Wow – this planning malarky is really dragging on much longer than even I expected.

I’ve been on to the builders, the local planning department and the civic society and I think fundamentally we’ve settled on the principals of an extension.

It would seem to make sense to attach a new garage rather than our previous detached suggestion and to extend upstairs above it. This would give us both a decent sized garage and the en-suite to the master bedroom. A “simple” single storey extension can then be tacked on the back of the kitchen to make things a bit bigger and to sort out the utility.

Our Architect concurred the scheme would work, although wasn’t too impressed with my suggested roof lines, preferring instead a gable end which I duely mocked up as well..

This raises the interesting question, of how much separation is required between houses on the 2nd storey? Ideally, the bigger the 2nd storey extension the better for us since it would turn a pokey en-suite into a grand dressing room/bathroom. Further mockups on my part which I’ve emailed to Havering planning, so we’ll see what their views are on the below..

Whilst all this is being contemplated, the ‘simple’ extension to the kitchen is also turning out not to be quite so simple.

Slightly controversially, we’ve decided it would be better to have the doors from the kitchen into the garden on the side wall (facing the dining room) rather than on the rear wall. To try and break up what would be an otherwise featureless end to the kitchen, I’ve proposed putting a matching bay on the back. The above diagram was my naive sketch of how this might work, but the Architect was again not impressed.

I’ve commited another crime against design allegedly with my flat roof over the proposed bay, so the Architect has come back with the above suggestion of a pitched roof to allow the bay to have it’s own roof of it’s own to match that on the back of the dining room.

..only the trouble with this is (and, to be fair with my original design too), is that I don’t think this will actually work inside the house. Having a sloping roof on the extension I think is going to cause havoc with the ceiling heights internally.

We’ve spent the last few days racking our brains over this conundrum, and the only suggestion I’ve managed to come up with so far is the monstrosity below.

I wonder if the bay has to bite the dust and we’ll have to go for a flat back instead. More emails to the architect tomorrow I think unless you, dear reader, have any suggestions? Answers on a postcard please!