I’m looking at a house (dormer bungalow job) that has a bit of an awkward downstairs layout. The front room basically doesn’t have enough room to get a TV and my hifi against any of the walls – at the moment the only place it can really go is in front of the window, which I don’t want to do.

The main issue is that the door from the hallway to the front room is almost slap bang in the middle of one of the walls. This is due to the fact that the actual front door proper is a couple of feet back from the front wall of the house, with a sliding glass door flush with the front wall giving a small (2 foot or so deep) porch area.

It’s occurred to me that I could rip the porch out, move the front door forwards, have a hallway that’s bigger with more room, and move the door to the front room along the wall by a couple of feet and out of the way of where I want to put my hifi.

Are there any spectacular downfalls to this plan? Is the headroom in the porch typically lower than in the hallway on dormers? So far as I can see the wall between the front room isn’t load bearing – it runs the opposite direction to the pitch of the roof, and everything above it is studwork, but I’m guessing that slapping a door within a certain distance of a supporting wall would be daft.

Anyone from the daytime crowd got any ideas?

I’d check where you stand with building regs/etc.
I’m pretty sure your proposal to ‘demolish the porch and build a new extension’ (this is how building control will view it) is notifiable work – and you’ll need building regs approval.

I might be wrong, but check it out.

I personally wouldn’t get rid of a porch as it acts as a heat lock during the winter – we have just put a small one back in and the front hall is much warmer these days

I’m pretty sure your proposal to ‘demolish the porch and build a new extension’

He isn’t talking about demolishing or building an extension. The sliding door would become the front door (replaced with something better I’d suspect) and would not extend any further forward.

I think doors and windows are notifiable works. Probably won’t need planning but will probably want to speak to building regs, at very least it wills ave you hassle when you come to sell and the buyers solicitor asks where the building regs approval is.