December 2006 - January 2007

Dec'06:

Finally ... we moved out of Project 4 and into Project 5 ~ a 1960/61 semi-detached chalet-bungalow with potential.

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Two upstairs bedrooms plus downstairs bedroom, bathroom, separate toilet, lounge, kitchen/diner, archaic lean-to and single garage plus a lovely south-facing garden. The attached semi, we had noted, already had an extension so, over the next few weeks, we asked the neighbours if we might chat about their extension and our proposed extension.

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Our neighbours were very accommodating and showed us round their very tidy home (kids all grown up and gone) and enlightened us of the potential problems we may encounter, even offering the use of their extension wall as part of our extension wall.

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Their downstairs bathroom and loo had been combined to make a huge family bathroom, which we liked but chose not to do (more later) and they extended the lounge and kitchen out towards to garden, making them both longer (again, not what we had in mind). Upstairs, they had created an en-suite shower room/loo between the two bedrooms by combining a bedroom cupboard with the airing cupboard and installing a combi-boiler for the central heating/hot water so that the hot water tank in the airing cupboard could be removed. In the larger eaves cupboard off the main bedroom, they had created a study.

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We created our plan and contacted an architect.