Extension plans

[steveonts]

Evening all.

Had some plans drawn up for an extension and was hoping to have some input from you guys. Can anyone spot anything thats glaringly silly, badly designed, out of place or just plain wont work?

This is how it is now



This is the current draft plan



I feel like im missing something but overall im happy with the flow of the design..but would appreciate input from all.

Thanks

[steveonts]

Sorry for lack of replies guys. Thank you so much for these suggestions though, its really given me a lot to think about and discuss. Heres a better image so you can actually read dimensions.

Hitch said:

wc in kitchen is oddly placed. What if someone does a massive dump as you're sitting down to dinner? It also blocks off the view to what I presume is garden space? Why not swap it with the dining area and have a separate access off the entry space?

I'm also not a fan of the living room also being the main corridor to the bedrooms.

Very good point, I think it was just laziness that led to it staying where it is but doing as you said and having access from the new hallway sounds like a very good idea.

Im not sure how we could get around walking through the living room without extending the corridor into the living room or totally rearranging the bedroom layout to allow entrance through the kitchen.

pitchfork said:

It seems that any journey to/from the kitchen involves going through the entrance hall.

That means any time you have breakfast in the conservatory, you're taking your cornflakes through the hall. Similarly, if you're having pizza in front of the telly, it's going through the hall. Late night cocoa in bed? Mind those wellies.

Agreed. Especially knowing how messy we are with shoes lying around. Maybe cutting a door/arch through to the living froom from the kitchen could work.

PositronicRay said:

It depends on what the garden's like, the road you're on, noise levels and any views to take advantage of. Generally I prefer living areas on the back, I don't spend much time gazing out of bedrooms so I'd lump those together on the front with living/dining/kitchen overlooking the back garden.

ETA

I can see how having a master on the back with patio doors would be a nice thing. Oh and I'd try to squeeze in a utility/boot room with a separate entrance.

The driveway is right outside the front door/entrance hall and there is garden on both sides of the house so both will have views. Although the sun comes from the side that faces the living room. The kitchen doesnt get any sun but we hoped some kind of roof window would help with that. Although the amount of cooking we do, its nice to have the kitchen a little cool. The living room gets insanely warm with all that direct sun.

irocfan said:

good shout on swapping the entrance and dining room! As an aside, I thought that there had to be 2 doors between a kitchen and WC?

My dad said the same thing and I mentioned it to the architect and he didnt seem to think it was an issue. but doesnt matter now if we are moving it out of the kitchen.

LaurasOtherHalf said:

Same as Hitch, poor layout for the hall and WC-they’re the glaring errors.

No through run from the front door to the bedrooms-annoying at best.

Master bedroom to the front? Only you know if that’s sensible as it’s plot specific.

Did an architect actually draw this up?

I think we have become so used to walking through the living room to the bedrooms that we didnt realise it was an issue but now its been raised, I understand. Trying to work out how to change it without total redesign though.

Surveyor who does architectural design work. Has been well recommended though.

Welshbeef said:

Why is the Hall as big as the dining room?

We wanted a decent amount of storage space in the hall as its limited elsewhere.

alfaman said:

Weird layout. Doesn’t flow well.

Smallish bitty looking kitchen/ dining / hall

Which end is the garden?

I’d go for large living room / diner overlooking the rear garden with plenty of windows / or folding doors.

Sorry but I don’t get the rationale for that layout

I don't know if the budget will stretch to a full redesign like that. There is garden on both sides of the house. The ends of the house dont have a view, one being a drive and the other being just a few meters to the boundary.

Danm1les said:

I would always try to avoid a second hallway within a house, just feels odd. Equally what other have said about the loo, can that be moved to be off the main entrance hallway? Gives the option to open the front door if its real bad in there...

What do you mean by second hallway? Ive considered an outhouse after some of the smells my brother in law has left when hes been round for dinner before

LivingTheDream said:

Is the soil pipe moving or remaining as is?

Presumably its currently in the corner of kitchen and bathroom? This would put it in the corner of bedroom four.

Havent even got as far as discussing that sort of practicality yet but its a very good point.

rsbmw said:

Chips officially pissed on

Oh yes, my cornflakes have been pooped upon..but rather that than spend a fortune on a duff design.

brianb said:

I agree with the rest

Move the WC to the hall
Continue the hall to the bedrooms, passing through the kitchen each and every time is not ideal

Do you mean put up a wall inside the living room to meet up with the hallway?

paulrockliffe said:

I can't see the dimensions on the rooms, but the kitchen looks disproportionately large compared with the dining area; are you in danger of ending up with a large area that isn't used for anything in the middle of the kitchen? Could you increase the size of the cupboard so it's a pantry, and put an opening on the other wall so you can walk straight through to short-cut to the bedrooms? Keep the access from the hallway too obviously. One way or another I'd want access from the kitchen to the bedroom corridor, to create a circular path around the house.

I'd prefer a better connection between kitchen and living room too, but you'll need to compromise somewhere and that isn't the worst compromise. Especially as eating pizza in front of the TV belongs in the Council thread.

Toilet should be part of the hallway rather than the kitchen/dining area as everyone has said. But I'd also throw in whether you need a downstairs toilet in a bungalow at all if the bathroom location and corridors are done properly?

Theres going to be a decent sized island in there somewhere hopefully. The idea of a circular route is appealing. The original thought for keeping the single toilet was the long walk from front door/kitchen to the newly positioned main bath and ensuite by the bedrooms. However, if theres better access from kitchens to bedroom area, it does seem unnecessary. Have to think on that one.

robfox said:

The layout of the enlarged Bedroom 2 feels awkward. Are you going to be using the new space created by the extension, or is it being built just so that you can have the new door to the garden? You could put a dressing table in the alcove on the left, but it's a long way from the dressing room.

The dressing room looks quite small to be used as access to the en-suite. If someone is standing in the dressing room with the wardrobe doors open, will another person be able to squeeze through? Can you rearrange things to get a door directly into the en-suite?

I quite like the idea of the poster following you, some kind of wall with dressing room/storage space on one side and then the bed positioned against the other side of the wall looking out of the main window. The dressing room is for the wife, i doubt ill be allowed to keep any of my clothes in there anyway so id likely stick to the main bath

robfox said:

I can't read the room dimensions - is the proposed Bedroom 2 as big as it looks? Could you move the bed out into the room and put a dressing room behind it, like this?



The new wall could hide that pier in the bedroom where the external wall used to be, getting rid of the alcove near the window and allowing you to position the bed anywhere along the wall. Use the space that had been allocated to the dressing room to enlarge the en-suite, and you now have room for a bath, or for his and hers sinks.

Ooh i love that.

[steveonts]

PorkInsider said:

Can’t you stick another door in that opens from the kitchen into the hallway where the bedrooms are?

That would do away with the ‘accessing everywhere via the entrance hall’ issue.

That seems to be a very sensible idea.

[steveonts]

David A said:

Did you do the plans or an architect ?

I’d suggest to try an app called roomsketcher. Super easy to use and you can 3D walk through so will get a feel for it.

I didnt do them the chap is a surveyor who does architectural design as well. Came highly recommended.

[steveonts]

thebraketester said:

I think I would get rid of the bathroom near the kitchen and give you more space for the dining room.... as it stands the dining room will feel too small imo.

taking on board the suggestions in this thread ive done a bad job of editing the plans and come up with these options. What are peoples thoughts?

First one giving access to bedrooms purely through kitchen. Also replacing toilet with a slightly larger utility room and taking some of the hallway to keep the dining room a decent size.



Second one simply adding a door from the kitchen which gives a circuit around the house and moving the toilet from the kitchen up to the dining room space with access from hallway. Also possible to put another door straight from kitchen into living room but seems a lot of doors already



What are peoples thoughts?

[steveonts]

dmsims said:

2nd layout is better but why do you have walk through the dressing room to get to the ensuite ?

Why do you prefer the 2nd? The walk through thing is a specification from the wife.

[steveonts]

PositronicRay said:

Loving the window from W/C to kitchen.

I thought it might be nice for people sitting down for dinner to be able to watch someone using the facilities Or i just copied and pasted the bathroom and didnt remove that window

[steveonts]

Danm1les said:

What I mean't by 2 hallways is that you have an entrance hall, then go through a room to get to a hallway. I appreciate you will loose floor space but I always think its messy.

Yes I think youre right, i didnt think of that because ive been so used to living in houses with a second floor and a landing so associated the second hallway with a landing.

[steveonts]

dmsims said:

I think the wall in the Kitchen/Dining will make things look cramped (and is inflexible)

This design stuff is hard for an uncreative oaf like me. I think the chaps above are 100% right, i need to get someone who will give me more creative and practical input on this stuff.

[steveonts]

Right, bit of an update. Have had someone else draw up some new ideas. What are peoples thoughts on this one? It gets rid of angles and it also does a good job of splitting the living space from the bed spaces.

[steveonts]

Ok, first plans were drawn by a surveyor who does architectural design. I took your advice and went to a fully fledged architect and his hourly rate reflected that. This is just a concept plan he has done for us and should we wish to move forward with it we can make changes to parts of it and it will then be done as full architectural drawings etc. I have a larger hard copy version of the plan and can upload it if people have problems with this one.

The two exterior doors(the one on the left is a utility room) close to each other is something i feel is a bit silly too, but for practical reasons rather than how it would look. Absolutely none of the property can be seen from the public road due to extensive tree cover and the road is below the level of our plot. The drive way sits outside the existing front door and stretches to the garage which is to the right of the garden room/conservatory. I honestly dont know what the primary elevation would be. I assume it would be where the front door is but the side with the new front door in the latest plans is the elevation that faces the public road.

The architect also included a very rough estimate of costs for this latest design..which shocked me a bit to be honest. Its almost at the level where perhaps knocking the whole thing down and starting over would be not far off his cost.

[steveonts]

dmsims said:

Sorry but as a concept plan - it's carp

haha the concept itself or the plan?

[steveonts]

garyhun said:

OP - sorry if I missed this BUT what is the reason for the extension?

Unless we understand what your actually trying to achieve with this work it’s quite difficult to advise or provide useful feedback.

We need an extra bedroom, the kitchen and bathroom are too small and theres no ensuite which we would like. In adding those things, we would also like to improve the flow of the house, we dont like walking through the living room to get to the rest of the house for example.

[steveonts]

Pinkie15 said:

If I understand correctly from what you've posted then the house is essentially "sideways" on in the plot, with current front door on RH side as viewed from the road ?

If this is correct this is a very significant piece of information and could have a huge impact on what you want to do.

You need to carefully review the planning history for your property and any previous extensions and see if anything there defined works as the "front", "rear" or "side". However, just because an elevation is the front of the property that doesn't necessarily make it the principal elevation

Where you're proposing to add bedrooms etc (the "new" front door on the last plan's you posted) could be regarded as the principal elevation. You're proposing a lot of work here and if it is the principal elevation you could come unstuck at planning stage.

We had similar with our bungalow renovation/extension (sideways on in the plot with front door on the RH side elevation relative to road) and had to "stage" planning approvals. Did one approval that from the road would be "the back" of the property (least controversial) with no intention to ever build it, but we called it the side and used that application to define the elevation with the front door as the principal one.

Once that was approved we could then add to elevations that from the road would be the "front" and "LH side" of the property, but from the above approved application defining principal elevation meant they were side & rear extensions, respectively. This was pivotal to us as we had to exploit the temporary permitted dev rights derogation for 8M rear extension for a detached property.

There was a small extension which was done in 1997 and it was just to extend the kitchen area slightly. Theres not much online regarding the extension and no plans or anything. How would I find out the principle elevation otherwise? I would have assumed it was the elevation with the front door but it may well be the side facing the closest public road.

Ive done this awful little plan which shows the situation. The yellow road at the top is very small road and it is below the level of my property. The roads to the side and below the property are a private driveway. The red on the plan is the garden room which i assume was added under permitted development at some point as no mention of it in planning application. Driveway outlined in black and the front door goes out onto that. The driveway surrounded by bushes.

[steveonts]

0-100-0 said:

Well you’ve got a nice plot and plenty of space all around. No major roads to avoid and I doubt the principal elevation issue is going to be significant tbh. I imagine that was quite a specific set of circumstances.

Like a lot of houses, it looks like your house has been extended at least a couple of times with the hall, WC and conservatory. No doubt there are some flat roof areas. Having the entrance at the end of a long house is always going to leave you going through one room to get to another which is not ideal, but to solve it you’ll need a much bigger budget than it looks like your surveyor was trying to work with. It looks like he was also trying to work with as much of the existing layout as possible and presumably has a plan for the roof which a lot of people posting on might well not have thought about.

Personally, I think the surveyor’s plan works ok with a few tweaks and would be much cheaper to build. I would move the WC to the wall facing the drive and turn it through 90 degrees with access off the hall. Close up the door to the dining area off the hall. The shape of the dining area is now better and you can have a big window or doors to the garden rather than looking at the drive. It also a better relationship to the kitchen. I would also close the door from the living room to the second hall and move the door to bed 1 to the left end of the wall it’s on. Then you can move the kitchen cupboard through 90 degrees to area where that second hall was. So the original cupboard is now part of a much better shaped squarer second hall with all doors off it and saving you walking past one bed 1 to get to all the other bedrooms. It does create a bit of a corridor through the kitchen but with a good layout and the right furniture you can get away from that feel.

If you PM me I'll email you a plan of what I mean.

Of course if you've got a bigger budget you could move the driveway, build a new garage and get the hall in the middle and extend to the right etc etc.

That sounds very interesting and sounds good. I've PMd you.

[steveonts]

Triumph Man said:

OP, what was your original brief to the designer? Not that I'm laying any blame at you of course but sometimes these things can be client lead.

Also, with regards to knocking it down and starting again, a new build house is zero rated for VAT.

To whoever said you require two doors separating a WC and the Kitchen, this is not the case.

I do accept it was probably my fault. Another poster mentioned earlier that I didnt seem to know what I want and he was right. I had hoped to tell the architect what I wanted in a vague sense and they would work their magic. I pretty much said exactly this to them.

me] said:

We need an extra bedroom, the kitchen and bathroom are too small and theres no ensuite which we would like. In adding those things, we would also like to improve the flow of the house, we dont like walking through the living room to get to the rest of the house for example.