Extension Architecture

Most homeowners think of a garage as a place to park, or more often, a place to store junk. But a garage is also one of the best places to add real space to a house because so much of the hard work is already done. A well-planned garage extension can go up, out, or over, and each direction suits a different need and budget. Here are the three routes, and how to pick the one that fits your home. Why the garage is such a good starting point A garage comes with things a normal extension has to build from scratch. Foundations, walls, a floor slab, and often services are already in place. That existing structure is why garage projects tend to be cheaper per square metre than a ground-floor extension on open land. You're paying mainly for the new structure, roofing and fit-out, rather than starting with a hole in the ground. So before you think about losing garden to a rear extension, it's worth asking what the garage you already have could become. There are three directions it can...

In a place where the average house sells for close to £870,000, the smartest way to get more space is rarely to move. It's to look up. The empty roof over a Wimbledon home is often the most valuable room the house doesn't yet have. But it's hard to picture a finished loft from an empty, sloping roof void. That's exactly why the short video below is worth watching. It shows what a loft conversion actually adds to a Wimbledon home, the real before and after, before you plan anything. Watch it from Architects Wimbledon , then read on to see how it works on SW19 houses. Why the video is worth your time first A loft conversion is one of those projects that's almost impossible to imagine from a plan. The dark, awkward roof space looks nothing like the bright bedroom and en-suite it becomes. The video closes that gap. It shows how the roof is transformed, where the dormer and stairs go, and how a storage void turns into a proper double bedroom. For a few minutes of watch...

If you own a 1930s semi in Chessington, there's a good chance the most valuable room in your house doesn't exist yet. It's sitting empty, up in the roof. The short video below shows exactly what that space can become, and it's worth a few minutes before you start planning anything. Seeing a real Chessington loft, rather than just reading about one, makes the possibilities click. Watch it here from Architect Chessington , then read on for how it works on KT9's streets. Why the video is worth watching first A loft conversion is hard to picture from a floor plan. It's much easier to understand when you can see the before and after: the cramped, dark roof void, and then the bright double bedroom with an en-suite that replaces it. The video walks through that transformation on the kind of house that fills Chessington, the classic 1930s hipped-roof semi. It shows how the awkward sloping roof becomes a proper room, and roughly where the stairs and dormer go. If you...

Most Victorian and Edwardian terraces in Haringey have a hidden feature at the back. A narrow rear projection, the "outrigger", that originally held the scullery or the bathroom, sticking out into the garden. That outrigger is the key to the best loft conversion these houses can have. Join a dormer over the main roof with one over the outrigger, and you get an L-shaped loft that delivers two proper rooms, not one. This overview from Architects Haringey is a good start, and here's why the L-shaped dormer suits the borough so well. What the outrigger gives you Walk around the back of a terrace in Crouch End, Muswell Hill or Wood Green and you'll see the shape clearly. The main body of the house, and then a lower wing projecting back, forming an L in plan. That rear wing is the outrigger, and crucially it has its own roof. An ordinary rear dormer only captures the space above the main roof. An L-shaped dormer captures both, wrapping around the corner to take in the ou...

Most homeowners in Brent think about extending out the back. But on the borough's 1930s semis, the biggest opportunity is often sitting right beside the house. That gap down the side, sometimes holding a tired garage, sometimes just a passage to the back, is prime building land. Used well, it can add a room downstairs and a bedroom upstairs in one go. This overview from Architect Brent is a good start, and here's why the side deserves your attention. The Wembley semi and its side gap Brent's housing tells a clear story by area. Edwardian villas in Queen's Park and Mapesbury, Victorian terraces in Kilburn and Harlesden, and, dominating Wembley and the Metro-land suburbs of Kingsbury and Kenton, the classic 1930s semi-detached. Those interwar semis were built with space between the pairs, and many came with a side garage or a driveway running down the flank. That garage was sized for a 1930s car and is often useless for a modern one. Which makes it the obvious place to ...

Earls Court has a split personality that catches homeowners out. From the street, it looks like a district of grand houses. Tall stucco-fronted terraces march around beautiful garden squares like Earls Court Square, Nevern Square and Philbeach Gardens. But step inside most of them and you find something different: flats. The great majority of these houses were divided into mansion and conversion flats long ago. This overview from Architects in Earls Court is a good primer, and the house-or-flat question is the one that shapes everything here. The flat-heavy reality Earls Court is unusually flat-heavy, even by central London standards. The grand mid-Victorian terraces around the garden squares were built as single houses, then subdivided during the twentieth century into apartments and mansion-block-style flats. Add the purpose-built red-brick mansion blocks on streets like Nevern Square and Old Brompton Road, and the result is a district where most homes are leasehold flats rather th...