack new small rooms onto the side - at great cost.

eg. Why can't the dining room just become a playroom at a cost of zero and the kitchen be opened up into a side extension? You'd then gain your metre and a half of kitchen length if the stairs were turned and the toilet moved into the garage. 

I just know you can get more square footage of attractive useable space with less money.   

I can see sooo many options.  

schuey87

Thanks.

Haven’t spoken to a structural engineer, have spoken to an architect who thought it was feasible, guess need to go into more detail on the structural side of things though. 

One issue we have with going to the front is that we don’t sit “side by side” level with our neighbours as you can see from the photo. Means the 45 degree rule with the way our neighbours windows are angled towards our house limits what we can do at the front. We had considered at some point coming level with the porch where the lounge is and then splitting that room into a smaller lounge and study but I think coming to about there would be our limit on planning with light rules.