What’s the big idea? The renovation drawings

What’s the big idea?

Why hello, Queen Peach here. I had wanted to be wowing you all with before and after photos of the peach lounge transformation. Instead I’m sat here eating Revels, trying to convince Mr Peach to put up our new curtains for the final photos. He is pretending not to feel my eyes boring into the side of his head. If I could crunch these revels harder to get his attention I would but I keep getting blasted coffee ones! I give up, instead let me share our ideas and our renovation drawings (before and after)…

Decisions, decisions…

Although we well and truly love our new house, deciding to buy the Peach Palace wasn’t a simple decision. The financial commitment was huge and it would take us further from our beloved Chapel Allerton and the space, although vast, just doesn’t work for a growing family. Add into the mix three cheeky littlies on the outside and one on the inside desperate to make her appearance. The upshot was a serious case of mum brain rendering me incapable of making any kind of decision. Luckily help was at hand in the form of a man with a plan. In swoops Ed Park from Park Designed who totally made us feel that anything and everything was possible. SOLD

The renovation drawings

The plans started instantly and rapidly evolved to us not being able to think about anything else. We knew we wanted to create an open plan kitchen-living are at the back, but also totally rearrange the space upstairs.The house was built in 1901, when the requirements of a growing family were somewhat different to ours now, so knew that extracting what we need from the house whilst retaining its core was going to be tough. This is where carefully planned renovation drawings come into play…

This is what we started with…

There were a few decisions that came pretty easily. The garage at the back of the garden needed to be demolished before it demolished itself on someone’s small head, so it made sense to re site a new garage integral to our house.

And for the ground floor…simple! Knock down the honky conservatory and create a light bright kitchen-diner with a new door, providing direct access to the playroom. Convert the pantry into an office and add a boot room/utility and new shower room at the back of the garage to hose down the dirty kids and muddy woofer. Simples!

This was the decided new layout…

Ed has convinced us to pretty much go large or go home and designed us something with 10m x 2.8m of glass doors and a pretty blummin’ cool grass roof to go on top. We are crossing our fingers and hoping that after such a financial commitment the said home will still belong to us and not be in the greasy hands of the bank! You gotta take risks right?

Upstairs we have deliberated for a longer than necessary amount of time about what to do and settled with the entirely selfish plan of treating Mr & Mrs Peach to a particularly indulgent master suite. Pretty much stealing the bathroom and a spare bedroom for our space. I like to think that it would be a kid-free zone. Yeh, who am I kidding? Reality means that as a sub 7 year old human, the favourite room to pee all over the floor in is the one closest to your ma & pa hence our coffin sized ensuite, we all know what the future holds but hey, a girl can dream right? So here we are, claiming back the upstairs.

Easy. Said no one EVER when dealing with Leeds City Council planning department. I shan’t bore you with the intricacies of our application, just rest assured that the battle to obtain planning has been a tough one but here we are six months later with a piece of paper giving us the green light, yay!

I shall celebrate with some chocolate. Damn another coffee one!

Don’t forget to have a look at some of the before photos to see the interior too.