Thoughts ahead of staying in our forever home

A collaborative post

When we bought our current home 16 years ago, we initially thought it would be a stepping stone home. We thought we would then move into a larger ‘forever’ home which we could raise our young family and live out our days in the comfort of a home we had lovingly created. The current pandemic has made the economic future of us ever being able to move into a larger family home rather uncertain. Saving and mortgage plans have been altered and we are now facing a forever future in our current 1910 built terraced home.

How to add value and increase living space

With that in mind, we are considering 3 ways in which we would alter our home to accommodate our growing family of four. We want to increase living space for us all as well as adding value to our home.

Utilise the space under the stairs

Our current home has one bathroom. It’s a large family bathroom and one that is used frequently by the whole family. We have a bath and a separate shower with one toilet. We have considered utilising the space under the stairs and turning it into a small downstairs cloakroom with toilet. There would be sufficient room to house a toilet unit and a small sink, all of which are designed for this purpose.

As we made changes to under the stairs it would be worth considering any future modifications we may make to our steep staircase. We have a steep staircase in our home and we may need to look at accessibility options to help us get up the stairs safely. We would look to reputable companies such as Age UK Mobility to give us advice and support in making such alterations to our stairs.

Convert the loft

As we currently only have two bedrooms, our growing family will need more space. As we are very limited into what space we have to build into, one of the ways we can create more space is by going upwards. We would be able to look at converting the loft space we have into an additional bedroom with en-suite to help increase the size of our home. It’s something we have discussed and I think it would add lots of value to our forever home. I am excited at the prospect of adding another floor to the home and modifying the current layout of our first floor to accommodate this.

Make the garden more accessible

Currently the only way into our back garden from our house is through the kitchen. Ideally, we would remove the window from the dining room and install French doors leading to the outside space. We would then be able to open up the doors and make the garden much more accessible. We really like our small outside space and being able to access it more readily and see the children playing in the back garden is a huge bonus for us. We have also discussed having decking on the patio and changing the layout of the garden so we can use the garden more as an additional space to enjoy in the sunshine.

Making these amendments to our home over the next few years will of course make our living space larger and will hopefully add value to our home.