Part 1........From Start to Finish: Our Home Remodel Journey

For those of you that follow us on instagram, you’ll know we relocated to Cheltenham last May (2024)

The house we settled on was "almost" perfect, and ticked our 2 main boxes which were: being able to walk in to town and being a period house. Its less than 5 minutes to the high Street √ and the house was built in the 1860's √

Picture of our new home, taken from Move estate agents listing.

This was not the first house we viewed or even offered on.

We viewed more houses than we can count but they just weren't quite right, either because of an estate agents wide angle camera or the location, if we had to hazard a guess we viewed 20+ houses before we found this one.

We actually offered on 4 before this one, each time the offer fell through or the seller pulled out, but as the wise say “everything happens for a reason”

We knew when we offered on this house we wanted to do some work, mainly to extend the kitchen and convert the basement in to a liveable room.

Before we offered on the house, knowing we wanted to extend, we looked to see if any other houses on the street had already extended, and if there was a precedent already set on the road for extending properties. Mainly the kitchen - as the kitchen is tiny! thankfully there was a precedent, more than 50% had, so we were comfortable that planning would not be an issue.

Although our extension plans were not particularly big we live in a conservation area which means that any changes we want to make need to be approved. Conservation is not the same as a “listed” building but we still need permission from Cheltenham council.

(If you'd like to read more on the difference between conservation and listed click here)

Our post on moving day. This is the 2nd biggest thing in our couple achievements to date, getting married being the first! Although we owned our home before this, this is the first one we bought together.

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Timings….

So we have never done anything more than update a kitchen in our previous home. So this was all new to us.

In our minds we thought move in May 24 and by December 24, we’d have it all done! Hahaha!!!

Architect

First thing we needed was an architect to draw the plans, a builder will need accurate measured drawings to quote on the job, as well as the council for the planning application.

We put the job on to Checkatrade.com and we ended up deciding to see 3 different architects.

We went with Nigel from Howard architectural, he is local with good knowledge of the area, on his initail visit he understood exactly what we wanted to achieve while making suggestions that in the end enhanced the final design.

Nigel also offers a full service. From drawings to planning, arranging the structural engineer and then putting the build out to tender.

This was perfect for us who are complete novices.

Finding our builder........

Next instalment - Come back next week!!!