House Extensions in Sutton Coldfield

Extensions on Sutton Coldfield housing

Detached houses on Sutton Coldfield's interwar and postwar roads usually have an attached or detached garage, and building over it is the most efficient extension there is: a bedroom and bathroom upstairs without giving up any garden. Whether the garage can carry another storey is the first check, because many were built on shallow foundations and single-skin walls, and the honest answer is sometimes to rebuild the garage as the ground floor of a proper two storey side extension.

A rear kitchen-diner extension, single storey with a flat roof and rooflights or a lantern, is the other common brief, often with a steel taking out the original back wall so the old kitchen and the new space read as one room.

Birmingham City Council handles planning and building control; a two storey extension needs an application, and in the conservation areas and on the covenanted parts of the Four Oaks estate the design will be looked at closely, so we check the address before drawings are commissioned. Foundations on the sandier ground toward Streetly and the heavier ground elsewhere are set by a trial hole.

Our quote itemises the structure, the roof, the glazing, the electrics and the finish, includes the building control fees, and comes with a programme, because a family living through a two storey build wants to know when the scaffold comes down.