New bang up to date art deco extension

A fine 1930’s house is being extended and upgraded to create an improved room layout with better flow, and a larger Open Plan Kitchen Diner. The new design was partly inspired by the art deco movement, popular at the time of the house’s original construction and features ‘Crittall’ style feature doors and windows. Despite looking relatively simple there were several challenges to overcome.

In the past the house had been extended with a couple of flat roofed garages [that were leaking], built at different times, these didn’t appear to have had much thought put into their layout and the rooms nearby were hard to use with convoluted routes to access rooms. The new design simplifies everything by reducing the number of rooms, and ways into the rooms, while increasing the overall size of the property. The new rooms are a large Open Plan Kitchen Diner + a new Utility Room, slotted into the old Kitchen + a new standalone Garage and Workshop. The new layout also has an improved connection with the exterior landscaping so everything just works better.

The original design was a single extension that included an attached garage and workshop, but we felt the large roof mass was too dominant and ‘in your face’. We also suggested that the client’s ideal scheme was too big, so we agreed to scale it back a bit to save money and energy while still giving them what they want. This simple adjustment more than paid for our fees ! The final design features a detached garage, separated from the main house, that forms a smaller, less dominant roofscape and is less visually obtrusive.

‘Crittall’ style feature doors and windows in aluminium are going to be used, which should be a bit cheaper than genuine steel-framed Crittall glazing, that would have been used in the 1930’s, and should be more energy efficient. A feature lantern ‘frameless’ rooflight also to the rear extension. Aluminium coping to be colour matched to the new aluminium doors.

Flemish bond brickwork has been specified [long brick face then short brick face then long brick face etc.] for the rear wall sections, which will give a slightly different look and feel and also provide a nice contrast to the existing render. Flemish bond means there is a long brick face then a short brick face then a long brick face etc…

A mixture of pitched roofs and flat roofs provide the aesthetic and required internal ceiling heights. The new flat roof features a polyurethane covering, not GRP, that can go brittle after a few years and doesn’t accommodate movement from the timber structure below as well. GRP can sometimes form hairline cracks and fail. Polyurethane is elastomeric, so has more built-in flex to accommodate movement and shouldn’t go brittle.

A large 10 bay retaining wall is required on one side as the neighbours ground is higher up and their existing garage is very near the boundary line and new garage walls. Groundwater and structural waterproofing also needed to be considered.

Clay soil and trees nearby, therefore the Structural Engineer advised the new foundations need to be quite deep + suspended ground floors needed to be used, to both the house and garage.

An industrial themed interior design scheme is being used with exposed steel beams painted yellow [with specialist intumescent paint fire protection] + exposed feature brick walls + a feature plywood and Valchromat kitchen, hopefully from Wood and Wire. Externally everything is finished off nicely with granite and limestone paving.

A full 3D model was expressly requested and exported to BIMx software so the clients could walk round their project and experience the design in VR before the building work started.

The client works abroad so we held a few meetings remotely via Teams to help the design and decisions to progress in good time. Planning Permission sailed through without any problems and was approved several weeks before the deadline, a new record !

On site now, keep an eye out for updates. Going to look stunning when it’s finished.