House saga

The house has taken a ridiculously long time, even by English
standards, and we still haven't exchanged contracts. However, we
haven't been spending the time idly. We've been spinning in circles.

The kitchen -- with its 30's era galley, 50's era linoleum, and 80's
era cabinets -- needs to be renovated immediately, and so we talked
about doing a ground-floor extension as well, to give us more space
and light. However, we also mentioned wanting to do a loft conversion
someday, to give us an extra bedroom, and everyone told us to do the
loft conversion first.

The reason is that, in England, you can extend a house by up to 10%
without requiring planning permission, and our local council is
aparently notorius for denying loft conversions. Thus, we should do
the loft conversion first, and then get permission to do the ground
floor extension.

Which is fine, except the kitchen still needs to be renovated
immediately. So we scrapped our original plans and started talking
about what we could do in the original space. The big thing is
knocking down the wall between the kitchen and reception room, and
installing an island, to open it up and give us more counter space.
Saturday I met with an architect, who wasn't particularly helpful.
(She rushed through the house in 10 minutes and then said it would be
"fine.") As Jess put it, this won't be a "wow" factor, it will just
be functional. (It will also be much easier on the finances.)

Here is our current drawing. Of course, this doesn't factor in little
things like type of flooring, countertop, cabinetry, tiling,
appliances, range hood, sink, lighting, electrical points, water
lines, or waste lines. And I don't know what they need to do to take
out a wall. And it's not actually to scale. But other than that,
it's a great plan.

We also need to strip the walls (it is covered in anaglypta, a thick
vinyl wallpaper) and replaster the entire house. While we're at it,
we're going to re-wire the electric, since it looks like that hasn't
been done in 70 years, and then of course we'll need to paint
everything. (No doubt Jess and I will do the painting ourselves,
although I haven't told Jess yet.)

It still won't be until mid-February before we have the keys, so we
have time to get more quotes and line up a contractor but honestly, I
can't wait.

Click to enlarge