Renovations & extensions
If you’re happy where you live but wish you could change a few things about your home, a renovation or extension can be a rewarding venture.
A renovation is a project to restore, repair or rebuild a property in order to improve its design and appeal, upgrade its functionality and/or its safety and eligibility for usage.
As the name suggests, an extension enhances the size of a property, and is sometimes undertaken during a larger renovation. Usually, an extension utilises garden or yard space to grow a house’s footprint, either adding rooms or making existing ones bigger.
Who are renovations & extensions ideal for?
If you aren’t specifically looking to move, it could be more cost effective to enhance your existing home than go through the process of selling your home and finding a new one that you like. The key factor is what needs to be changed. If you want to enhance your living space, as well as improving liveability, you can increase the value of your home with a renovation and therefore find the investment worthwhile.
On the other hand, if your home is severely outdated in terms of insulation, energy standards or building regulations, you might decide that the cost involved to bring it up to date can’t be justified and a move might make more sense. One consideration is whether moving costs and purchase fees, such as stamp duty, are a wiser use of funds in the long term than the outlay to improve your home.
There can be a big difference between the kind of project you might undertake – and the amount you should spend – on an extension to a property you won’t be living in within six years, compared to your ‘forever home’. Sometimes adding an extension is as much with a view to increasing the sale price in the mid-term as it is about adding benefit in the short-term.
Types of home renovations
Home renovations can range from minor remodelling, such as a kitchen renovation or bathroom renovation, to a complete layout rethink and adding rooms onto the existing floor plan. You might want to increase the number of bedrooms or add a study to better enable working from home, however a renovation doesn’t necessarily need to increase the total area of your home. You might simply want to update your home to modern safety regulation standards or make it more energy efficient to save on bills and improve your home’s energy performance certificate (EPC).
Kitchen extensions and other types of house extension
Kitchen extensions are a fairly common undertaking. You might want to make the kitchen area bigger and more efficient to prepare meals in, or you may want to incorporate a dining area. Sometimes the kitchen can be shifted out into garden space as part of a large extension project, in order to reuse the original kitchen space as a new lounge area. Often, kitchens just need a solid update.
At the top of the house, a loft conversion is a popular project to add a bedroom or home office space. Elsewhere in the house, it’s not uncommon to add a self-contained flat, either for guests, or ageing relatives, or to rent out for additional income. You may also be considering an extension into the garden for a different purpose — for a sunlit conservatory or orangery.
Orangery extensions (and how they differ from conservatory extensions)
Whilst conservatories remain common, it’s becoming increasingly common for people to undertake an orangery extension to the ground floor of their home. Orangeries became popular in 17th century Europe (specifically Italy) to aid the growing of citrus fruits during winter months. Constructed mainly of brick or stone, with clever use of large glass areas for light, they are less a greenhouse and more a continuation of your house.
An orangery has a flat roof with a central roof lantern (a type of glass structure that sits on top of a flat roof perimeter) and more solid materials, which can offer better insulation. Conservatories generally have a pitched glass roof and either no, or little, brick or stone base. The windows are larger in a conservatory, and usually they would have french doors. An orangery can be a really appealing house extension because they can offer the feel (and most of the light) of a conservatory, but also essentially maintain the comfort and feel of the rest of the house.
A roof lantern is an attractive feature that lets in light but has a flat perimeter around it for some continuity with the rest of the home.
Cost of house renovations in Cardiff and the UK
You may be able to find simple tools, such as an extension cost calculator, however these would only be general in nature and couldn’t give you a specific cost for your situation, as costs of house renovations can vary greatly. Each project is unique to some degree, and if you’re receiving the best personal care of a builder, your requirements will be discussed in detail in order to reach the highest quality and most suitable outcome.
Specialist renovation and extension builders
We’ve undertaken a broad spectrum of renovation and extension projects in Cardiff, Penarth and across South Wales over the past 40 years. These include individual home upgrades as well as full-scale developments of listed buildings converted sympathetically but boldly into beautiful apartment communities, such as Raisdale House in Penarth.
We spend time with our clients to understand individual needs, ideas and longer-term goals, and we use our experience to advise on an approach that can ensure better safety, and ultimately a more pleasing and cost effective outcome. The goal is always to ensure that the home once again feels like a pleasurable and rewarding daily experience.
If a renovation project is large-scale enough, it’s possible that you’ll need to find temporary accommodation, however in most cases you’ll be able to stay in your home relatively comfortably while the work is underway. We always try to ensure that disruption is minimised and that the project is as smooth as possible alongside day-to-day living.
No job too small
Each year, we complete many smaller projects in residential homes and at commercial premises for local firms. Adapting a space or creating a new one within an existing property is an exciting challenge. We bring not just years of experience to each project, but a genuine empathy for each client’s needs and wishes, in order to achieve the best possible outcome.
It may be a cliché, but for us it is genuinely the case that ‘no job is too small’ to be worthy of our consideration. After all, small changes can make a big impact, and every job is worth doing well.
A property developer for nearly half a century
We've been building and renovating quality houses with care for more than 40 years, so we like to think we know how to deliver homes that capture the imagination.
If you’re looking to significantly enhance your home, or to reimagine a property you’ve acquired in the greater Cardiff area, please feel free to contact us today.