We own a nice 4 bed end terrace in a nice part of our local town with good transport links.

Its got four decent sized bedrooms and the possibility of making the drive big enough for 3-4 cars, more on this later.

We are a two adult, two children(age 12 and 10 currently)family.

Whilst the house is decent enough the ground floor layout wont work for us at all. It was a two bed end terrace originally and the previous owners had a large extension built onto the side making it a four bed.

Downstairs there are four rooms, two front and two back with the stairs in the middle at the front running up the original outside wall.

This means there are two lounges(both not very big), a kitchen and a dining room.

If we stay we would like to move the staircase over to the new outside wall giving us a good couple of feet on the largest front room and then we would make the other lounge into hallway/ reception. I guess if we move the stairs then the bedrooms upstairs would need to change as well. This would also mean the porch would need to move as well.

We have a budget of around 30k for this. Is it feasible for that amount ?

The other option would be to sell up and move but everything else in budget is a lot smaller and only 3 bed.

Our house also had a good size end plot and as said before we could have the front drive extended to accommodate up to 4 cars which would be ideal for when our two lads start driving.

I should also add that we dont currently live in it as it is rented out.

Ideas?

Not sure on the structural side of things and cost to do it, but when we wanted an extra bedroom we weighed up the cost of moving and the price of a suitable property and decided it would be far cheaper to extend, retaining all the positives of our current home and gaining the extra space. Also means I wont be tied to a mahoosive mortgage for the rest of my working days.

That also had crossed my mind.

Our 30k budget would be my leaving the forces gratuity and therefore would not be extra and a mortgage.

That sounds like more than £30k worth of work.

I’m not sure hence why I was trying to get an idea of costs.

From recent experiences with the trades – not bad experiences, I hasten to add – I think you’d struggle to get that for £30k, although I guess it depends on what kind of day rate folk are on in your area.

There’s potential rewiring (which can get very expensive very quickly if the existing wiring isn’t up to current regs – currently have a spark adding security lights to our house and there is A LOT of extra work needed for him to be happy to sign off), moving & re-plumbing of any pipes in floor/ceiling spaces, re-plastering, re-decorating, etc. Depending on size, I’d expect the porch alone to eat up close to £10k of your budget given the demolition and making good of the old one.

I would get an architect to take a look. Moving staircases could mean compliance with latest fire regs / extra doors etc as well as advising on maintaining structural integrity if you’re taking-out / moving load-bearing walls

There’s potential rewiring (which can get very expensive very quickly if the existing wiring isn’t up to current regs – currently have a spark adding security lights to our house and there is A LOT of extra work needed for him to be happy to sign off), moving & re-plumbing of any pipes in floor/ceiling spaces, re-plastering, re-decorating, etc. Depending on size, I’d expect the porch alone to eat up close to £10k of your budget given the demolition and making good of the old one.

Cheers.

I had thought about this and to be honest inside the house apart from 1 light switch there isnt anything else to move. Also my old man does house electrics as a living so could sort that for me.

The main thing for me that would probably be a biggy is that the gas and electric meters are built into the side of the original porch.

I would get an architect to take a look. Moving staircases could mean compliance with latest fire regs / extra doors etc as well as advising on maintaining structural integrity if you’re taking-out / moving load-bearing walls

there is potentially one wall to remove and that is the wall on the other side of the staircase from the original outside wall.

you need to get an architect round – cost could be very variable depending on what structural work is required. New steel beams could add on over 10K for example, if required.

I would be leaving the stairs where they are and reconfiguring the DS to work for you.

Maybe keep one lounge as a study / snug, then knock through the other 3 rooms to create an l-shaped living space.

Worth chatting to a couple of local builders.

We recently looked at moving and didn’t fancy the extra £25k in stamp duty we’d have to pay if we moved (on top of the extra cash to buy the bigger house).

So now we’re going with a loft conversion and a new DS extension – the layout of which was suggested by a local builder and was much better than what we had come up with ourselves.

I would be leaving the stairs where they are and reconfiguring the DS to work for you.

Maybe keep one lounge as a study / snug, then knock through the other 3 rooms to create an l-shaped living space.

Hard to say without a sketch of the floorplan as it is but that’s how I’d be thinking as well. Open plan is great but for me only if you still have a room to go and hide away in.

We had thought about the open plan but that would still leave us with a not ideal sized living room.

Here is a link to the previous for sale advert.

Pics 2 and 5 show the lounges with 5 being the small one. no floorplan though.

https://www.zoopla.co.uk/property-history/35-ledwych-road/droitwich/wr9-9la/41069994

Leave the stairs, otherwise you’ve got to change that around as well.
Knock down the conservatory thing, build new single storey extension across the back, knock down the existing back wall to create a bigger kitchen/lounge with bi-folds opening onto the garden.
About £50k if you don’t change anything upstairs.

Leave the stairs, otherwise you’ve got to change that around as well.
Knock down the conservatory thing, build new single storey extension across the back, knock down the existing back wall to create a bigger kitchen/lounge with bi-folds opening onto the garden.
About £50k if you don’t change anything upstairs

This was another idea we had but removing the conservatory altogether and just having bi-folds.

Knock lounge 1 into the dining room and have that as a massive lounge with big doors into the garden then move dining room into the small lounge.

Easily 4k to 6k for standard rewiring of the entire house that size.

Spoke to an electrician who was rewiring a two room flat a while back and he said he would charge 4k for a 3 to 4 bedroom house … larger house more. 😮

Where has the rewire come from ??

renton – Member
Where has the rewire come from ??

The Flying Ox – Member
There’s potential rewiring

I think it is just for the just in case scenario … 🙂

Fake news, init.

Even so, £30k goes nowhere on a building project. Best find a local recommended Builder and get him round to discuss your ideas and get some ball Park figures from him. Then add 20%.

Hard to say without seeing a floor plan, but 2 reception rooms and a dining room are pointless IMHO.

Can you knock the whole lot into a large lounge and a large dining kitchen?. Is there still enough bedrooms upstairs for this?.