Yet Another House Renovation Thread
Discussion
Having completed on a new "project" house last week and having followed several similar threads on here with much interest and to get inspiration, and having already had a couple of PH'ers provide some input/guiance for our ideas, I thought I'd start another thread for a house renovation project.
So presenting - Lottie and Matt's new pad, just outside Milton Keynes:
4 bed detached with double garage. 1687 sq ft / 156.7sq m
Plan is to live in our current place for a month or so whilst we replace the central heating and rewire the new place. Looking to move in to new place around middle / end of August and rent out current place.
We have a gazzillion and one questions, and loads of pics to follow, so start your engines PH experts!
So presenting - Lottie and Matt's new pad, just outside Milton Keynes:
4 bed detached with double garage. 1687 sq ft / 156.7sq m
Plan is to live in our current place for a month or so whilst we replace the central heating and rewire the new place. Looking to move in to new place around middle / end of August and rent out current place.
We have a gazzillion and one questions, and loads of pics to follow, so start your engines PH experts!
Knocked up a couple of Visio floor plans
First things are to do central heating and a rewire.
Then looking to remove the two internal utility room walls in the kitchen to make a big kitchen.
Master bedroom - thinking about chopping this in half to make two rooms, and using the small fourth bedroom as an en suite for the master, so instead of a 4 bedroom house that is 3 doubles and a box room we have a 4 double bedroom with one double en suite house. Also thinking about chopping the bathroom in half to make an en suite for the 2nd biggest bedroom, but the bathroom window is large so dividing the room would mean changing the window which would affect the symmetry of the house at the rear.
Anyway, early days, just thought I'd kick off the thread now whilst we're high on excitement of completion and before the bills start rolling in
First things are to do central heating and a rewire.
Then looking to remove the two internal utility room walls in the kitchen to make a big kitchen.
Master bedroom - thinking about chopping this in half to make two rooms, and using the small fourth bedroom as an en suite for the master, so instead of a 4 bedroom house that is 3 doubles and a box room we have a 4 double bedroom with one double en suite house. Also thinking about chopping the bathroom in half to make an en suite for the 2nd biggest bedroom, but the bathroom window is large so dividing the room would mean changing the window which would affect the symmetry of the house at the rear.
Anyway, early days, just thought I'd kick off the thread now whilst we're high on excitement of completion and before the bills start rolling in
Fair enough. Although what if you expanded bed 4 into the cupboard in bed 1, using the rest of that space for an en-suite?
Also, plenty of room to expand in the future there though. Join the garage up to the rest of the house, giving you a utility room between the two, then you can put a spiral staircase in and have a cinema room / guest room above the garage. A friend of mine did just that and it worked really well.
Also, plenty of room to expand in the future there though. Join the garage up to the rest of the house, giving you a utility room between the two, then you can put a spiral staircase in and have a cinema room / guest room above the garage. A friend of mine did just that and it worked really well.
Edited by furtive on Sunday 15th July 11:04
furtive said:
what if you expanded bed 4 into the cupboard in bed 1, using the rest of that space for an en-suite?
If we did that we'd lose the view out the back over the fields. It would also mean having to change quite a large window to privacy glass.Good idea about joining up the garage, although that side path his handy for getting kitchen rubbish to the bins and getting the bins out the front. Got any pics of your friends spiral staircase and above-garage room?
What the hell, I've got no clue of dimensions, and am not sure if the doors shown are 726 or 826, but here goes nothing....
Two assumptions:
The new heating will use a combi and therefore not need an airing cupboard.
You want to keep services (drains mainly) costs down by keeping them largely where they are and certainly as close to each other as possible.
The dressing might be too small to be meaningful, and bed 2 remains quite small, but they all look to still be slightly larger than new building (looking the door opening vs. wall lengths...)
Two assumptions:
The new heating will use a combi and therefore not need an airing cupboard.
You want to keep services (drains mainly) costs down by keeping them largely where they are and certainly as close to each other as possible.
The dressing might be too small to be meaningful, and bed 2 remains quite small, but they all look to still be slightly larger than new building (looking the door opening vs. wall lengths...)
Radiator removed from kitchen. New boiler plumbed in. TRV's fitted to rads, and the hot and cold feeds and drainage that were stuck to the utility room wall now relocated out of the way ready for the walls to come down.
Next job is to do something about the comedy stairs.
This is the sort of look we're going for in the hall :
First quote in, for a straight white zig-zag design with handrail, post, spindles and steps in American Walnut - £7867.50. Plus VAT. And for an extra £400+VAT the company will even assemble them for me.
Needless to say, we're "shopping around".
Next job is to do something about the comedy stairs.
This is the sort of look we're going for in the hall :
First quote in, for a straight white zig-zag design with handrail, post, spindles and steps in American Walnut - £7867.50. Plus VAT. And for an extra £400+VAT the company will even assemble them for me.
Needless to say, we're "shopping around".
Planning out bedroom layouts with garden cane. 
Mate helping to demolish the old shed.
Old lean-to greenhouse and bushes ready to be destroyed so that bike shed and tool/wheelie bin shed can go up.
Bike shed built. I need to extend the existing patio to give a hard area infront of the shed but royally CBA at the moment.
Mate helping to demolish the old shed.
Old lean-to greenhouse and bushes ready to be destroyed so that bike shed and tool/wheelie bin shed can go up.
Bike shed built. I need to extend the existing patio to give a hard area infront of the shed but royally CBA at the moment.
Looks like an interesting project. The small bedroom that has the stairs coming up would make a reasonable "study area and stairs" if you went up into the loft for an extra pair of bedrooms. (Although this could be a future plan...)
Also, that garage has "Man Cave" written all over it. What are the plans there?
Also, that garage has "Man Cave" written all over it. What are the plans there?
Man cave / home office looking like it will be located in the current dining room. SWMBO is on about turning the garage loft space in to a massage room. Not sure how feasible that is, thinking about noise / fumes from garage.
campfreddie is coming over tonight (he's a structural engineer/architect) to go through all our ideas and give us a bit of advice.
As usual with these things, the ideas / ambitions far exceed the budget so this will be a slow one.
Most immediate things to address are knocking down the utility room walls, putting in new stairs and getting the rewire done. Tenants want to move in to our current house on 24th August so we need to crack on and get the new place livable in.
We have a quote in for sorting out the utility room walls and two quotes for stairs. The stairs are way more expensive than I thought they were going to be. The two problems seem to be the structure and the materials. Apparently if we have stringers on the stairs it will reduce the price by providing more strength/stability so they won't need to add so much "hidden" internal structure, and if we switch to oak treads rather than American Walnut it will reduce the price further as oak is cheaper. Just waiting to receive some samples.
campfreddie is coming over tonight (he's a structural engineer/architect) to go through all our ideas and give us a bit of advice.
As usual with these things, the ideas / ambitions far exceed the budget so this will be a slow one.
Most immediate things to address are knocking down the utility room walls, putting in new stairs and getting the rewire done. Tenants want to move in to our current house on 24th August so we need to crack on and get the new place livable in.
We have a quote in for sorting out the utility room walls and two quotes for stairs. The stairs are way more expensive than I thought they were going to be. The two problems seem to be the structure and the materials. Apparently if we have stringers on the stairs it will reduce the price by providing more strength/stability so they won't need to add so much "hidden" internal structure, and if we switch to oak treads rather than American Walnut it will reduce the price further as oak is cheaper. Just waiting to receive some samples.
louiebaby said:
I know everyone is different, but I quite like the idea of a utility room to leave the muddy boots in, or towel off the dogs, etc...
I don't disagree. But I'd rather have a bigger kitchen without an annoying wall cutting across the space. I spose we could look at possibly adding a utility by turning the outside path between kitchen and garage into a room as suggested above. One for the "way off in the future projects" list perhaps.Of course, this could all change once we've had a winter in the house and I get annoyed at muddy paw prints in the kitchen.
mattdaniels said:
Good idea about joining up the garage, although that side path his handy for getting kitchen rubbish to the bins and getting the bins out the front. Got any pics of your friends spiral staircase and above-garage room?
Finally found the floorplan of their house on Rightmove:
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