West Berkshire

The replanning, rendering and refurbishment of a 1990s house to create a modern family home

The house had everything a big family could want on paper, with six bedrooms and three reception rooms across 5,000 sq ft, but the rooms were small and dark, the connections between them were awkward, and a triple garage with a snooker room above it sat at one end doing very little.

The brief was to rework the house without extending it. Everything needed was already inside the footprint, so the work was to find it rather than add to it.

The garage and snooker room came first. The garage needed more head height, so the ceiling was raised, and the snooker room above became three bedrooms and a bathroom. Raising one ceiling takes from the room above, so the work was in the balance: good ceiling height on both floors. This sequencing let the family live in the house while it was renovated around them, with the enlarged utility room serving as a temporary kitchen. The ground floor was then opened into a kitchen, dining and sitting space, with a light filled snug where the original kitchen had been.

With both parents often working from home, two separate offices were needed, along with a cinema room and a downstairs cloakroom. The first floor principal suite was enlarged and rearranged to include a dressing room, gym and ensuite bathroom, while still retaining six bedrooms.

Outside, the house carried its age less well. The unlovely 1990s brick fixed it in its decade, so the elevations were rendered. The roof and the existing solar panels stayed. Both were in good condition, and replacing things that work is poor budgeting when there is so much else to do. Keeping the original roof also means the house looks settled in its landscape rather than newly arrived.