Location: Hove, East Sussex
Work carried-out: A Certificate of Lawful Development for a rearwards Ground Floor extension and alterations and additions to the roof.
Project description: The house is detached and sits in a street of Victorian villas. The clients had considered a move, but decided to improve the layout of their existing house and to update its facilities. There had been an earlier loft conversion of the roofspace, but this had not produced satisfactory spaces. The house lacked a suitable space to form a Kitchen / Garden / Family Room although it did have a large Kitchen and a comfortable rear Reception Room with decorative plasterwork ceilings and other strong architectural features.
On the Ground Floor the solution was to open-up the Kitchen to the Reception Room and form a good link – which did entail a small addition to the rear bay. It was at ceiling level that we had to merge the two spaces with some care. The plain Kitchen ceiling was set lower than the decorated one so that it could contain the complex steelwork supporting the building profile above. The original profile of the Reception Room is higher and thus still legible. The Victorian space makes the modern space look better and vice versa.
The Top Floor was rearranged with an enlarged dormer to form an attractive Master Bedroom suite with amazing Eastward views. There were other smaller changes throughout the building and an extra section of garden was purchased from a neighbour and the whole rear garden is being re-worked.
Contractor: Jurial Construction Ltd, Brighton