extension and garage (part) conversion ideas

3 years ago

Hi
We are looking at how to increase downstairs space. (Need to add space for an upright piano = family space, toilet and utility using garage space?)

rear extension to make open kitchen diner?
downstair toilet and utility area in the garage
But we don’t want to lose side access.

It’d be great if anybody can give us an idea!
Thank you.

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Comments (3)

User
3 years ago
Is the garage single or double skin? Do you need any of it for cars or storage?
0
PRO
MacLean Architecture + Design
3 years ago
You could retain the front of the garage for parking or storage, open the wall between the kitchen/dining for a larger kitchen, tuck a pantry with utility access to the side of that (middle section of garage) and then the rear of the garage could be a glazed dining area that frames an external patio/deck and has views back into the kitchen area. This will keep them connected visually, yet functionally separate.
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Depending on your family situation (eg. do you have kids, elderly relatives who stay, do you entertain a lot, etc), I would make the kitchen into a kitchen diner the whole width of the house and move your current dining room wall to where continue the kitchen wall which will make your dining room bigger and then convert the garage into a lounge. If your current dining room is big enough for you, then just don't move the wall and make a part of the kitchen diner a play / TV area for the kids / office. Just then beware with flooring and the "echo" effect. I find with many more open-plan type kitchen diners there are tiles / wood on the floors and not enough soft furnishings which makes it really loud and echo-ey when kids are playing.
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Hi, need advice on the frontage of our garage conversion. I've attached a sketch of the area. I don't want it to look cheap or completely out of place. What I've sketched is what the idea is at the minute but I don't think it will look right when completed. The part I'm questioning is having a door and window adjacent to the front door. The front door is a big upvc porch type thing with a window next to the door. Won't it look weird???? Area marked out in red on sketch. Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated, even on the rest of the design....thanks in advance!!!! Whilst we love our house it is an ugly 1960s house from the outside so every little bit to make her more beautiful helps!!!!
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Hi Stuart, I want to start by saying I prefer to be frank when I give advice, but I understand that people can be offended by frank advice, so I would like to apologise in advance if my advice comes across as harsh. It is not my intention to offend. I come across a lot of poorly designed houses in my line of work. Whether they are poorly designed because the developers who built didn't care about the people who would eventually live in them or because the owners tried to better their homes, but didn't get the right guidance, and ended up making them worse. There is really no substitute to hiring a reputable and experienced architect when looking to better your home. Designing a house is not something that most people can do successfully without the help of an architect. Home renovations are among the biggest investments people make after they home purchase. An architects fees are only a fraction of cost and could potentially save you from a dysfunctional home that doesn't serve you and your family well as well as very costly mistakes. I think its commendable that you have taken on the challenge, but my honest advice would be to take your ideas to an architect and ask him/her to review them with you. I will post here what I can see wrong with your design and offer some solutions but this would really be a two way process between you and your designer that would take much more time. So, firstly the doors! I have counted 13 individually swinging doors in your design. Just to put things into perspective, my parents live in a similar size house to yours and they have 6 doors and after upcoming renovation they will have 5. I live in smaller house and I have 5, but really only need 4. In your design if someone was to close every door behind them, arriving home, freshening up in the wc, making a coffee and then going to sit down in the living room, by my count, they would have opened and closed a door 8 times before they'd sit down! The downstairs loo. If the door to the toilet is a standard door i.e. approx 760mm wide. The space left between the wall and the door is 14cm. The smallest sinks I have seen are 18cm deep and they are barely functional. Either your knuckles hit the sides or you end up with water all over the floor. Also where would someone stand after entering the toilet and attempting to close the door. What about taking a child to use the toilet and wanting to shut the door? If the intention is to use the study as a guest room, how comfortable would it be for a guest to use this wc. The porch. I'm not a fan of porches. Thermally inefficient and neither an internal part of the house nor an external part. The living room. The living room is a nice size and the only place to relax, but how to enjoy the garden from the living room? If the children are playing in the garden and the adults watching TV, how would they supervise? Its nice to be able to close off from the rest of the house but it makes it difficult if one person has to cook while the other wants to sit and relax but they both want to talk. The space under the stairs. This is currently only accessible from the living room. The living room door swings into this area so it cant be used for a desk or reading nook. This door also means that furniture cant be placed along the this side of the room. A portion of the living room becomes a thoroughfare between the hall and dining area The kitchen. The kitchen is a great size, but the vast majority of it is just empty space. The space is essentially just a thoroughfare. This thoroughfare serves the same function as the one in the living room. The large cavity wall. This very thick cavity wall is right at the centre of the house. Would be great to be able to give it another function or thin it down. The conservatory. I am not a huge fan of conservatories. They are too cold to use most of the year and when the weather is warm enough to use them its also warm enough to sit outside! The are thermally very inefficient and take the same heat to warm up as it takes to heat the entire house. Although they have large amounts of glass in them, they will significantly reduce the light levels in the room they are attached to. The back doors. Oh the doors! The house has one door at the front. This one door alone leads to the great wide world and the universe beyond, but at the back of the house, however, there are 3 doors right next to each other, used to access only one small patio! If you consider each of swings then there are 5 doors leading to this one patio! (Apologies, I've had to split this long post up as I tried earlier and broke the submit button!)
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Sorry to resurrect an old thread that I totally forgot to check. Thanks both for suggestions :-). We did eventually put a door from hall into garage to get things moving in the right direction but life gets in the way. We now want to extend the kitchen into the passage that runs down the side of the kitchen, which is just part of the garage so we can create a U shape kitchen with breakfast bar. The kitchen had already been extended into the garage by 1.5m when we moved in, so the wall we want to knock down is non supporting. The extension would only be 1 x 3m into the garage, we'd brick up on both sides to block from garage and the bit that juts out onto the patio. Would need pipes & electrical cables re-routing and all the works associated with making it into a liveable area. It would also mean we'd need to knock through to the patio from the kitchen, the existing window is 1.2m wide and 2.05m from floor to lintel, figured we wouldn't have too much trouble replacing this with a door? Looking for an idea of cost really if anyone has any idea? We are Midlands based. Any advice much appreciated :-)
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Kawasaki Monica
Original Author
3 years ago
Hi Sarah, it’s a brick wall and we don’t keep the car there but would need some storage space.

Hi MacLean Architecture + Design, what a great idea! That sounds perfect!! Thank you for the advice.

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extension and garage (part) conversion ideas

Comments (3)

User

MacLean Architecture + Design

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Kawasaki Monica
Original Author

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extension and garage (part) conversion ideas

Comments (3)

User

MacLean Architecture + Design

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Kawasaki MonicaOriginal Author

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Kawasaki Monica
Original Author