Extension - help with where to start....

tcif

My OH and I hope to extend our bungalow in the coming year to add on a kitchen extension, a small porch out the front and extend the master bedroom. Nothing too fancy, just a bit more light and space that hopefully won't cost the earth.

So far we've spoken with an designer who said they could do it all for us (they work with a building company) and a number of friends who've done extensions of their own who advised anything from a draughtsman to an architect to just get ourselves a builder and go for it. It's a big undertaking, obviously, so we want to get it right and get the best value for our money we can. Can anyone who's got some experience offer any kind of advice about what sort of professional we need or where's the best place to start going about planning this?

We're in the Naas area so any recommendations for anyone in our area would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Calahonda52

1, decide if what u want requires planning permission.
2, read as many of the relevant posts here, use Google advanced search with boards.ie as the search domain and words like extension, building costs, etc

tcif

We think we probably won't need planning permission - we should be able to bring the porch in under the 2sqm allowed and the overall extension at the back should be less than 40sqm. But if an architect, say, came up with a clever use of space that pushed us over the threshold we'd be open to going down the planning application route.

I have googled and read lots of posts here and while they've been helpful, I'm still unsure of how to go about this. We are struggling a bit in trying to visualize exactly how much space we need to add to the kitchen and the master bedroom to make those spaces work as we'd like, and while we have a large site, the shape of it and the orientation of the house on it make for some restrictions in where and how much we can add on (at least, to our untrained eyes). Is an architect overkill for this sort of job or is there any other professional route to go?

Calahonda52

If I understand it correctly if you need planning then you are caught up in the BCAR so this will add additional costs, over and above any costs for professional advice for how it might look layout out wise.
I ma strictly a meat and two veg man, with spuds, so can't help with that aspect of the job.
Perhaps get an interior designer, for a fixed fee, to give you a conceptual layout before you go to an architect.

While you don't always get what you pay for, you never get what you don't pay for.

tcif

We have plenty of room to grow a few spuds ...

Thanks for the suggestions, Calahonda52. I think we'll have to bite the bullet and start looking for some architects to talk to.