Opening the kitchen and dining area, re-planting our small garden with black fences and then refreshing some of the other rooms in the house. We go thru phases of doing nothing in the house - just enjoying the space and then a phase of refreshing some areas. More tedious - a new roof and external decorate too. I am excited about the kitchen project but also nervous because I really want to get it right. 2016 is going to be a busy year!

The suggestion was just the most cost effective solution while you are planning/saving for an extension. I agree you could swap the kitchen and dining room, but I personally feel a house of this size warrants an extension if affordable, and swapping them in the meantime would be a waste of money. Just my opinion though! I agree it's not totally open plan, but ime feels more open than a doorway. It depends on your long term plans though. I loved your idea of a glass box extension, and I would plan to put this full width across the house behind the kitchen ultimately (leaving the courtyard for dining room and basement light).

I can see potential for a 3-bed by turning the downstairs reception room into a bedroom but I don’t think you’d fit a third bedroom upstairs. You could consider turning the downstairs shower room, or part of it, into a utility / laundry space. Changing to 2 separate flats could be problematic in terms of access to the first floor one - presume you’d need a shared entrance which would make accessing the ground floor front reception room more difficult. Also, I don’t know if you’d need any special permissions, plus extra fire / safety regs to turn a house into 2 flats. It seems to be potentially a lot more hassle to take that option.

The floors in my house are suspended timber and are insulated underneath. All the habitable rooms are "upstairs" with cellars below which could be converted into habitable rooms eventually. We will shortly be having UFH installed "upstairs" These are EPS overlay panels. I would like to lay a tiled floor in some of the rooms. The tiles I prefer are 10mm x 1200mm x 600mm, made from porcelain. Do I need a Structural Engineer to calculate the weight that the timber floor can take? I am concerned that the floor may not be able to accomodate the additional weight of tiles plus adhesive and grout. Any advice welcome. Thankyou