Hello Jonathan. thanks for your post. I have never seen an internal courtyard... but definitely something that would look really amazing if I can get it right. what do people use this courtyard for? any pictures you have that I can see to visualise. I don't see the wall separating the reception room and the passage (where the stairs are). practically, if we walk in the house we will be right in the living room. space wise, it is great. but practically does that work. your thoughts? thanks again.

Taking water and drains a floor up looks like a horribly expensive project. And you'd lose bedroom space. So work with what's already there. The house looks finished well from what I can see on the photos (might be merely esthetic, but still a reason not to hack into it too much). So I've focussed on the extension only (and an extra doorway, so the bathroom is right under the stairs). Tear it down and rebuild. It looks like the only space that hasn't had some tlc. The grey line is where the old extension ended, so I've added about one metre. And proper rooflights, no plastic. And yes, if the roof height allows, bring up the floor, a few csm lower is good, personally I would not like a full step down. I guess fire regulations won't allow to bring the kitchen into Rec2, because of the stairs, plus a extra hallway would take up too much space.. And I merely copied the back wall, but some french doors would be nice, of course.

It seems to me that you would me almost doubling the downstairs space but living in a smaller space than you have in order to have many additional little spaces. Furthermore you end up with a house that is bottom heavy (ie not enough space upstairs considering the downstairs). If it were my house I think I would be considering if I could save some money on single storey extension to extend upstairs instead.

Good morning all, I am looking at a property which has huge scope for expansion. One particular extension which I was looking to do was a wrap-around rear extention off the back of the existing kitchen. Normally this would be pretty straight forward, however this particular property (a mid-terrace London Victorian) has a partly-dug cellar to the rear, with access down to the cellar via some external stairs in the back garden. The cellar is below where the side infill of the extention would be, which raises the issue of: Will it be possible to 'fill in' this cellar and then build over the top of it? In addition to this, the mainhole cover for the drainage system is also at this lower level at the bottom of the stairs. Obviously this will have to be re-routed and a build over agreement with the Water Authority agreed, however, will it be possible to re-route this to the 'normal' ground level of the garden behind the new wrap-around extention? I hope that makes some sort of sense, but I have also attached photos of said cellar, along with pictures of the stair access and also a floor plan. Any help would be really, really appreciated. Many thanks, James