Dear Joe, Please have a look at this article. I have found that the ideas are ingenious. Don't you think so?! http://www.chezlarsson.com/myblog/2009/09/troubleshooting.html Good luck and keep us posted! Ana Perroni

Take it from me the pitch is very important. When we moved into our house, the previous people had put standard Velux windows in the kitchen extension which had a very shallow pitch roof, which resulted in constant leaking and water ingress, simply because the windows rely on the pitch to drain the water away. In the end, when we had the roof re-roofed we had to have upstands installed which put the windows at the correct angle.

You need to sketch out your options to see what looks best for you, that's what we done. And you need to tell the builders exactly what you want, eg middle gap in line with centre of middle door etc. eg see below. How wide are the doors? I wouldn't have windows ending nearer the walls than the doors. If I had 3 velux, I'd want the middle in line with centre of my doors. Is it bifolds, slider, 2 or 3 pane or windows and doors? I'd want my velux equal spaced. Do you have any tall furniture down any walls under sloped roof? If so, I wouldn't have velux above tall furniture. You need to make accurate sketches to see what you like. I think 3 is a bit much, I went for 2.

We used to own an old farm-worker's cottage with a separate, single storey coal/laundry building behind. We connected the two buildings with a rear hallway link building and gutted the coal/laundry shed to convert it into a new kitchen. We removed the old ceiling, put veluxes in the roof to add light and also kept a few of the joists (we removed some of them but had to put strong bolts through the remaining ones to tie them to the rafters.) We also put collar-ties on some of the other rafters and put extra reinforcements in along the wall-plate. Bottom line, is, I think it's well worth opening up the room into the roof pitch – it will look fabulous – but you should probably have a word with a good structural engineer first! :-)