We have moved from our 3 storey new-build townhouse near the marina in Portishead North Somerset UK to a detached 1930s house in the older part of town, which was lovingly owned by a family for around 40 years.
For the past 6 months we’ve been discussing options with our builder and architect to turn it into our dream forever home and we’re super excited that we have been granted planning permission.
Next step is structural engineer and building regs so we’re keeping everything crossed that there are no nasty surprises or major dents to the bank balance that we haven’t accounted for…wish us luck!
Here are our 1930s forever home renovation plans along with some of our inspiration plus the other house plans we considered and why they didn’t feel right for us…if you’re embarking on a similar project, reading our thought processes and considerations may help you to make decisions with yours.
CURRENT HOUSE
The house was originally a classic 3 bed 1930s house but the previous owners have converted the third box room into an ensuite, added two dorma bedrooms above the garage and partly extended it at the back which has provided a breakfast room and a small amount of space in the kitchen and living area.
You may be aware that I have my own collection of homeware which is also featured on Not on the High Street so as you can imagine I’m soooo excited to transform this house so I can style and photograph my products here too! EEK!
INSPIRATION
It’s really important to have an idea of what you want your home to look and feel like as it will help inform your decisions moving forward.
As I’ve mentioned in my previous blog post ‘5 Steps to Define Your Home Style‘ it’s really useful to create Pinterest boards in order to identify trends in your taste. Here are my Pinterest boards if you wish to see mine!
As you’ll see from our moodboard for the exterior of our house, we’ve been drawn to the white American style, with Georgian Bar windows and contrasting front door, so we’ve tried to marry these preferences together in a way that’s sympathetic to our existing home.
NEW PLANS
Looking at our chosen plans it seems strange that we even considered other options now, but it was a real ‘process’ to get us here. Further down I’ve shared the other plans before arriving at this one, along with the reasons we discounted them.
What I LOVE is how the house will (eventually – it’ll be done in phases) be fairly symmetrical at the front. If you’ve been here a while you’ll know that I love to create visual balances so it’s no surprise that my dream has always been a symmetrical home with a front door in the middle.
By converting the garage and keeping the car port on the other side we’re adding usable space whilst still keeping a practical storage area. Further down the line we’ll convert the dorma bedrooms above the garage and bring them to the same level as the original house, so we’ll have four true double bedrooms. Phase one is just the downstairs including extension as our budget won’t stretch any further.
How we configured the plans inside to create our dream family home downstairs may seem pretty straight forward but it really wasn’t that easy.
If there’s one bit of advice I can give it’s to bring a builder in (with good structural knowledge) BEFORE applying for planning permission because a good one will bring a different perspective to your architect. Show them the plans, tell them what you want to achieve, tell them your budget…it was this conversation that led to the plan we’ve gone for, which we actually designed with the builder then asked the architect to draw it.
More space doesn’t always equal more money, sometimes it can be better value to create a new extension than mess about with lots of existing structural walls. Basing estimated costs on an average cost per square metre is common in the industry but it’s not always going to take other factors into account for your specific build. In our case we feel that we’ve benefitted from having in depth conversations with the builder before proceeding with planning permission.
This is obviously just our personal experience, but I had an overwhelming number of people reply to a story on Instagram saying they wish they’d done this so it could be worth bearing in mind if you’re about to embark on a building project.
The architect plan shows the kitchen in the middle but you’ll note from the kitchen company visual that we’ve switched the open plan space around so we could have the kitchen at the back of the house.
WHAT DID WE WANT TO ACHIEVE? WHAT WAS IMPORTANT TO US?
- a house that is sympathetic to the original, whilst serving us as a modern family
- open plan sociable living with flexible spaces
- beautiful sociable kitchen with an island, a range, tea & coffee station and a pantry
- formal and informal dining with access to a drinks dresser/fridge that doesn’t interfere with food prep in the kitchen
- a sociable lounge and a separate cosy snug to suit the needs of us and the kids
- indoor-outdoor living opportunities
- a bootility where we can bring the dog after his walk, dump our coats/shoes and sort the washing behind closed doors!
- an office, ideally not too close to the main living area
- four good sized bedrooms
SOME OTHER OPTIONS WE CONSIDERED
I thought it may be useful to share other house plans that were thrown into the mix and what our thought processes were when discounting them.
1.Extending to the side where the existing car port is, converting the garage, no conversion of dorma bedrooms.
Visually I didn’t love the lack of symmetry at the front & to me it looked as if bits had been added to the house at different times rather than being one cohesive design.
Internally I loved the kitchen and living space being at the back of the house but there’s no pantry, the access from the bootility was into the middle of the kitchen and in our new plan I prefer how our dining space is a part of the open plan space. It’s formal yet still accessible. I didn’t love the awkward shaped cinema room or where it was in relation to the rest of the house either.
In all of the plans we’ve reduced the size of our unusually long WC/cloakroom (!) which has allowed us to create a new access point from the hallway into the office and WC.
2. Extending at the side but only in the back half, extending the breakfast room out at the back to meet the rest of the house, converting the garage, no conversion of dorma bedrooms.
I felt the same about the look of the exterior at the front of this plan, wasn’t sure about the practicalities of the bootility being at the front not back of the house (particularly as we have a dog), and didn’t love the awkward space in the cinema room.
I liked the flow of the open plan space and having two sets of patio doors, but our builder said he’d put money on us ending up with a pillar in the middle of the kitchen – my worst nightmare!! He also said we could have lots of issues extending the breakfast room out because of how close it would be to the boundary and that we’d need to expect to pay a huge amount on structural support because we’d be removing the external wall to open up the kitchen area.
Personally I’m not a huge fan when the dining table is ‘lined up’ between the kitchen island and living space so wouldn’t have done this anyway. I would have opened up the wall to the formal dining room but would have preferred it being closer to the kitchen. We were told that we should keep the dining room separate as houses with a separate reception room are more ‘desirable’ to buyers…if we were flipping the house to sell we might have considered this comment a bit more, but because it’s our forever home we’ve put more focus on what we want and how we live. We are however having glass doors installed so there’s an element of closing it off.
No office would have meant more expense by putting a cabin in the garden or using one of the dorma bedrooms which isn’t ideal. No pantry either which I really wanted if possible.
3. Double extension at the side, converting the garage, no conversion of dorma bedrooms.
Another external visual which didn’t sit right with us at the front. Downstairs the plan was the same as above but we’d have had an office at the front of the side extension. Same potential issue with pillar in kitchen.
Upstairs we would have gained two additional spaces in the side extension but at much more cost which we couldn’t justify so we’ve prioritised converting the two dorma rooms in phase 2 instead. I didn’t love having to walk through one bedroom to get to another but it would have been AMAZING to have the dressing room! This is the only thing that’s missing in the plan we’ve gone ahead with in terms of ‘wants’, but we’ve achieved all of our priorities and once the dorma bedrooms are turned into good sized double bedrooms we could actually use one as a guest room with day bed and dressing room storage.
4. I’m showing two plans here but they are similar and both far exceeded the budget so it was a bit of ‘take a look at what you could have won’ type thing! Both have the double side extension, one with a balcony and one without (off the master bedroom/dressing room), one with dorma conversions and one without.
The plan with the converted dorma rooms and master bedroom balcony was visually the most beautiful of all the discounted ones. As well as not being able to afford it we didn’t love having to lose space from a bedroom to create a walkway to the upstairs office and although a balcony might have looked desirable, we did discuss how much we’d actually use it.
Downstairs we’d gained more open plan space but the flow of it was a bit awkward by the lounge in the side extension. We didn’t love how the cinema room would have been configured and the bootility was still at the front. The same potential issue of a pillar in the middle of the kitchen existed too.
5. The plan we’re going for in light of our thoughts on the others…
We adore how balanced it looks at the front. It’ll be a fair while before we can actually create it, but when we do it’ll be the dream! At the back we’ve been told that the other plans are more aesthetically pleasing, which could well be the case from a professional perspective. What we have however is a plan that we think works for us inside, for our family, how we live, and what we deem to be most important to us.
We are sociable, we host – during the day and at night-time, so we wanted a flexible open space where we can cook and host at the same time, either indoors or outdoors, with formal and informal dining as well as a drinks area for the kids and adults.
I love how the kitchen is in the middle of our living and dining spaces because from experience we know that the kitchen is the hub of our home, so we can be cooking or making a cuppa and still be in conversation with someone sat in the lounge, outside or at the dining table.
The kitchen and dining table are right next to each other which wasn’t the case in other plans.
This plan allows us to have a pantry as well as a bootility (and at the back too!) plus it saves us money because we’re utilising existing external walls. We did spend some time discussing that in moving the kitchen to the back of the house rather than keeping it in the middle as originally drawn, the pantry access would now be in the dining room. We decided it’s worth it and it’ll only be a few steps away from the kitchen, but we’ll conceal it behind a door rather than having it open so you’re not looking at food storage jars etc while at the formal dining table.
By simply building on the existing extensions at the back and leaving the breakfast room wall where it is, not only are we saving ourselves a lot of money and headache with the boundary and original external walls, but I love how we can still hide the bins and outdoor tap/hose there.
We get an office downstairs which is away from the main living space and we get to have two sets of patio doors out onto the garden.
The kids are growing up and rather than constantly be in their bedrooms we really want them to have a living space downstairs where they can still be with us and socialise even if they’re watching a different programme, playing on their console or having friends over. The additional living room will have double doors on it, so it can be open or closed like a snug/cinema room. We may choose to use this living space during the winter and the open plan space during the summer or when entertaining, we’ll see!
I really like that one lounge is at the front and one at the back, yet both still part of the main living spaces – in previous plans I didn’t love that they were either right next to each other or stuck over the other side of the house.
You may notice that we’ve added patio doors from the open plan living room onto the car port which may seem like a strange thing to do! In some ways it is, but because we’re maxing out the space by extending out to the side as much as possible, and because there is no access around the other side of the house, we wanted the option of being able to bring furniture deliveries through there, amongst other things.
Keeping the car port has given us valuable storage space too.
Upstairs we’ve saved money by losing the double side extension because realistically we don’t need extra bedrooms and didn’t love losing bedroom space to a corridor, although a dressing room off the master would have been nice! When the dormas are converted we’ll have four double bedrooms plus two bathrooms which is amazing…
Without an endless pot of money we’ve chosen to not mess around too much with the upstairs as downstairs is where we spend our time. It’s where the biggest impact will be for us as a family at the end of the day and we’re super grateful that we can already do what we are doing.
I hope our 1930s forever home renovation plans help if you’re going through the same process!
I’ll be sharing our learning curves and progress along the way, as well as my design moodboards and decor choices (featuring pieces from my own homeware collection of course!) so watch this space, check out my Instagram or sign up to receive emails as an OSK Insider.
If you have any practical tips on managing a renovation project please do comment below as we’ve only ever put in a new kitchen and patio doors in the past! Eeek!
Until next time,
Kel
