**This is a collaborative post

When we moved house we were looking for somewhere that had potential to be improved and developed as our family grows – grows up that is, we definitely aren’t planning on making our family any bigger! We knew we couldn’t afford our dream home so we wanted somewhere we could perhaps extend in future and turn it into our dream home instead.

If you’ve not seen my house before you can have a look at it in this house tour…

So you can see our house is slightly unusual! Although it looks like a tiny bungalow from the front, it’s actually three stories at the back with a dormer built into the back half of the roof. Our plan eventually is to also convert the roof space at the front of the house and extend our home. This would allow us to have all our bedrooms upstairs and use the two downstairs bedrooms as an office and playroom / den.  And best of all it should mean we have enough space for me to realise my dream of having a walk in wardrobe!

It wouldn’t be a typical loft conversion though – there is no need to install new stairs or anything like that – there’s already a door off the upstairs landing. At the moment it opens to reveal the airing cupboard but remove that cupboard and the space behind would be turned into a room.

When it comes to turning the roof space into a usable room we have two options. Several of our neighbours have already converted their front roof spaces so there shouldn’t be any issues with planning permission, and we can also see from our neighbours houses what our options might be.

Our next door neighbours have a full dormer on the front of their house (it’s currently for sale so this image has come from the property listing)

This would obviously give us the biggest possible space in the new room (or rooms) but it is also the most expensive option. An alternative would just be to add VELUX windows and have a sloped roof inside. As the new room would mostly likely be the boys’ room then this may well be a sensible option, and it would probably mean we would be able to afford to do the work much sooner.

The front of the house gets all the sun in the evening though so if we went with the VELUX option we would definitely need to black out the windows – I had no idea there were so many different kinds of blinds available for VELUX windows though – you can see some of the different options here.

We’ve still got so much to do to our house, and I am so full of ideas. All we have done since we moved is the kitchen diner – I still love it so much but it puts the rest of the house to shame! I’m currently in the middle of decluttering and turning our upstairs spare room from a general dumping ground into a usable guest bedroom and extra play space. It feels like a never ending battle at the moment but I’ll get there and I’m sure I’ll be sharing it with you when it’s something like finished!