Victorian Half House - Extension Dilemma

[Partriguez]

Hi,

My wife and I live in a 2 bedroom half-house on Silvester Road and we are currently planning a rear extension and loft conversion as we would like to start a family, love the area and don't want to move out of the area to be able to afford a 3 bed house! We are struggling to decide on a suitable layout and design.

As those of you who live in a half-house understand, the trade off with a half-house versus a normal house is you share a front door and hallway with your neighbour (with 2 internal entrance doors thereafter)and the bathroom is normally always on the ground floor. We have an existing, but very old, rear L-shaped extension incorporating a galley kitchen and bathroom. We are unsure whether to move the bathroom upstairs by using some of the precious bedroom space or to keep it downstairs but fill-in the side return and open up the kitchen - full width with bi-fold doors and sky-lights. Has anyone done this to their half-house?

We are also thinking of converting the loft at the same time (suffer the disruption in one go!) but we are struggling to visualise the space that the loft conversion with en-suite would provide. Are there any local half-house owners reading this that have converted their loft? We would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to show us your loft conversion (in person or via pictures) so that we can understand what the space will look like.

Where did you position your new staircase? was it directly above the existing staircase? If so, is the size of the second bedroom still adequate for a child's room?

Thank you so much and sorry for all the questions!

[intexasatthe moment]

I had a look on Southwark's interactive planning map to see if other houses in your road who'd had work done had any useful plans on line .

But sadly it now seems that "older" applications ( though is 3 years ago really old ? ) have no documents on line .

Such a shame .

I didn't check Landells half houses ,might be some there .

[bobbsy]

I don't have a half house, but I did look at a few some years ago when looking to buy. Two that I remember had loft conversions, but the staircase for both was up from the (existing) second bedroom. That put me off buying as it meant that the loft became a bedroom but the room with the staircase couldn't really be used for much other than a home office/sitting room.

[sheff]

I owned one similar to the Silvester roads one, and my now wife lived in the one next door!

So, sharing a hallway is not such a bad thing :-)

For a while it was like having one big house with the doors open.

Anyway - both were differently configured - and hers had the loft done by the people we sold it to.

The staircase naturally returns on itself but you can still retain the window on the staircase for light.

The smaller 2nd bedroom usually then becomes a fairly large bathroom.

And - you can get 2 fairly decent bedrooms in the loft - certainly for children.

If you can stretch to it then the full width extension is always a bonus. Mine had a larger extension width wise) and that made a huge difference to the kitchen feel. My wife's was still on the original outbuildings foot print.

The killer was the staircase when the loft was done because usually on a half house the staircase is open straight onto the downstairs rooms. So you end up having to create a fireproof core landing or put in a sprinkler (which is what our neighbours did).

ETA - the key is removing any chimney breasts. Certainly the ones that are in the rooms furthest from the road. If you keep the bathroom on the ground floor then the smaller room can at a push be a small single, again more for children. Then you have the option of an en-suite larger room in the loft.

[HRE]

I would love to see what others have done in these Half houses as we are in one too and looking to extend into the loft also.