Hi Louise. In the end we merely added new windows and a new door. We went for a mixture of Sapele and aluminium to break up the width of the house. The windows are made by Smart and are the Alitherm Heritage 47 range which are supposed to a close match to Critall. We also converted our garage and matched the windows and use of Sapele frame as well as having a bespoke Sapele gate. We're still not convinced we made the right choice by adding two sapele windows - but we always have the option to add aluminium ones to replace them and they are not too costly. So - it's not 100% what we wanted, but for the budget we had we are very pleased. The garage conversion is very cool inside with bespoke ply shelves/desk and seating area as well as ply walls. It is a homage to Corbusier and his Cabana in South of France :)

They put the loo near the door for people over 60 like me coming back from the shops!! Love Becci’s ideas. My late Father in Laws house was almost the mirror image of this one. The new occupants converted half the garage to a play room knocking through the back of the cupboard and took down the study / dining room wall to make a large kitchen diner. Studying ‘Your Home Made Perfect’ on the BBC - see last weeks episode on the 90s house, as very similar to this, try to get a sight line from the front door through the house to the garden so make the study window into the doors into the garden. This will make the house seem so much bigger. So adapting Becci’s plan slightly, leave the under stairs cupboard as is, open up the dining room kitchen wall and move the dining room doors to the study window and vice versa. If you do move the loo to where the utility is you could open the entrance hall up to make this very grand space. Easy!!!

No insulation on the plastierboard. And rads are fine. Problem is drafts aeound wall cavity (you can feel it when you remove a plug face). Extra layer of insulation would have dealt with this we think? but apparebtly not needed when xhanged to using blockwork for outer wall. Builder thinks it is draft from void underneath (floating floor) which we have access to. He thinks adding a layer of insulation to the bottom of the floor will help solve it. We dont know if block work is air tight? and if the void is a problem for the ventilation gap in the walls and air movement there.

We're currently having an extension built, builders on site preparing the footing and brickwork starting in a week or so, but I've hit a problem with our cavity walls specs. On the architect drawings (top down plans and structure cross-section) it shows 100mm facing brick, 100mm cavity, 100m blockwork (then normal plasterboard). All of the floorplan measurements are based on this size of cavity wall for the whole build. Our builder (who I have complete faith in) however says that the plans are wrong, it shuold have an additional 90mm of insulation board on all internal facing walls.... this has come as a shock as of course we agreed to the plans and had planning permission approved for what's on the plans. The new kitchen we've had planned and ordered will need to be redone, and the rooms are now 180mm (90mm each side) smaller floorspace than we were expecting. All this has only come to light right when the work is fully underway. With the plans, our architect included a "General Notes" page which includes this regarding the cavity walls: "6.0 EXTERNAL WALLS: (max 0.18W/m2k U-value) 315mm nominal cavity work, finished in facing brickwork. 100mm facing brickwork, 100mm full fill cavity insulation cavity with 90mm 'Kingspan Kooltherm K106' (0.021 W/mk) foil-backed extruded insulation to internal face (continued min 150mm below ground floor insulation level) and maintain 50mm clear cavity, 100mm Celcon Standard (0.15 Wmk) blockwork 3.5N/mm2 finished internally with 2 coat 13mm plaster." Before I contact our architect and try and find out what went wrong here, can anyone confirm whether the above tallies with what our builder is saying? I also feel as though surely the local Planning department should have picked up on this conflict. Can anyone offer advice on what options there might be to try and reduce the size of these walls? Are there thinner options available for example with the same thermal properties? This is a very standard south-facing kitchen / diner extension, really nothing fancy at all.