For me it’s maximalism. Lovely in a quirky cafe or boutique hotel but at home it would give me a headache. I like a restful house and so yes quite a lot of it is grey! Not battleship grey or anthracite but bluey or greeny greys. Concrete floors. Depressing, cold, ecologically not great, look unfinished. Plants very high up. How do you water them? Walk in wardrobes even if it means the bedroom becomes tiny. I’d rather have a bigger bedroom with wardrobes in it, than dress and sleep in tiny spaces. Uber industrial. There’s a reason we usually hide cables, conduits, vent ducts...because they are ugly. Buying new furniture and accessories very often to have an “up to date“ look. I see all these instagram pictures with everything brass, mid century, wood, rattan, green (today’s trends) and I wonder what has happened to all their grey, painted, silver, shabby chic items from 5/10 years ago. And what will they do with today’s items when the look swings round again...

Pete I am North London (Islington borough) and went ahead with mine, finished just over a year ago and it’s changed the flat entirely, so happy I did it. Layout similar to the plans in original post but larger kitchen. If you have an idea of layout you want I’d recommend trying to find a junior architect or go with some sort of basic pack option. Architect fees were way more than I expected and unnecessary for me. I found my original suggestion was the best option anyway and despite agreeing a planned budget it was way over spec’d resulting in tenders out of my reach. I ended up finding a very well priced builder myself using mybuilder.com who still worked to fixed fee contract, came in significantly cheaper than lowest architect tendered builder. Speak to your neighbours before Party Wall letters go out, you are about to disrupt their lives for 3 months or so, worth having them on side :) Try and pick/plan the small things as early as possible - you can’t imagine the ridiculous amount of stress you feel having to pick and order kitchen cupboard handles out of the millions of options there are when the builders are ready for them now! Good luck!

@arc3d I dug out the very first design we had drawn up for the ground floor and interestingly the kitchen space isn't too dissimilar from your proposal, with some adjustment to door placement. It would be very nice to have enough room to clearly separate seating from dining furniture and I'm not sure it's possible in the current plans without doing as you suggest. Referring to our existing plans, my thinking was to move bench seating with dining table (extendable 6-8 person) to the party wall and seating to bay window area as @rinked suggested. Hopefully that would free up space for a small 2-seater sofa facing windows and couple of chairs with a side/coffee table. Note, the reason we introduced a double step-in to the external wall was because although not captured in the plans, the passageway tapers towards the house and we want to maintain a 700mm to run bicycles and wheelie bins to the rear. I think a side window in the kitchen wall was omitted because it faces our neighbours brick wall; maybe we could add one retrospectively at head height to the planning application, to reflect the side window in the extension: @rosemonde Below are the submitted plans for the other floors and external elevations for comparison to your house (- ignore the stair direction on 1st floor; this will be flipped but there's a separate application for the loft under PD so the plan here shows the current stairs). I should also add that we plan to change the walk-in wardrobe in 2nd floor plans so that the entrance is opposite the en-suit, with drawers along length of eaves and wardrobes along length of partition; we feel this will give us more bed placement options (e.g. facing the rear window) and make the walk-in section less cluttered. Our current layout is awful (we recently purchased the house knowing we'd do this work); the kitchen is where utility is planned, there's a horrible lean-to conservatory where extension is planned and a similarly nasty lean-to utility to the side, the current bathroom is oddly split into a bath and separate shower room (with two adjacent toilets split by the partition) and loft space is a bedroom with non-reg stairs, floor joists and ropey dormer window. We're making the study 2m wide as well to make it a more practical size (it's currently 1.4m) and potentially use it as an overspill 5th single bedroom if necessary: Hope this helps you with your own plans and feel free to PM me if you want further info :-)

I appreciate the property buying public can be a little conservative and raise an eyebrow when confronted with an upside down house but when sensibly and well done I’m sure most people can see the benefits. Particularly in OP’s case where the downstairs looks quite dark and the sloping garden is a concern. These are arguably greater disadvantages then living ‘upside down’. Then again, I may be slightly biased having lived in an upside down home for decades. 😊