Rita meet Ben. Ben meet Rita.

This week we had our first meeting at the house with our architect Ben to walk him through the house and to share ideas. Rita has a pretty basic configuration – basically two large rooms on each floor of the main house with stairs running up the centre. The lower ground basement flat is self-contained and so slightly larger.

Working from top of the house to the bottom, we discussed how we would like to open up the top two rooms in the loft by removing the stud wall to make one super master bedroom. The loft has a gorgeous view of the park down the road and Ben’s suggested we take advantage of the aspect by replacing the current Velux window, with a couple of new fandangled Juliette balcony style Veluxes. I’m not convinced about whether I would want to stand high above the street over my roof on one of those. Apart from it perhaps looking a bit odd it might give me the heebee jeebees, but it’s something to look into.

The view to the park from the loft

We would also want to incorporate a new master ensuite bathroom in the loft (who wants to be tottering downstairs in the night to go to the loo?), so what is helpful is the sheer volume of plumbing that is already running along the outside of the house, which will make that task a bit easier.

On the first floor, we plan to have a bedroom at the front, again taking advantage of the view to the park. Ben points out the lovely art deco fireplace and surround that is still in the room. That makes me happy. We notice that someone has painted over the tiles. Ben suggests that we could remove it and Rita might reveal something special. And I guess if we bugger it up, we could always paint over it again!

The art deco fireplace

 At the back, we will divide up the back bedsit into a bathroom, separate loo, and a utility room (or as I am used to calling them, “a laundry”). Ever since moving to the UK, I’ve never had enough space to have a laundry and the effort to ignore the vibrating sound of the spin cycle and the constant problem of dropping my clean clothes on the kitchen floor has often tried my patience. It’s so great to wander about with Ben who helps us to think differently about where walls could go and about moving windows to create proper sized rooms, rather than just working within the confines of what we see. We agree to keep the current loo where it is and separate from the bathroom. There’s nothing worse than waiting for someone to get out of the shower so you can use the loo!

We have A LOT of fire extinguishers. And loos.

 On Rita’s ground floor – which is I suppose properly an “upper ground” floor, we will continue the bedrooms down the front of the house theme. It’s at the back that the interesting stuff will happen.

The back bedroom looks out over the garden. We would like to – and it’s also a condition of our mortgage – to reintegrate the main part of the house with the basement flat so that Rita is restored back to her original glory. The idea is to use the back room as a TV/sitting room and to create a small mezzanine overlooking the main kitchen and extended dining space in the basement. By extending the roofline slightly at ground level, we can visually bring the living and dining spaces together as one. Stairs will go from the sitting room down into the basement, popping out by the kitchen. We are a little bit concerned about how much space this will leave us upstairs and down, but I am sure Ben will come up with something snazzy.

The view over the back garden

 As we wander through the basement, Ben also points out that the heavy wall that we thought was structural, probably isn’t holding anything up above so that is good news and means much more flexibility and space for us to begin our kitchen.  This also means that instead of extending the house by 5 metres into the back garden, we might get away with applying for less. Permitted extensions are only 3 metres at the moment, but we know we will need more than that. And although the Government has proposed a relaxation of those laws, word on the vine including from the Planning Officer is that the Councils will oppose it so there’s not much hope there. I then get really excited when Ben suggests building a pantry/larder in an area of dead space in the basement a la Nigella style, picturing it in my head with fairy lights and all.

Heading down to the basement flat

Throughout Ben raises all sorts of things like fire doors and whether we plan to replace the windows. Rita’s windows are pretty much all dodgy and don’t close, but she does have some beautiful arch shaped windows on the first floor. We probably can’t afford to do those as a first run as good windows are so expensive. But starting at such a low base means that any improvements we make to the house will make it more environmentally friendly, which is a good start.

Ben says he hopes to get the plans back to us before the end of November so that we can get into the Council Planning Office at the beginning of December all going well. So the first task for us to get some preliminary quotes from builders, at least for getting the gutting of the house sorted and for the tanking of the basement so that we have a good shell to work with.