Help with kitchen extension full of damp low sloping ceilings
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6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
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6 years agoRelated Discussions
Dark floor with low ceiling, is it a total no-no?
Comments (8)Hi. I'm not a pro so clearly may be wrong but I thought using dark floors, combined with very light walls and a white ceiling was actually a design trick for making ceilings look higher. Having such a contrast of the dark and light tricks the eyes into making the walls seem higher. I've attached a pic of my basement which is a lot lower than your ceilings (ignore my lighting over the bar table as this is meant to be a no no with low ceilings. Mine were just so low I went with what I wanted but it does show the contrast in floor!). Combine this with other design tricks ie wall lighting, low furniture, floor to ceiling curtains, hang pictures high, full height doors etc. if in doubt, do follow One Plans advice and see your space with different flooring options so you can decide rather than making a costly mistake...See MoreHelp with downstairs layout & extension
Comments (28)Hi Keswing, I'm not sure if this is helpful but we went through a similar (ish) process about 6 months ago and I found it all very confusing at the start as to what I needed from who and in what order! What I learnt from it was... We already had a very good idea of what we wanted (we got an interior designer / concept planner on board right at the start- highly recommended), so just used a local recommendation of an architect to do our basic drawings - we needed these for building regs and also to give to the builder so we had something to base the 'contract on'. We paid £500 for these drawings only. (For comparison we had architect quote for nearly £2k from a chartered firm) We also needed structural calculations for building regs and to give to the builders alongside the architects drawings. The builders needed the structural calcs so they knew what size steels etc to buy / install / quote against. This was £900 just on a separate structural engineer. It's worth noting our calcs were reasonably complicated and involved a site visit; had he been able to do them from the architect's drawings alone (quite often this is possible) then it would only have been £300. It then cost us £400 for all of our buildings regs submissions / certificates on top of the above. It's worth finding out from your two different quotes what they both will and won't include; Will either / both then require separate calculations from a structural engineer and therefore additional costs or is that already included in the quote with the architectural technologist? Does either quote include building regs and / or planning submission? Hopefully then you'll know that you're comparing the two quotes like for like and can also know how much of your budget is going to be allocated to fees. Hope this helps and good luck! Claire...See MoreExtension to replace retaining wall - garden at window level? Help!
Comments (10)I levelled my garden, a paved area of roughly 6m x 6m that sloped upwards 2 1/2 feet. We also got crazy quotes for digging it out, which thanks to the joys of a London terrace had to be done completely by hand with bags of dirt carried through my kitchen. We ended up managing that part ourselves with help from casual, non-builder labour. (Turns out the guys at the local gym don’t earn much, have some spare hours, and have lots of friends in the same boat.). I studied up on retaining walls and became convinced that a timber retaining wall would work. We bought treated timber through Jackson’s Fencing using their slotted fence posts for support. The retaining wall/ new fence was professionally installed, but they had very little digging to do to tidy up the removed area. Six years later it’s still going strong and I fully expect it to last....See MoreBungalow Extension Drop in Ceiling
Comments (4)It seems that the idea is to put a flat roof under the eaves of your existing roof. That explains the 2.4m ceiling height but the 2.1 ceiling height seems unnecessary. Personally I think a room that is only 2.1m high is uncomfortably low and I wouldn’t accept it. 2.4m is the same ceiling height as most houses in the UK so quite acceptable- however a higher ceiling height is desirable, helps better link the old and new plus it help get more light into the inner rooms (especially if the RSJ between the old and new is higher). It is possible to build a higher ceiling height… it requires either some sort of rainwater drainage gulley at the base of the original roof (which means the ceiling will be 2.4m at that point). Alternatively an alternative roof or a roof lantern might be solutions....See MoreC C
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