When planning home improvements, it’s not uncommon for homeowners to feel torn between what they want and what their budget allows. This recent project perfectly highlights that challenge – our clients had big ambitions for both additional bedrooms and a more spacious kitchen living area, but trying to achieve everything at once meant making too many compromises. In this post, we take a closer look at how we helped them rethink their approach and find a smarter, more manageable solution that delivers real value now, while keeping future plans firmly in sight.
The dilemma
Our clients had recently moved into their new home and wanted to explore the possibility of extending/remodeling their home; the problem was that they needed those additional bedrooms but wanted that larger kitchen/family room; the ground floor had previously been extended be it badly, remodeling along with a loft conversion was outside of there budget well not quite they could have stretched themselves, but that meant installing their 2nd choice kitchen, forgetting the underfloor heating, not including the second bedroom in the loft area, it became apparent that there was going to be too many scarifies.
ABM Lofts can supply the complete architectural design and build service or design only or build to your plans if you have had them prepared by others your project; your choice, how you use our services is entirely at your discretion.
The solution
When clients are met with this dilemma, we always recommend they stop and revisit the project further down the line when the improvement is less cost-prohibited or phase by phase; we mean to do loft conversion now and then extend/remodel in the future or the other way round depending on your wants/needs.
After various meetings, it was decided that they work from the top down, i.e. the loft conversion now, along with improvements to the first floor, and revisit the kitchen/ground floor in the future.
So so important
Share your home’s road map; by the road map, we mean what you want your home to provide you in the future with whoever you deiced to work with, be it an architect/designer/technician. You do not want to have to undo anything, as mistakes can be costly or simply out of the question.
The loading of your home is all connected by the weight distributed throughout the structure; for instance, if you were to knock down a wall in the kitchen to have an open-plan theme, the engineer would work out the weight distributed (loadings) to determine the size of the beam required, you then complete the works finally have this lovely kitchen, you then decide to extend upwards be it a loft or another storey above guess what the loadings change Mr/mrs beam has to be changed it gets worse so please share your thoughts/ pathway.
Communication is key
We always ask our clients what the end game is. Have you thought of this? How about that; we then design your improvements/extensions for your today and tomorrows; you do not have to carry out the complete work in one go; you can phase just to ensure you keep building control in the loop, as they will want to separate their fees.
Works summary in brief
On this particular project, we converted the loft space to achieve the master bedroom, including a spacious en-suite along with a 2nd guest bedroom that was going to be used as a temporary home office. On the first floor, we created a sizeable four-piece family bathroom and a utility; utilities to the first floor are becoming increasingly popular. We updated the existing en-suite to what was the master bedroom and installed French doors that would then lead onto a balcony.
Complete rewiring, along with a pressurized heating system, made the changes bulletproof. The old and drafty windows were changed to an in-frame-grained profile that provided a contemporary but still traditional theme.
Our office is based on the outskirts of
Horsham, West Sussex, which provides a perfect location to offer a comprehensive building service for those who wish to extend/modernise their home. We cover:
Crawley
Dorking
Horsham
Reigate
Billingshurst
And throughout West Sussex, Surrey and the southeast.
If you would like to come to us, our office is open from 9.00 am to 4.30 Monday to Friday please, please do call to arrange the meeting to avoid disappointment, hate to miss you.
