Good afternoon everyone! We are blown away by the amazing response we have had from this community, thank you everyone for your feedback. We are especially grateful to Jonathan for his valuable feedback.. the idea is genius and makes so much sense! Thank you so much Jonathan for taking out the time to help us! I have never seen my husband so impressed by an idea so much!! I have attached a couple more photos showing view of the garage from the front of the house along with the entrance gate itself into the property. I have also attached a copy of our floor plan. We would really appreciate your thoughts on what we could to with the garage and front exterior in terms of: Garage walls - What do you think about the brick work? Worth keeping, or should we clad? Garage roof - We currently have an unsightly metal sheet. We don’t want to fully rebuild but we’ve seen light weight roofing for garages which look like tiling. Any suggestions or thoughts on this? Front exterior - We’re looking to improve kerb appeal of the house from the front, any ideas welcome (cladding, paint, stone work?) Windows - these are the original single pane windows which unfortunately come with poor insulation. Any thoughts on what to do for those? Further to the front patio suggestion, is it worth installing an entrance which leads straight into the kitchen through the current ‘Study’? See floor plan. (We are planning to extend the current kitchen by a further 2.5m towards the rear garden). Any ideas, suggestions and comments will be really appreciated, thank you for your help!

Hi Sonia! I’m hoping to be able to get one through a door and window company as you say. The door I ordered was from a door company who sent out a surveyor to measure up the space and get the sizing right. But he said that they don’t make doors wide enough for what I want (even though I checked this with their customer services multi times!). He also said that even with their widest door we wouldn’t be able to also fit a side-panel. Sorry for the brain-dump! It’s all very frustrating since the whole point of the renovation is to make our bungalow accessible. Elki.

Honestly...... do you keep the porch doors shut like that? If so, it's going to affect how any door behind looks. You could have the most beautiful door, but with those porch doors closed over the front it's not going to look the same. A plain, all glass door would be best. If you do keep the porch doors closed then I think you need something with no design/lines etc on it as together with the porch it's all a bit much.

I would be inclined to have wall washing lights either side. Not sure about a canopy unless it is pitched like the existing porch roof with brick infill either side but otherwise kept open. Maybe stick with the lights first to see if that alone does the trick. Making the bed on the left the same shape as that on the right and repeating the planting would help to bring symmetry. I am not sure about the two tall Pom Pom shrubs in front of the windows. Sorry I cannot make out what they are. Could they be moved one at each corner of the house perhaps to make a full stop? Taking away some of the grass to extend the drive in front of the door would open up the entrance too. It is difficult to see on the photo but the grass seems to curve towards the door. It would be better if it followed the curve of the drive out and away from the door, basically an expansion of your step that seems to be a curve, and then return in front of the bed on the left in the photo. You could have a path here in front of the left bed in the same material as the drive. I know planting and reconfiguration of your drive wasn’t on your remit so I hope you don’t mind!