Hi all I wonder if you can help…

We are in the process of buying a house, this was originally a 2 bed end terrace which has had a massive double height extension on the side to make it a 4 bed.

The kitchen is in the extension part of the house and the dining room is in the original part of the house and we would like to knock through to make it open plan.

The problem is the wall between the two rooms is the orignal external wall from the property so Im not sure if this causes any problems at all?

First of all, Is it do able?

Would we need to get planning permission etc and do you have any ideas on how much it would roughly cost to do ?

many thanks

Steve

It will be structural so you will need it doing properly (ie structural calcs, underpinning or whatever they advise) and I would assume you will need to get it signed off by building control (but not planing permission). When we did something similar (built an extension which meant removing two structural walls – one of which which was external) we had to specify high performance double glazing (argon filled I believe) so it would meet regs for heat loss.

Does it share a wall with a neighbour? If so you will need to do a party wall agreement too.

Cost-wise – depends on what groundworks are needed but I would allow for £4-8k including materials.

Thanks for the reply.

Its not the wall between the house im buying and its neighbour its the wall between the old part of the house and the extension. There is already a doorway between the two rooms which has been put in.

So no party wall agreement needed but the rest stays as above – you can put a door in a structural wall but if you remove it entirely you need to put steelwork in. Due to the loads we had to put two in our opening (approx 12ft wide).

And be prepared for mess…..

Sweet.

I am thinking that the new extension side of the house has the joists put into the brickwork of the original wall so they may need supporting too

any ideas of a rough cost?

It will depend how wide you want your new opening?

I had a quote for similar job they quoted me 4k. They said they would put in a big steel r.s.j which would support everything.the opening is 12 foot if that helps.

The opening will be the whole width of the two rooms so around 2.5 meters.

If it was me (I’m a Bricky) I’d get some calcs of a structural engineer to draw me up some calcs then get a fellow Bricky/builder to give me a lift!

It will save you money getting the calcs/drawing yourself then someone to do the job

I will come and do it this weekend if we can agree on a price of 4 grand!

A 2.4 m knock through, should cost no more than 4k all in with any plumbing,plastering and electrics that are needed.
Should take no more than 3 weeks and if there good not to much mess