Ferdinand

I think you ca; also register what is called a Beneficial Interest in it, which avoids some buggering about. Take advice on that, but it is what 3rd party restorers I know do to avoid the need to change ownership.

Followup. I think that WOW in a hall depends on having a huge space (say with a staircase AND a dining table - in our family small manor house there was a Jacobean staircase with a 15ft high x 6ft wide arched window, and the hall was about 20ft x 16ft in addition), or playing to create perceptions of space. Surprises also help, so eg a dark low ceiling porch into a bright high ceiling space is dramatic - Frank Loydd Wright did this in houses. Perhaps try: Pull sneak corridor into hall. Try some sort of rooflight feature to give something to draw the eye upwards. Try a dogleg staircase across the side and back, which will mean they see the double height space immediately on entering. I think that perhaps your kitchen and office are a little 'average'. In my kitchen I have 30+ 600mm unit spaces in toto (excluding utility, and counting everything), How many do you have? What happens if you pull the secret space into the office. 4m x 3m to me is neither a compact study (which would be 3x3m) nor somewhere sufficient for a big worktable in addition to the desk for holding meetings or doing 5000 piece jigsaws, Ferdinand

I concur on the money saving strategy with @scottishjohn. Reasonable quality then price, with a bit of flexibility in the actual product detail.

*stops digging*

So - doesn't fit in the z dimension. I feel guilty now.

Trust you welcome a candid comment; I am taking it that you are exploring the universe of possibilities. IMO this one will be very (and unnecessarily) expensive to build because of all those stepins from GND to 1st Floor - as I make it you have about 20-25m of upstairs outside wall which is above voids on the Ground Floor, and the corresponding amount of single storey roof. Won't that mean umpteen columns and beams, each of which will cost you £500+ extra? And then you will have sealing and jointing and flashing and cold bridge and access problems. Simplify away the vast majority of it by adjusting your room sizes. On the design approach, I get a feeling that you are still doing a bottom up "sum of parts" thing - here starting with a list of rooms and what you want each one to be, rather than looking at the house as a whole. Even the (good) presentation is a series of tableaux rather than a walkthrough of a house. You need a unified whole. I am slightly reminded of the Windmill Theatre "tableaux vivant" circa late 1930s in the design/presentation; I want a full blown Moulin Rouge Can Can instead. I think you are being driven by what other people do, or find acceptable, rather than thinking about your own requirements. "What is normal" or "what do other people want" are questions for a developer. Self builders can nod to them, but they should imo be subsidiary. Trust yourself. On details, I agree with @epsilonGreedy that there is too much subdivision. IMO the way to get wow in a relatively small house is to have fewer, larger rooms, using vistas etc creatively. There is also imo a too-large amount of circulation space. What is that long balcony expressly to be able to have a pot plant at the end ? ? Put the espace in the bedroom. On that sneak pantry: two points. Firstly the need for it is a symptom of a different problem - access to the kitchen is not thought out thoroughly. Secondly, it is a pink elephant - what does the extra door, the corridor, and 3 cupboards add over a simple door from the hall to the generous utility? Put the space in the hall to give you WOW, make the loo a better size with a shower for infirm visitors, and put the cupboards in the utility. (Were you to stick with the sneak pantry I would say put the 2 doors opposite each other at the kitchen end and make the rest a bigger shower and proper cloak closet.) On fixing the layout, I would probably put the theatre front to back on the RHS, incorporating the playroom (gives you your 5.5m). I would then make the kitchen-diner-living into one room screened off from the theatre, by a wall or those bifolds. (As they are they will mean there is a 1m wide run of floor you can never use). I would make the the theatre the correct size for repurposing as a garage - may never happen but it answers a real question with a "yes, you can". Children's playroom? Somewhere else or "let them watch films" or accept that mutual-murdering and cinema will not often happen simultaneously. As you suggest, I have ignored the upstairs. But how will you clean that window at the front above the door? Ferdinand

Shall we have a sweepstake for whether it fits ? (Sacrificing future invitations to @pocster's whilst he is still alive and in possession of capacity.)

It's the skeleton cupboard ... ? .

Appropriate in a tall, expensive house, perhaps if roof terrace or balcony eating is a use case. And iirc you are building these. I find that the thing that worries me is taking eg furniture upstairs, for which spending 16-18k on a wheelchair lift would be a more reasonable investment. The last time I felt vulnerable was taking the carcass of a filing cabinet upstairs, and feeling that the Centre of Mass might move outside the step I was standing on. I have a location where I can fit one, but it would involve expending the utility into the back of the (24ft) garage. Also it blocks you stairs when it breaks down at the bottom. Could be designed out. Dangerous. I have a relative who slipped down 3 stairs after a trip on this type of stuff, landed on and shattered one ankle, had several months off work, and now triggers security scanners at airports. How do we manage this? Not easy - the best I have is a straight staircase where things can be put under the banister line, and a "dumping chair" at the bottom. Perhaps built-in shelves? Ideas? Ferdinand

Bungalow ?. If you have a dumbwaiter, but no slave, then you have to walk upstairs to unload it anyway. So, staircase and a cruise.

A topic which has been done to death, but student @Lakeside has come up with a short and sufficiently general definition that to me it covers recognised categories of self-builder. It is quoted from this thread. (* What does the piccie of 2 cats shooting a cannon have to do with the topic. Nothing. Explosive debate?)

Sweet Home 3d (free) has some lighting design features, and is good at displaying internal layouts, but it may not be sophisticated (or complicated ) enough for @puntloos. I have 3 zoned dimmers in my kitchen, but have not used the dimmer bit since I switched wholesale to Ikea LED bulbs 5 years ago. Ferdinand

Diluted slime - just what I want to talk about with my breakfast after my shower ?. Ew. I always feel that soft water is slightly "soapy". Just had a look in my 5 month old cistern - no slime line yet. I suspect that there is something in @Onoff's temperature theory. Also, is there a version of one of those edge-hung cleansers that turns the water pink or blue that your granny used to use, that might go in the cistern rather than the bowl? F

> Secondly, within my research I have created a definition of a self builder which is as follows; 1. they have acquired the land. 2. the risk ultimately lies with the owner. 3. the self-builder is going to live in the property. That seems to be a very good general purpose definition to me. F

Welcome. If you buy without PPIP, then you need to know where you are on the accepting risk vs saving money balance, and in particular to know more than your vendor.

I would say that Sonos One is probably better value than Sonos Ikea, given the superior performance and not-that-different price. F

One further note wrt to requested solar panel brochures etc. If concerned you could include "illustrative" to describe the brochures, somewhere.

Welcome. Best of luck.

Welcome. You will have a well nourished future garden. You can be bricking it later. As @Temp says .. you still have thinking times. Make like Columbo and poke your head back around the door ... just a moment, what about ... Ferdinand

Cheers. f

@Nickfromwales What is your rough estimate of the overhead of a preheat tank on bills? I have always run mine in Eco mode with that off (big Worcester Bosch Combi), and my longest pipe run is I guess around 12-14m. Ferdinand

Thanks. At this point I have nothing and an Amazon Prime subscription. The Sonos Ikea stuff looks interesting, once I had recovered from the idea of £300 for 2 speakers as the low-cost end of the range. My requirement is 1 - just to play music in 2-4 downstairs rooms, and probably have some variability. When I started the thread, the idea was to have music where parts could be excluded if different people had different tastes. 2 - The ability to play 2 or more channels would be nice. 3 - Extendibility in future would be a nice-to-have. Ferdinand

Cat flap debacle? *Us*? Here I can get Amazon to deliver to my local Morrisons, but Morrisons do not offer click-and-collect yet for their own goods. ?

Is this not back and offered by eg Hermes locations?

A supplementary question. How does one integrate Sonos with say Alexa? Can an Alexa stream different things to different rooms? Hopefully it is just plug and play, without the plug? (This is an area of profound ignorance for me; have always been a speech radio World Service man. But now is a time to ring some changes.))