[Festerfly]

We are looking into buying our first home. Due to budget constraints and already having two children (with a third on the way! ) we are kind of restricted to properties that require work which are of a suitable size and within our budget.

Basically, we have found a house that we consider perfect for our needs but will also need to do alot of renovation throughout. The house was previously lived in by an old lady who sadly has recently died. the interior decor and such has nt been touched in at least 15 years if not longer

This is great for us becuase it just us the opportunity to build it up to our standard and put our own mark on it.

the questions i have are:

This is the current layout of the house

as you can see, there are lot of off built in cupboards and such.. and the second front door leading to the utility room is rather odd and unhealpful to say the least..

what we propose is this:

which in theory gives us a much more usable living space and at the same time doesn't reuire too much structral work.. The only Load bearing walls i can see (from the plans and viewings etc) is the wall between the kitchen and Utilty room, and the additional front door from the utility room.

The others are all single brick cupboards.

Our plan would be to remove the cupbaords throughout, change the central heating to a Combi Boiler system (situated in the loft, exisiting boiler is a back boiler in the living room chimney and a hot water cylinder in Bedroom 2 Cupboard). also we would seal up the exisiting back door from the kitchen and turn the living room window into some french doors etc.

aside from the expected replacement plumbing and electrics throughout i would also like to 'network' the entire house for any future upgrades that we may carry out AV wise etc.. would i be best running ethernet cabling to each room from a centrally located hub (i.e. under the stairs) or otherwise.. without spending thousands of pounds in the process.

I am confident that we are able to do alot of the work ourselves except the removal of the load bearing wall, double glazing, gas works and the full rewire but we have friends who are able to do this for us (builders and tradesmen etc)

Any bodu have any suggestions?

We havent purchased the house yet as its a sealed bids type auction but due to its price and expected return for just basic works, we have been advised that its not able to privide a suitable return for an investment purchase so our main competitors are just other FTB's.....

Heres a front pic currently too:

The back:

and the current wall paper (which i quite like!):

[KirkSi]

Nice looking plans there, they seem to make sense to me, but then I'm no expert. From other threads I've read recently it seems that it would be well worth cabling the house for future AV upgrades, but it might be worth thinking about using CAT7 cable not CAT5. It's backwards compatible with CAT5 devices but you'll be all ready for the days when it can carry 100 gigabits per second.

Personally I'm not convinced about the wallpaper!

[cockroach]

I'd keep the toilet and bathroom seperate if I were you.

[Festerfly]

Originally Posted by cockroach

I'd keep the toilet and bathroom seperate if I were you.

that was a consideration but with them in there current setup makes them both quite small/narrow etc... hence the idea of opening them them .

why the suggestion?

[connorjordan]

Originally Posted by Festerfly

that was a consideration but with them in there current setup makes them both quite small/narrow etc... hence the idea of opening them them .

why the suggestion?

I would split them, and also if you could afford it (cause it would be cheaper doing everything together) , I would build up the garage door and have a 2nd living room with same size window as the other living room. this would be great for the kids to play in and then for a future cinema room.

[Festerfly]

Originally Posted by connorjordan

I would split them, and also if you could afford it (cause it would be cheaper doing everything together) , I would build up the garage door and have a 2nd living room with same size window as the other living room. this would be great for the kids to play in and then for a future cinema room.

thanks for the suggestion.

Bricking the garage up is not an option sadly.. i like my cars more then my AV in most cases and having a garage is a luxury..

thre is another idea on the cards.. a friend of mine suggested this to me (he is a QS and works for a large contractors/builders)

then my wife came home and suggested this!

your thoughts?

[rucyj]

Keep the loo separate. With 5 people vying for bath and loo you need to keep it flexible. Trust me - been there!

rucyj

[ched]

I like your wifes idea of splitting the through lounge. But with one change, keep a wall between your kitchen and the new dining room. The reasons for this are 2 fold. 1. You will have a dining kitchen already so an extra 'kids' playroom or lounge would be handy for all the kids toys and maybe one day a cinema room. 2. It should increase the value of the house as you would then have 2 reception rooms and a dining kitchen!!!

I would also keep the split between the loo and the bathroom unless you have an alternative loo somewhere else in the house.

I have just had another thought. How about instead of removing the cupboards in bedroom 2 converting the space into a second loo. All the plumbing is just in the bathroom and the soil pipe is just outside the new loo. That way you can remove the wall between the original loo and bathroom. You then have 2 loos and a combined bathroom and loo.

Alternatively you could convert the cupboard in bedroom 2 to an ensuite.

[Dr Force]

Hi matey

The wifes idea's are good but the kitchen size seems a bit out of synch with the overall size of the property.Also I would think about adding a decent sized
conservatory in the future to the back of the existing living /dining area.

If you had the kitchen as described by the boss then that idea sort of goes out the window as the conservatory would end up attached to the kitchen wich is a bit odd (just trying to make you think ahead)

The QS has got the balance about right IMHO, not to mess around with the layout too much, but adding touches where it matters (the bathroom and open plan kitchen/dinning area)

Those sort of mid 60's houses are known to have floating floors (about a 2 foot drop below the floor boards) this means its often easy to re-wire as the chasing for the ring mains down stairs are done up to the sockets rather than down, thus far less work.The light switches also may well have metal conduit, so you can feed new cables down those also.

Our house looks similar and I re-wired it in a weekend

The front room is a lovely size for a good AV set up and is large enough to split the use ie sitting area one end and maybe a nice desk and computer at the other.

My advice is to keep things in balance and add a bit more charachter to the front (nice bay window for example)

Just a few idea's

Doc

[Beerfuelledman]

Where do you plan on putting the TV?

[Syphonic]

Just to echo: Keep the loo separate.

I wouldn't lose the en-suite either tbh...

[connorjordan]

I would go for this as you can have good privacy in the living room for watching tv etc, also the kids have a room for toys etc which is great when u dont have to trip over them all the time.

if the table/dining area is in front of the double it will always feel bright and airy and also has the possibility of adding a conservatory later.

Also if the corners of the front bedrooms already have ensuites or builtin wardrobes, I would try and keep them, maybe even making it into 1 for the main bedroom.

Connor

[Festerfly]

We have decided to keep the original plan (one large living room & open kitchen & dining room)... But i like the layout that you did Connor.


TBH we would use the rear sectoin of the living room (divided by a sofa or chair etc) as a kind of open plan play area for the kids and then with teh double doors open to the garden they have an extended play area for those nicer days.

sadly a Cinema Room would not get enough use to warrant being built in such a size house as this. But its a nice idea.

The Bathroom idea.. seems everyone recommends keeping the two seperate.. but we are still wanting an open bathroom.. maybe thats odd.. i dont know. lol

Never realised about the floating floor possibility, will have to check furhte rinto this when we re-visit the house on saturday..

Will hopefully have some morepics by then as well!

[MarkP80]

I'd definitely put ethernet cabling in, Cat 5e at least, all back to a hub. Maybe even two to each room. I wish I had in my house, but several rooms are now completed, and the Mrs won't let me lift the carpets/floors....

Seeing as no-ones mentioned the plumbing, I will. If I were you, I'd consider a mains-pressurised system rather than a combi boiler. I'm sure there will be lots of people will post to say their combis are great. However, I've had both, and in my personal experience, the pressurised system is much better. There is a cylinder (a pressure vessel, usually stainless steel) but you could put this in the garage. There are no head tanks whatsoever though, so it's much simpler than a conventional system, and you get really high pressure for both hot and cold, which makes for great showers. (Is this AV???)

Cheers,
MarkP

[stevey27]

i'd open up the bathroom as per your plan, but as mentioned see if you can make another smaller toilet room/ensuite in bedroom 2 and then make that bedroom 1

[megabit]

Originally Posted by MarkP80

Seeing as no-ones mentioned the plumbing, I will. If I were you, I'd consider a mains-pressurised system rather than a combi boiler. I'm sure there will be lots of people will post to say their combis are great. However, I've had both, and in my personal experience, the pressurised system is much better. There is a cylinder (a pressure vessel, usually stainless steel) but you could put this in the garage. There are no head tanks whatsoever though, so it's much simpler than a conventional system, and you get really high pressure for both hot and cold, which makes for great showers.

Just remember that this only works if the mains pressure is good to start with - water companies don't have any obligation to supply a high pressure. In my house the supply pressure is barely 1 bar....not enough to fire up a standard electric shower

[cockroach]

If you don't keep the toilet seperate, you should definately try and fit one in elsewhere. Downstairs would be best, but I'm not sure where.

[Festerfly]

Had a second viewing saturday this time taking parents along etc for a second opinion...

Also chatted with a neighbour who is a builder and he used to live in a property near identical and said that the plans we had proposed were good and as far as he could remeber, none of the internal dividing walls were load bearing.. just the central section (stairway etc) so we should be okay, but he offered to come over if we bought it prior to works to go throug it all and help too...

Top Chap!

Just got to see about the purchase now!

[schlange]

Originally Posted by KirkSi

Nice looking plans there, they seem to make sense to me, but then I'm no expert. From other threads I've read recently it seems that it would be well worth cabling the house for future AV upgrades, but it might be worth thinking about using CAT7 cable not CAT5. It's backwards compatible with CAT5 devices but you'll be all ready for the days when it can carry 100 gigabits per second.

Personally I'm not convinced about the wallpaper!

From what I have read the CAT7 cables are still only in a design spec stage. Can you actually buy and install cat7 cables for the house? what is the cost difference between CAt 5e and Cat 7?

[MarkP80]

Just remember that this only works if the mains pressure is good to start with - water companies don't have any obligation to supply a high pressure. In my house the supply pressure is barely 1 bar....not enough to fire up a standard electric shower

- good point and a valid one megabit. Can't remember what the pressure needs to be for a pressurised system, but electric showers are a different matter and certainly need it to be right. It's not too bad for a pressurised system though. A conventional system can give you a good shower, and the pressure isn't that great in that system - all you have is the static head from the head tank in the attic (hot and cold), so maybe only 0.3 bar at the shower valve.

For a pressurised system, one bar at the mains gives you ten metres of head at ground level, so you'd still have 5m static head or so (0.5 bar) at the shower valve, so still better than a conventional system.

A good plumber will advise for a particular installation.

MarkP