1930s Semi-Detached House Reconfiguration, Chorlton, Greater Manchester

How can Pride Road maximise Alex and Rebecca’s semi-detached home to support an expanding family?

Alex and Rebecca’s 1930s semi-detached home in Chorlton requires an internal reconfiguration to accommodate their growing family. With two children and one on the way soon, the family primarily hopes to gain an extra bedroom, along with more storage.

After a planning application for an extension with dormer windows and a gable wall was rejected, the couple turned to Magda at Pride Road to see how the existing footprint could be enhanced and its potential fully realised. Magda and the team conducted a half day Concept Design Workshop to review the existing layout and how this could be altered to improve the family’s overall lifestyle experience.

The house has already been extended and the first floor currently boasts three large bedrooms, one small bedroom and a large bathroom. Magda listened to Alex and Rebecca in order to understand their priorities, which included provision for a master bedroom with en suite, three children’s bedrooms and a spare bedroom that could also double up as an office.

The ground floor has a large rear kitchen and adjoining conservatory, which veers towards being hot in summer and cold in winter. The kitchen gives way to an already extended living room and another separate front room. The couple were keen to redesign the kitchen and other downstairs rooms to create a family friendly space where everyone can sit and relax together.

We drew up a range options to reconfigure and maximise the first and ground floor living spaces.

All plans are to scale

View of front of property

The First Floor

Option 1a – the addition of an en suite bathroom

First off all, we looked at installing an en suite bathroom between the main large bedrooms that stretch from the front to the rear of the house. We examined how much space this would take from each of the bedrooms affected and which would be best suited to this particular change, while causing the least amount of disruption.

Option 1b – move the existing bathroom

Here, we toyed with the idea of taking the current bathroom at the front of the house and moving it between the master bedroom. This would allow the family to turn the old bathroom into a bedroom. As this room is dark with little natural light, we agreed that this ultimately might not be the ideal fix for a child’s bedroom or office space.

We have a variety of great ideas to help with home redesign projects and reconfiguration work.

Option 1c – an cost-effective solution

This was our quick fix option and involved simply placing a new en suite bathroom in the current main bedroom.

Option 1d – transform one bedroom into two

For this transformation we considered turning the existing master bedroom into two smaller bedrooms that would allow for lovely garden views. The en suite bathroom would subsequently be located between the other two bigger bedrooms.

The Ground Floor

Option 1 – create a modern, open plan space

Here, we would knock down the wall in between the kitchen and living room to create one large room. Then we looked at reconfiguring the kitchen so if the family wished to replace the conservatory at a later date with an extension, they could do so without too much disruption. Read our handy guide for more advice on kitchen types.

Option 2 – little changes for less disruption

This proposal offered the least drastic change and meant that while we would knocked through to the living room to create an open space, the kitchen would remain untouched. This would pave the way for a future fuss-free extension, as and when the family were happy to proceed with the work. Look no further than here to discover more ways to extend your home.

Option 3 – combine the utility room and downstairs toilet for better functionality

At the moment there is a utility room that houses the fridge and is accessed from the kitchen. Between the kitchen and the garage is a small toilet that can only be entered via the utility room.

We decided to move the fridge into a newly designed recess in the kitchen so that it would be in easy reach of the whole family. We then looked at grouping the utility room and toilet together, making them accessible from the hallway, rather than the kitchen, as was previously the case.

In this instance, the wall would still be knocked through to create one cohesive living space for everyone to enjoy.

The result: Home reconfiguration solutions to suit a flourishing family

Alex and Rebecca were extremely happy with our Concept Design Workshop and appreciated the resulting ideas that we presented to them. They decided that their first course of action would be to knock down the wall between the kitchen and living room and think about the kitchen design at a later date. This would pave the way for a family focused space with increased room functionality.

For our part, it was extremely interesting to listen to the family’s needs and sympathetically reflect their wishes in our designs. One such focus was around their son, who is unable to handle too much sudden disruption. We made sure that the changes to the layout could be made gradually so that he was able to cope while the rest of the family still benefited from the alterations. If you are unsure of where to start, we have information all about how best to invest in your home.

Alex and Rebecca say: “We wanted to think about how we could better use the space in our house, both the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom and downstairs to have a kitchen and family space.

“We’ve drawn lots of interesting ideas and we’re going to think about how we could best use the space to do what we want. It’s been a very useful morning.”

Finally, we discussed the budget together and looked at what was best to invest in first and change immediately and what could be staged and worked on at a later date. The next step is to obtain quotes from builders and double check the various price options before settling on the best course of action. Our plans are hand drawn to scale so that the clients and builders can measure from them to get first cost estimates.

Would you like to change your house to create more space? Book a workshop

"We wanted to think about how we could better use the space in our house, both the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom and downstairs, to have a kitchen and family space."
Alex and Rebecca

"We’ve drawn lots of interesting ideas and we’re going to think about how we could best use the space to do what we want. It’s been a very useful morning."

"For our part, it was extremely interesting to listen to the family’s needs and sympathetically reflect their wishes in our designs."

"Alex and Rebecca were extremely happy with our Concept Design Workshop and appreciated the resulting ideas that we presented to them."
Pride Road

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