House Extension Project

This project quickly followed the LifeBox project (which if you have read my blog about that project I was happily to see go). When we were given to project brief for this I was very excited to say the least; working on a real project with a real client is the way I want to work.

In the first week of the project we were assigned to a team, we were divided up to focus on different tasks, choosing to my strength I decided to do the group CAD work. Another sub group where tasked to do a site survey and within a 2hr visit produce a fully measure survey of the house, which had its problems with the measurements now adding up. After a couple of days of recalculating dimensions with site photographs, the base drawings were complete and the design stage of the project begun. Below are some photographs of the original house.

Side Facade

Front Facade

Back Facade

 As can be seen on the photograph of the back facade, there had already been a single extension done on the back of the property with a conservatory. However both the conservatory and extension had been poorly constructed and therefore my design incorporated the demolition of this previous extension to make way for the new, 2-storey extension. 

Over the next few weeks we built up our portfolio of work which included a series of deadlines. These deadlines, every fortnight, where challenging yet helped pushing you to finish the work off early, which I believe  made the project more and more interesting. The work we had to was nothing which we hadn’t done before, the Construction Tech 1 module we have done throughout the year has been very helpful in completing this work, however I had to find new details for boundary gutter work (to avoid a party wall agreement). Below is a collection of pdf images of my final, 2 storey extension on the read of the property.

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

My 2-storey extension provides a new, open plan kitchen and dining area with an enclosed utility room. I also have added the conversation of the understairs storage into a small powder room (toilet ans sink). Upstairs the extension provides a nice master bedroom, and the split of the original spare room creates an en-suite for the master bedroom and separate bathroom (as shown in the ground and first floor plans).

Side (South-East) Elevation

Back (North East) Elevation

I have to admit that this has been the most enjoyable project I have done in the past two years of university. This is the first project that I’ve done which has real life potential and could be used in the design of the client’s extension (waiting on the result on which design the client has chosen). Also, because the project has been a real one it has made it very interesting and pushed me into doing the best work I could do. No words could describe how happy I would be if my design was chosen by the client!