Yoggo's Home Cinema Extension

Yoggo

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Worcester Park
Back in February, my wife and I kicked off the idea of extending our house. Main reason: my year-old son who requires more room than anyone else for his toys/books, etc!:)

Our house is a narrow 3-bed townhouse in SW London (between Wimbledon & Kingston), lots of bedroom space (over 2 floors), but a small open-plan downstairs kitchen/diner and lounge. We bought the house from new and have been in there 5 years, and like all new builds, the builders were obsessed with bathrooms so we have a downstairs loo, middle floor bathroom for our son and upstairs en-suite which is massive with a seperate shower and bath.

We considered moving but with the costs including stamp duty, plus the economic situation, decided to go for a single story extension to the back of the property, creating a new TV room and making the kitchen area larger and then making the exisiting lounge into a dining area and play area for our son. We opted to keep the extension to 3m to a) comply with the permitted development legislation, and b) not lose to much of our 12m garden.

First thing was we got a local company to design the extension and they gave us two options a pitched roof or a leaning roof. We chose the pitched roof option as we felt it would look better. We applied for and received a letter of Permitted Development in March/April and then started looking for builders.

After finding a local builder (we visited some of his work and talked to his existing customers getting really good feedback), back in June the building work began...
 
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The old set up is shown below. We had really nice Heal's Cherry units but these wouldn't fit into the new extension so we had to sell them.

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The old room (a bit dark sorry)...

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And the view from the back of the garden...

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As you can see from the photos we were worried about the amount of light we would lose when we added the extension, so chose to fit Velux windows in the roof and keep our old rear windows and doors. We also needed to paint the rooms a lighter colour.
 
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DAY ONE:

This arrives on site:

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and digs this...

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1.2m deep trench for the foundations all round. Thankfully they got the microdigger in through our back gate without having to tear any fence panels down. The big bit of concrete in the middle is what they found whilst digging!
 
We then have to wait for the building inspector to approve the depth of the trench before filling in the foundations:

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Once complete they really get cracking on the building and within the week the outside walls are complete and the roof is getting underway:

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The roof is then put in and the tiling complete (you can see the openings for the Velux windows in the photo).

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Thankfully all this work is taking place with the patio doors still in place so minimising the dust and dirt in the house as we're still living there. The builders clean up every day and keep the mess to an absolute minimum.
 
Velux windows now in and tested. We went for the remote controlled powered version because it would be easier than trying to reach up and open them, plus the builder got them for a really good price.

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So now the external building work is complete and we need to think about where all the kit is going!

I'd already decided to upgrade our Acoustic Energy Aego P5II Amp to a 'proper' AV Amp back in February and bought an Onkyo TX-SR608, but we deliberated about what to do for speakers. The missus didn't want bookshelves or floor standers so I needed to go for a small 5.1 package as a) the room wasn't big enough for 7.1 and b) my budget was limited. In the end I went for the KEF KHT8005 with a Kef Kube 2 subwoofer. The KHT8005 is a soundbar but only the front 3 channels, so looks unobtrusive with two separate rear speakers. It also gets the thumbs-up from the missus.

After picking the amp and speakers, we would keep the old TV but wall-mount it and we would also need a new AV cabinet to hide all the equipment as the old units we had were too big for the new extension. I went to Blok and they designed a custom unit for us which would store all the AV kit plus our collection of Blu-rays, games and DVDs.

I also wanted to keep the wiring as flexible as possible so I did a few sketches for the builders to allow us to still have the possibility of having the Sky HD box and TV connected in the old room if we needed to. To keep the wiring as tidy as possible I also bought a 5.1 wall plate from Nexxia, the remainder of the sockets being from the MK Logic plus range as I wanted a white, clean look and keep the cost down.

So, the electrician sat down with me and we planned out the wiring:

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Here is the wall where the TV and AV unit is going. The two cable trunkings on the right-hand centre were far too small to run any cables through so I got the electrician to put a drainpipe in the wall instead! From left to right we have: double gang power, double gang power, TV/FM/Phone, Speakers, SAT, Brush faceplate to run cables up to the TV, and another double gang power! There's a switched fused spur up at TV height too. Finally, we added a double gang RCD outside socket for good measure!

We have also got 2 double gang power sockets on the back wall where the sofa is going - so enough power!!

Lighting wise, to meet the regulations we needed to have at least 25% of the lighting low energy. I wanted dimmable spots for the main lighting so we specified two low energy wall lights in addition to meet the regulations. The outside light would also be low energy.

The next issue was heating. We needed a radiator in the room as it was now exposed on all but one side, but our existing flooring is concrete so it would have been a massive job to get the plumbing extended from downstairs. Thankfully, the pitch of the roof was just enough to allow us to connect into the plumbing for the radiator in the bedroom upstairs, so the plumbing was complete in a morning - result!
 
Worcester Park man too... Langley Avenue so more like North Cheam really. Always struggle to describe where it is!!!:)

More updates to follow over the next few days, only got round to taking the "finished" photos today even though the builders moved out in August and getting them uploaded to Flickr.
 
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Worcester Park man too... Langley Avenue so more like North Cheam really. Always struggle to describe where it is!!!:)

More updates to follow over the next few days, only got round to taking the "finished" photos today even though the builders moved out in August and getting them uploaded to Flickr.

WORD UP !!! I grew up in Kingsmead Ave. Did Cheam Common Infants & Junior (same as John Major lol), then Sutton Manor Grammar.

Sad eh lol ?! Rock on Nonsuch Park !! :thumbsup:
 
WORD UP !!! I grew up in Kingsmead Ave. Did Cheam Common Infants & Junior (same as John Major lol), then Sutton Manor Grammar.

Sad eh lol ?! Rock on Nonsuch Park !! :thumbsup:

Crickey! I grew up in Sandringham Road, also went to Cheam Common Infants & Junior and then on to Sutton Manor Grammar!!! Small world! :smashin:
 
Enough reminiscing and back to the progress.:)

With the main wiring planned I also debated putting in some CAT5E, but the cost and dust associated with channelling it in from the front of the house to the back excluded that option. I had been using some Netgear 85MBps homeplug switches and they had no issues streaming music and photos and were also OK with my DVD collection but I was pretty sure they couldn't handle Blu-ray. If I do start to backup my Blu-rays for streaming I'll probably upgrade to 200MBps homeplugs but they will do for now.

Speaker cable was Fisual 2.5mm studio grade install stuff from Audiovisual online. I got 35m of it for a reasonable price. Benefits of it are it is individually covered cores with the PU outer cover so well protected. Cheaper than VanDamme blue and the guys at Audiovisual online pretty much suggested it is the same stuff. (I checked some against a friends and it does appear to be the same, so probably a good buy as I got it cheaper than the VanDamme.)

With the wiring and plumbing now complete, the builders removed the existing patio doors and moved them into the new opening. Thankfully they fitted no problems and with no damage!

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The bottom photo shows the barrier we had to construct to prevent my son climbing into the building site! You can also see the first layer of plaster on the walls so the whole thing is starting to take shape.
 
Finally the plastering was all finished and we are now left with this for the main AV wall:

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The big loop of speaker cable is for the KHT8005 centre speaker, the fused spur and the brush plate will be covered by the TV.

The opposite wall looks like this:

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You can just about see the LH rear speaker cable on the right hand side of the photo. It's moved up higher than the listening position according to the THX recommendations. RH rear is obviously on the opposite wall. The grey pipes in the centre are the microbore push-in tubing for the radiator, and the terminal blocks for the rear wall lights.

The wiring and the roof and the Velux windows looks like this:

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Each window has its own power switch for maintenance. We went for 4 spots in the end as felt this would provide enough light and also looks symmetrical in the room.
 
Hi Yoggo, I'm going to be watching this thread very closely. The reason why? Because a little while back we saw a beautiful town house in Bristol, which I wanted real bad... but my wife didn't! Why? Because the kitchen was too small :rolleyes:

To save from deviating from Yoggo's thread, if anyone has any answers or suggestions to my post, please feel free to PM me :thumbsup:

I suggested we extend the kitchen out and make it into a proper kitchen diner. But she just couldn't picture it :eek:

Now I want to show her your progress and let her see what could have been ;)

Would the council have given you permission to build over the extension? So, effectively being able to make the room above the kitchen bigger?

In the town house we saw, the top floor was flat - so no possibility of a loft conversion. Do you reckon the council would allow an extension of another floor?

Back on thread; Yoggo, how do you find the KEF 8005 with the single front speaker? Do you notice a big difference from not having 3 front's?

I've got the KEF 5005 package, and TBH I'm not too impressed with it yet :( Going to have someone come round and see if I'm doing something wrong with it :facepalm:
 
Would the council have given you permission to build over the extension? So, effectively being able to make the room above the kitchen bigger?

The kitchen for ours is in the front so no possibility to build over it. Over the extension all we could do is extend our spare bedroom so a no-go. Our bedroom is in the roof space so we have no loft and no garage. You soon learn not to horde! Both our bedroom and our son's have Hammonds fitted furniture and we've added masses of wardrobe space to act as storage.

We now have the potential to make our kitchen much bigger which you'll see once I post the final pictures up, and that is our plan budget permitting for next year.

Back on thread; Yoggo, how do you find the KEF 8005 with the single front speaker? Do you notice a big difference from not having 3 front's?

The sound we get out of the 8005 is really good, I'm glad I paid the extra for the 8005 over the 7005 to get the Uni-Q driver arrays in the fronts and the extra width + the Kube 2 sub. Spatially you can still get the left and right channels OK as the bar is wide enough, especially now we've run the Audyssey set-up on the Onkyo.
 
Back to the build...

At the same time as getting the extension we also thought we would get our back garden sorted out with a decent patio and path, especially as it was now a complete mess with half of it already dug up. Originally we had quite a step down from the house to the garden, but now with the slope of the garden we could almost have the patio level with the back doors.

The builders got to work digging out for the path and front and back paved areas, putting down hardcore and the compressing it. You can see the state of the grass in the garden in the photo below:

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To ensure we didn't open the back doors and let the water in, a drainage channel was put right in front of the building and the patio was levelled so it sloped toward the main drainage point. So far we've had no problems with lying water so they must of done a good job!

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We chose Marshalls Saxon Buff paving as it was a good quality product at a reasonable price, edging the patio and path with bricks from the build to save cost but still give a nice finish IMO. Here's the paving slabs down before pointing. The row of bricks toward the bottom was a little feature the builders added to sort out the irregular length of the path and it worked a treat.

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We moved the path over to one side a little more from the original garden to give us one flower bed and then the left hand side as lawn. We made the patio area a bit bigger as well as the area around the shed.
 
The next issue was flooring. The original downstairs was a bit weird; because of the open-plan design, the builder had chosen to put lino down in the kitchen area and then go straight to carpet. The join of the two was raised and collected dirt like nobodies business. The carpet, as usual for all new-builds was cheap and nasty light beige stuff that was impossible to keep clean.

So - what to do? We really wanted a wooden floor but there were issues with the kitchen, so toyed between laminate and vinyl. Our neighbours had Karndean installed and were very happy with it, so that pushed us toward the vinyl option. As most of our furniture was oak, we plumped for the American Oak from the Karndean DaVinci range, with a thicker wear layer (0.7mm). Our builder was also Karndean registered so they quoted us a really good price - almost ÂŁ1000 less than dedicated flooring shops in the area.

Final stage of the build before decoration was to prepare and level the floor prior to fitting the Karndean. The whole process was about 5 days as they did the complete ground floor including the hallway and downstairs toilet. High-pressure adhesive was used for the kitchen as recommended by Karndean, in the end they used this everywhere; trouble was it took a while to dry.

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Final finish is really good. Relatively easy to keep clean, no noise and its quite warm underfoot too.
 
The final stage was painting. The builders painted the extension brilliant white, a cheap option, but recommended in case of any movement over the first few months - we may paint again in the new year but I quite like the white walls. We painted the rest of the floor in a light beige colour with contrasting berry-red pillars and recesses in the kitchen to match the soft furnishings.

This is the view looking into the dining area and play-area:

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The sideboard was also new and gives us a bit more storage. The Dwell unit for my son's toys we had already but the plastic boxes are from Ikea - not designed for our unit but they fit ok.

And the view of the kitchen:
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As I got some new AV stuff, the wife got a new toy in the shape of a Bosch American fridge-freezer! Its a monster but the space inside is enormous, allowing us to only have to go shopping every two weeks. The cupboard next to the fridge-freezer was home to an integrated fridge-freezer, but we've now shelved it out and put in the microwave and more storage space. Next year we hope to add some new units on the right hand side - we've taken out the radiator there in preparation.
 
And the garden...

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The grass has been re-seeded but we'll probably have to do it again next year. Not much but we're really pleased with the result as it doesn't feel like we've lost any space.

Flower bed looks a bit bare at the moment but not really had time to plant anything - another job for the spring.
 
This is the view into the new extension, with everything in place:

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You can see the position of the rear surrounds up out of the way. The curtains pull back enough to open out the whole window area during the day and let as much light in as possible. Here's what it looks like from the sofa:

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Not much I know compared to some of the awe-inspiring stuff on here and its only a 46" TV (soundbar is a little lower just in case I want to upgrade!). The Kube-2 sub is below the coffee table out the way from my son! It produces some great bass and we've even had to turn it down a few notches.

I'm really happy with the Blok custom AV unit, really good finish and stores everything nicely. The doors are all push to open, IR friendly smoked glass on the main AV rack with an open back and adjustable ventilated shelves:
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Just about enough room for the AMP!! The unit is based on the Aveos but I asked them to make it taller. The 3 drawers hold plenty of DVDs and Blu-rays:

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Blok also made me a new coffee table top to match the unit; I may get them to make some shelves too.
The Harmony One helps a lot (especially with the Harmony PS3 adaptor), but still we need a few remotes:

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We're planning on adding electrical blinds for the Velux windows and they'll work off the same remote. Unfortunately the Velux remote is RF so no Harmony integration.
To keep our phones charged and tidy, the Bluelounge Sanctuary:

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Great bit of kit. A bit steep at around ÂŁ100 but comes with about 15 different charging connectors allowing you to charge loads of things from one power source.

All-in-all we're really happy with the result. We've got the extra room we needed, I've got the AV set-up I wanted, and the wife is even happy with it.
 
Whats the square white thing with a screen with the PS3 controller, remote control and velux remote. Is the blue lounge thing just a charger :confused:, as for ÂŁ100 I'd expect it to make me breakfeast.
 
That would be a Sonos controller...
 

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