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There has been one bungalow in town that has had a whole new floor put on under PD rights - they didn't even go for PP but submitted a cleverly worded report.
Was not aware you could do that. I'd definitely want the peace of mind of planning if I were going to that time trouble!
We want to do a bit of work on the ground floor and loft convert ours but realistically not for a few years, makes me wonder if it's worth starting the ball rolling with an architect before too long, even if we get plans drawn and change our minds it gives us plenty of tinkering time before we do anything we can't easily un-do.
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Just out of interest, any difficulties getting planning for this? Because it's a hell of a transformation and obviously the extension is in fairly stark contrast to the existing house.
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Yes, lots! (see my post above). Nope, it's a workshop so it'll be OSB (maybe painted) inside, and clad outside.
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£3600, but I have gone a bit overkill because I've got some big trees quite close (probably closer than is ideal, but they are mature trees), and I want to park a car on it. especially considering they dug our road up to fix a burst pipe and I saw how thin the road surface was (probably about 50mm subbase and 75mm tarmac) and we get a fair few trucks and tractors going up and down to the farm down the road. But I'd rather have it over-done than under-done.
It's dug out 250mm, 150mm hardcore/type 1, 150mm reinforced concrete with fibres and A142 reinforcement mesh. Plus I had them dig a trench from one corner to a corner of the house (about 5m), for electric and a water supply, and stick in provision for a soil pipe (drainage) whilst they were at it.
I very seriously considered doing it myself until recently, but after seeing how hard the two of them worked and how long it took them (they allowed 2 days and basically ran out of time and came back for another half a day to finish off and tidy the site up), I reckon it would have taken me a solid couple of weeks worth of man hours working mostly alone, and it'd likely not be as good.
I priced the materials up to do it myself and it was around 2k, could be less if you did it all by hand with no machines but it'd take forever, with machine hire etc. you could easily clear 2k all in doing it yourself. I had quotes from 3.2k to 5k (I'm in Norfolk), but these guys came highly recommended.
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And a better idea of the plan, still moving things about a bit, going to bring the door in a bit, realised having the door tight to the wall is going to create a tiny slither that I'll have to clad on the corner, plus the ducting for the electric and water come in at that corner so I need clearance for those.
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Progress!
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Particularly for anyone who’s looking to do something similar, in a bid to keep costs vaguely sensible, the build has been quite heavily influenced by “stuff I found cheap on marketplace”.
For example, ALL the wall sips were a job lot from a guy nearby who’d just done built his own workshop, this was the leftovers, I paid £640 for the lot and it’s enough to do the whole build (I think!) - when you consider that effectively replaces all your framing, all your insulation and all your sheathing, it’s very economical.
The roof panels were the same, a job lot of leftovers from someone else’s build, I paid £1000 for enough panels (inc. most of the trims/flashings/guttering) to do the whole roof, and I’ll have some left over.
The Glulams were the most recent addition. I priced up a new glulam (£530 delivered), a steel ridge beam (£500 delivered), buying new timber from Travis Perkins to do a cut roof (approx £3-400). I found these at a reclaim yard and got all 3 (going to double up the ridge beams as I’m unsure on the structural calcs, 1 probably would have done it but 2 certainly will) for £160!
I realise I’m lucky to have the space to store all this rubbish but if you can be flexible and keep your eye out for deals, there are ways to do either a higher spec or lower cost (or both) build than you otherwise might if you were just placing a big order with the merchants.
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Cheers for the subs.
We’re having some internet issues and I’ve also currently got my 1 year old sleeping on me at the minute so I’m limited to the photos I can find on my phone.
This is a rough idea, it’s an earlier design, and has changed a little since but it’s ballpark (the size is correct). I’ve reduced it to one larger window on the left and added a personnel door to the right hand side of the same wall. The long back wall is against the boundary, the short wall on the left is south facing (as is our garden), the main front wall with the window and personnel door will be east facing looking out across the garden, and the right hand wall with the large door (probably end up being a roller door) faces north, towards the front of the property, because we have a wrap around garden I can bring the car round the side of the house and through the big door - no more fixing cars on the drive in January when they inevitably choose to go wrong!
The roof pitch might end to being a bit lower but if you imagine a big timber beam from one gable end to the other.
Also pics of SIP mountain (tarped), roof panels, and Glulams chilling in the garage!
I’ve decided to throw a water pipe in as a last minute addition, it may never get connected but nows the time to put it in before the concrete goes down, which also means sticking a soil pipe in for the drainage. Hopefully the ground workers don’t mind and by end of play tomorrow it’ll be in and ready to pour concrete. I’ll try and timelapse it all.
It’s on my long term todo list to do a sketch-up drawing of the whole property.
I’ve got a job coming up which will probably involve a lot of sitting about on standby so it might be an ideal time to start if I can remember to take some measurements before then.