Lounge/Dining Room Revamp

[Bon]

Hi guys,

We're currently contemplating a revamp of our Lounge & Dining Room for both aesthetics and practical reasons. Our house is 2 terraced houses, joined together (done before we moved in) and we currently use one of the former front lounges as a lounge and the other as a dining room. The dividing wall had an archway knocked through by the previous owners.

The problem is that the front door opens straight into the lounge, which is less than ideal if I'm sat on the sofa in my pants while the wife answers the door, or if it's a Salesman who won't take no for an answer and we lose all heat from the room.

My plan therefore is to build a small porch in the corner of the existing lounge, block up the archway and knock through 2 doors at either end of the dining room, so you will enter through the door, turn 90 degrees to your left and then walk through another doorway into the dining room. You then access the lounge by walking to the back of the dining room and turning right.

I've drawn some (really bad) basic sketches on paint as below and was wondering if anyone could maybe flag up some problems with what I'm proposing or knows of any Building Regs that I have to satisfy. The only one that springs to mind is a wheel chair being able to turn the 90 degrees when in the porch.

Thanks for any advice in advance!!

CURRENT

PROPOSED

 

[Steve]

What about the rest of the house - give us an overall plan, and a few measurements. There might be something really obvious you could do.

Is the house built straight onto the pavement, or is there a front yard?

 

[Bon]

Yeah the house opens straight onto the pavement, which makes it even worse as when folk walk past, it feels like they could just walk through the front door if it was unlocked.

That sketch is pretty much the whole Ground Floor. At the bottom left of the Lounge is a doorway which leads to the stairs (which run parallel with the bottom wall of the lounge). At the bottom right of the Lounge is a doorway which leads through into the Kitchen (pretty much straight through the Front Door).

The total front elevation is approx 9m (split 50/50) and the front to back distance is approx 4.5m. The bottom elevation is approx 6m in total.

When I've got a bit of time to get onto Google Sketch I'll get a proper scale drawing done.

Thanks for the interest though!!

 

[ColJack]

can you not just swap the dining room and lounge round? so you are entering into the dining room anyway?
a set of french doors between new lounge and dining will give some privacy..

 

[Bon]

can you not just swap the dining room and lounge round? so you are entering into the dining room anyway?
a set of french doors between new lounge and dining will give some privacy..

I had thought of this initially, however the lounge also has a chimney breast (not shown on my awful) sketch which houses our gas fire which made me reluctant to go for this option.

I might re-visit it as a consideration though as it would save on building the porch and the other building work would be minimsed too as we'd be just fitting a square casing into the arch and making good around that as opposed to blocking it up totally and knocking through 2 new doorways.

 

[PE]

What about a porch like you have but with an internal door directly opposite your proposed dining room door so that the front door opens into the porch and then you have another door opening into your lounge

No need for additional doorways through lounge/dining room then and you have privacy from front door by closing the new lobby internal door when anyone calls

 

[Bon]

Again, that's something we considered, but we felt it wouldn't entirely solve the problem as you'd have to make sure you closed the porch door before opening the front door etc... Plus it wouldn't help with the amount of heat we currently lose through there being an external door there.

Turning the entrance into the Dining Room means that we can fully insulate the porch and the only doorways in/out of the lounge would be from heated areas.

 

[ColJack]

true, but you have to consider the effect it will have on getting things like setees and so on into the property.. a straight through door will be much easier than having to try and negotiate a turn..

 

[PE]

Personally I think you need to weigh up the loss of good through flow in your house to sealing it from outside draughts when the front door is opened. The addition of a lobby/porch are however it opens will improve the insulation properties of that room and the privacy even if the internal door is slightly open

Getting rid of a through arch between your lounge and living room may well change the feel of those two rooms significantly especially as it appears to be quite a small house. you will also lose any heat transfer from the lounge to dining room aswell from your fire

 

[mikeyd]

You probably thought of this but..

There must have been an external door in the dining room once. Maybe the original lintels are still in place. How about reinstating it, block up the existing one and put double doors in the (squared off) archway?

 

[Bon]

Personally I think you need to weigh up the loss of good through flow in your house to sealing it from outside draughts when the front door is opened. The addition of a lobby/porch are however it opens will improve the insulation properties of that room and the privacy even if the internal door is slightly open

Getting rid of a through arch between your lounge and living room may well change the feel of those two rooms significantly especially as it appears to be quite a small house. you will also lose any heat transfer from the lounge to dining room aswell from your fire

Blimey, your house must be big if you think ours is small!

I do understand what you're saying though, and it is very good for bringing things in the house like furniture, shopping etc... and putting a porch in where you have to turn 90 degrees would restrict that.

However at the back of the house, the back door is pretty much in-line with the front door so the big stuff could be brought in that way. I'd say we spend more time being annoyed at having the door opening into the lounge & losing heat than we spend bringing large items into the house.

As for the arch, this is something that's been put in after the house was converted from 2 into 1 so blocking it up wouldn't affect the feel of the rooms to much.

I keep meaning to get a fully scaled sketch done which will give a better idea. Will get some photos taken too.

 

[Bon]

You probably thought of this but..

There must have been an external door in the dining room once. Maybe the original lintels are still in place. How about reinstating it, block up the existing one and put double doors in the (squared off) archway?

Yes I have thought of that, however I really can't figure out where the doors would have been. It's an end terrace, but the last house was at 90 degrees to the second to last house (in an L-shape). When the conversion was done the majority of the turned house was knocked down and the gable end re-built and to create a bit of a driveway down the side of the house.

Here's a pic of the outside

I think the front door for the turned house will have been inbetween the 2 windows on the gable wall.
[/img]

 

[PE]

Sorry missed the dimensions in your earlier post At 20ft wide its a decent enough width but the actual dimensions of the living and dining rooms may help. If its about 15ft front to back on those rooms then I'm guessing the lounge is no more than about 15ft x 10-12ft which isn't particularly big if you take out a chunk with a lobby area

From your outside picture why not out a new "front" door on the side wall - would be far more pleasant than opening straight out onto the street regardless of any porch etc

 

[Bon]

Sorry missed the dimensions in your earlier post At 20ft wide its a decent enough width but the actual dimensions of the living and dining rooms may help. If its about 15ft front to back on those rooms then I'm guessing the lounge is no more than about 15ft x 10-12ft which isn't particularly big if you take out a chunk with a lobby area

From your outside picture why not out a new "front" door on the side wall - would be far more pleasant than opening straight out onto the street regardless of any porch etc

Hmm, I like that idea! Got me wondering why they didn't do it like that when they did the conversion in the first place!

The only thing I woldn't be keen on is the "bricked up" appearance left by the removed front door. As I know nothing about brickwork, would a decent brickie be able to remove the lintel and make it look like there was never a dorr there? I'm guessing the whole front of house would need sand-blasting to make this work.

 

[PE]

Sorry missed the dimensions in your earlier post At 20ft wide its a decent enough width but the actual dimensions of the living and dining rooms may help. If its about 15ft front to back on those rooms then I'm guessing the lounge is no more than about 15ft x 10-12ft which isn't particularly big if you take out a chunk with a lobby area

From your outside picture why not out a new "front" door on the side wall - would be far more pleasant than opening straight out onto the street regardless of any porch etc

Hmm, I like that idea! Got me wondering why they didn't do it like that when they did the conversion in the first place!

The only thing I woldn't be keen on is the "bricked up" appearance left by the removed front door. As I know nothing about brickwork, would a decent brickie be able to remove the lintel and make it look like there was never a dorr there? I'm guessing the whole front of house would need sand-blasting to make this work.

Maybe check if you need planning for moving a door entrance?

if you dontl; want to change the whole outside look , you could presumably leave the door there on the outside but just brick over internally so keep the same look outside with a little sign pointing towards you new front door perhaps. Sure someone with more building knowledge can advise better