Two single doors to create a french door (internal)

gwynlas

There are a lot of options for garage door replacement if you are worried about matching brickwork. We have installed french doors with split side panels that open to what is now our studio. There is also the options of obscured glass.render, cladding or feature stone. your integral garage would need  building control sign off to be fully incorporated as a habitable space but it gives you lots of options. You could have a larhe porch type entrance at the front with deep cupboards for coat storage, A boot room utility space at the rear side entrance to take washing machine out of the kitchen and provide storage. Kitchen should be kitchen diner and keep lounge seperate if you do not wabt to go totally open plan. Personally to maximise valu I would br thinking of a third bedroom with en suite to maximise potential resale.

_Sam_

Merging kitchen and diner is definitely on the plans, a next on to do list once we can afford it, alongside with replacing the kitchen. The wall separating the two is structural and ideally I would be looking at installing the beam flush with the ceiling if possible (the ceiling would need to come down in any case to make it uniform across the whole space there).

But at the moment we'll just get rid of the door between kitchen and diner as it is kept open at all times so really not needed there. We don't cook much, mostly light meals on the hob and occasionally oven for roasts, so not much smell.

I don't want to devalue the house but also not focusing on increasing its value as such, more on making it comfortable for us. It is nice to leave options for an easy change later if necessary, although in this case further enlargement would probably be most logical in the loft, lots of space there under the gable roof.

Doozergirl

I think it's important to work towards a grand plan from the beginning so that you don't undo anything you've spent hard earned money on. 

It would be beneficial to get plans drawn up  now with focus on being able to do things in stages as and when funds become available.  

In theory, the garage conversion could become a utility now, or indeed a lounge without knocking down the wall to make it massive like I did in the plan.   

If you put the door in the middle of the house straight away you can still use that big room in the meantime, you'd just have an entrance hall that can also be a room for the moment.   That would save you the effort of paying for two front doors, you'd just glaze the garage conversion for now.  Or indeed keep using the door you have until you're ready for the next stage.  

Whatever you decide, there are a lot of potential variables for you and I'm positive some time now spent in planning the perfect house will reap rewards as you work towards it by saving you money - just making sure that your double doors, if you have them, are positioned perfectly to accommodate future work is a good example.  You don't want to be cursing in a few years wishing that they'd been 30cm to one side, for example. 

Plus it gives you something to get really excited for 🙂

_Sam_

ThisIsWeird said:

If you post some photos of the whole house front, I'm sure folk could suggest ideas for the 'garage' entrance. That nicely-coloured buffy-orange brick would go quite tastily with charcoal, I think...

I keep thinking about what colour the front door to get (and the windows when we replace them eventually). Grey looks nice against the buff, but I'm not sure if it is too 'industrial' sometimes, white looks a bit more cheerful and cottage-like. With cladding the main thing is that it doesn't look out of place, maybe buff stone cladding could be a good idea actually. The front door would look quite good if placed in the middle too:

Original
 

Garage entrance


Middle window entrance

Doozergirl

The door looks perfect in the middle! 

Use the full width of the existing garage opening for the replacement window, it doesn't need to be a twin of the bedroom window - you could even fully glaze the opening.  It totally solves your brick issue, provides more architectural interest, more light and would probably be cheaper. 

sugar-walsh

In our old house.We went with a grey green, which seemed softer with that buff colour. If we had stayed the front door would have been replaced and painted the same. 

Bad pic, but you get the idea.

_Sam_

sugar-walsh said:

In our old house.We went with a grey green, which seemed softer with that buff colour. If we had stayed the front door would have been replaced and painted the same. 

Bad pic, but you get the idea.

Thank you - grey green might be a good compromise!

_Sam_

Doozergirl said:

The door looks perfect in the middle! 

Use the full width of the existing garage opening for the replacement window, it doesn't need to be a twin of the bedroom window - you could even fully glaze the opening.  It totally solves your brick issue, provides more architectural interest, more light and would probably be cheaper. 

Thank you so much. Feel more confident now about the upcoming changes, will see if I can get a plan drawn with precise measurements. In the meantime it had occurred to me that as the garage is integral, we could simply paint the wall (breeze blocks) which divides it from the sitting room, this way if it is to be removed later there would be no loss. Was thinking to have a gallery wall there in any case, so maybe we can make it look as a feature.