Moved from a lovely 2 bed flat in Ealing to a 3 bed Victorian mid terrace in Hitchin in North Herts on the train line into Kings Cross/Moorgate in 2011. I struggled to leave the city but our town is v lovely and unique for commuterville in that there is a lots on offer on our high street both for shopping and entertainment. That said, we've sold to move a little closer to a big city again. Moving 10 miles north of Brighton later this year. I love our house and the space but after 5 years I feel I need more than there is on offer here and once we leave this town, it's a 30 minute (usually more) drive minimum to get anywhere with more on offer. I'm a city girl through and through and though I can no longer afford to live in one, I need to be close to one. Space is great, but think of what you do with your spare time, though it's pretty fab for where we are, I feel I outgrew this town of 35,000 people in less than 5 years.

Hi Natalie, This is actually a hard one. I know this was posted some time ago, but in case you are still in a conundrum about this, a radical possibility is as follows: My intial idea was to open up your back area with the following extension (detailed below), so that your family could live facing your garden. But given that you are on a busy road (unless you want to reconsider using the front reception as a bedroom which you can test by pulling your mattress in there and sleeping in it for a couple of nights), this may do the trick, if you are willing to change your garden differently than you had intially considered. Here is how to get what you want - 3 bedrooms & open plan reception space to plan a kitchen with an island / breakfast bar, lounge & dining area. Knock all the walls through from your front reception room & your first bedroom area. This will give you one huge open-plan reception space to take advantage of and configure just the way you want to include kit - dining - living. Extend the hallway through the current kitchen - dining area to the back of the flat (and slightly beyond into the extension (detailed below). Out of the rest of the kitchen dining space, you can create another bedroom that can either retain the current window or have double doors opening up onto the garden. On the left side of the garden - all the way down the length of the garden - do a 1 room extension (13'6" long x 9' wide) with large windows or sliding doors onto the courtyard garden. This will give you the 3rd bedroom you desire and also with planning permission approvals or under permitted development (must find out what applies in your area), possibly give you enough space for a small ensuite shower room too. The extended hallway into the new left-side extension should be used to create access & a door into the courtyard garden. Your court-yard garden will still then be about 13'6" x 10' (rather than 19'9 x 10' as you suggested with a 1m back extension across the rear of your house) and you can still use your side return for light. Not doing the side extension will reduce the cost significantly - and as you know getting the 3rd bedroom out of the size of the side return extension was very difficult. If you do what to also do the side return extension, you can enlarge the kit - diner converted to a bedroom, and also add a small ensuite to that room behind the other bedroom (if you retain the courtyard area on the side from the current large bedroom, past the bathroom & 2nd bedroom windows, upto the fireplace). If you do decide to use the front reception as a bedroom: You can create a lovely open-plan living - dining - kitchen in the garden extension I suggested above & the current kitchen dining area - putting in all glass (sliding or concertina) in both areas facing your courtyard garden. You can configure your kitchen - diner in one side and the living area in the other. Both areas will have full light and exposure to the courtyard, and offer indoor-outdoor living when weather is nice and doors are all fully opened - giving you an L-shaped open plan living around your courtyard. Also if you do the side extension as well, this will extend this reception area even more across the back of the house, give you more options for skylights & allow you to add a small ensuite or w/c in the side return too. The rest of the blue-print of your home would remain the same & you would use your front reception room as a bedroom. Well, hope this helps and best of luck! Best wishes,

"Possible" is a lot. To start with though, consider: changing the internal layout of a flat requires freeholder approval performing works inside a flat likely requires a party wall agreement extending a flat (making external alterations) requires planning permission many alterations ("opening up" / extending) require work by a structural engineer So even if you own a flat ... you can redecorate, refurnish, change joinery ... but touch the walls, windows, or outside, and you still have to get more than one other party to agree on it, and likely require building control approval during/after the work. If you're on great terms with your neighbours as well as own (at least a share of) the freehold, the first two can be "small items" alright. If even one of your neighbours is adamantly against it, you may well get scarred in that process... if your freeholder is able and greedy, they'll charge you for the lease alteration big time because the size of the flat will grow notably. The floorspace, especially if you'd be able to create a wraparound rear extension, could grow by almost 50% (about 5sqm on the current lean-to/side passage, and another 20sqm from a 5m rear extension). There would be some "space to play with" for sure. Whether the value of that space exceeds the construction costs, I'm not qualified to say. Do you have a budget ?

@katlucy it's a good point - a window/door in the bedroom rear wall could be nice. yes - the door at the bottom of the stairs is a cellar. There is garden access from the kitchen only and a side gate. I suppose my greatest priority is creating a more cohesive living space, hence the thought to create a living/dining room and then make the bathroom a bit bigger with its own entrance off the newly extended hallway