it says J J 1909, my house was built in 1984 so it must have come from the old man's parents' house? His surname was Jacquier. i have been trying to brush the cast iron plate with a toothbrush, a lot of soot has come off but there's a lot of creosote on there. i'm going to see if there's something a bit more efficient than my son's old toothbrush!! also, because of the bicarbonate i can't get in there without getting my jeans dirty! really pleased with it though! might do another wash and see if i can get any more off!

It's worth looking for a shed on Freecycle or in Friday Adds, there are good things going for cheap or for free because people want them removed. You produce growing area needs to look good, I think, because you are going to need to place it where it will be visible, to get enough light. It also looks like you will need to protect it well from Rabbits. They may have something to do with the uneven lawn. The most useful thing I could tell you, as you want an orchard, is to leave a large weed free area around each tree you plant. When I say weed free that includes grass!!! If you put at least 5 centimetres of good green waste compost over that and stake the tree really well, it will be well established in a few years. The best Apple tree I ever planted had a stem but no head at all and it overtook all the others in the second year. Trees need TLC rather than VISA or Mastercard.

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!

Hey Lee, Just another idea not covered above, without moving the stairs or load-bearing walls (which is obviously super expensive). I wondered if you could move the new WC and utility in your hallway space, using that space also under the stairs. This would then do a similar thing as moving the staircase to open up the space but would leave you with wider rooms rather than narrower ones. I'm also not a fan of long halls as they are a bit of a waste of space. So if I can ever get rid of them I do! I am also not a fan of a WC right off a living/dining space so having this off the hall seems more logical. If you also have the WC in the utility/panatry area your guests have to go into it to get to it, which for me defeats the purpose of having this hidden messy space!!! The doors between spaces can obviously be adjusted, you could also enter the utility from the dining area if preferred but I've seen so many great designs for small utilities/WC's that would be great in that space. Purley going from the thickness of the wall between the dining area and old utility, I assumed it was load bearing, so left it in, but could open it up, or if you want more of a broken plan feel, you could put barn door type dividers in or glass doors to let in light but keep spaces sperate. Depending on how load-bearing the walls are. This should only mean a small stud between WC and utility and then the old utility walls in the new kitchen space. I blocked up the door between the dining room and utltiy but this also could be kept in if you don't mind accessing it from this room. Hope this helps :) Rhiannon