2026 renovation — project hub

Sub-projects

Kitchenactive

The pocket: 201 wide × 219 deep, minus the 219 × 50 stub of the old external wall. Sink on the passage wall, hob and extractor on the back run, prep along the 283 wall.

Settled

Stays in the current pocket — working assumption, open to revisiting.
Fridge moves in from the party wall enclosure.
283 wall stays solid — no hatch through to the dining room.

Open

Layout once the fridge lands in the pocket — it is not a big pocket and the old wall stub takes a corner.
Does the sink stay on the passage wall? Moving it is the main cost driver.
Boiler: stay, move, or replace. If it stays it constrains the layout.
Is the old wall stub loadbearing? It is the end of the original house, so assume yes until an engineer says otherwise. Reducing it means a beam, padstones and building control — not a weekend job.
Ceilings are 2480, with 2200 under a T-shaped bulkhead that follows the old wall lines — not over the kitchen pocket. So the pocket has full height and tall units are fine there.

Gates: living area layout, then climate emitters.

Living areaactive

The garden end, roughly 414 × 385, plus the 75 × 285 the laundry enclosure gives back. French doors to the deck, tall blind window, one radiator.

Settled

Laundry and fridge enclosure is demolished — 2.1 m² back and the party wall squared off along its full 7.10 m.
That run becomes the party wall run: pantry, appliance garage / coffee nook, cleaning store.
Washer faces into this room, integrated into the party wall run.

Open

Where does drying happen? The airer is standing in the middle of the living area today — so this is a problem to solve, not one to preserve. Proposed: a drop-down rail in the dead 1.3 m above the washer.
Washer stays put and rotates 90° — facing into the room, loadable from the kitchen side, with a full-height door in front. Services do not move. Still worth an acoustic detail given it sits against the party wall.
Furniture plan: the TV and drinks cabinet run currently occupies the party wall the storage is moving onto.

Depends on: kitchen position. Gates: climate emitters.

Dining roommeasured

8.7 m², 3.49 × 2.84 m max, with four angled walls at the outer corner. Shares its 284 wall with the kitchen prep run. Its default state is dining; the murphy bed puts it into guest mode, and dining moves back to the main room for the duration.

Settled

Entrance moves to the left-hand wall, so food travels easily from kitchen to dining room.
Surveyed and fitted — every wall closes within 2.4 cm.
New door goes in the 144 wall; murphy bed opposite, on the 178 wall where the existing door is today, which gets blocked up. Bed down leaves 139 clear.
Guest bathroom is just outside the hallway on the right — stays as is.
No opening through the 283 wall.

Open

Window position and size — nothing on the survey locates it, and it reads as being in the angled outer walls.
Ceiling in the main space is 2480, which clears a vertical-fold bed easily. The dining room itself has not been measured though — worth checking it is not another 2200 zone.
Exact position of the new doorway in the 349 wall, and whether the old 92 opening is blocked up.
Which end of the shared wall the new door goes nearest — drawn at the kitchen end on the assumption the hall runs alongside.

Gates: the new door position, which the kitchen route depends on.

Climatescope now, spec last

Heating today is one radiator on the left wall plus a wall-mounted boiler in the kitchen. Cooling not yet decided.

Settled

In scope as its own sub-project rather than an afterthought.

Open

Is cooling actually in? If yes, where does an outdoor unit go — side passage or garden — and does it need consent.
Emitter positions once the party wall run and kitchen are fixed. Every good wall is being spoken for.
Underfloor vs radiators. Fine at 2480, but under the 2200 bulkhead a 75 mm build-up leaves 2125 — and Paul is 2 m tall. That is the constraint, not the garden step.
Does the boiler decision belong here or to the kitchen? Treating it as a kitchen constraint for now.
Heat gain through the French doors — worth knowing which way the garden faces.

Depends on: kitchen and living layouts being fixed first.

Dining tablenew

A folding table, built as its own piece. It belongs to no room — deployed in the dining room normally, in the living area in guest mode, and collapsed when the main room needs clearing.

Settled

It folds — that is the whole premise. A fixed table in either room fails the other case.
Not tied to a room — guest mode moves dining back to the main room, so the table has to travel.

Open

Where does it live collapsed? All 7.10 m of the party wall run is spoken for. A collapsed table needs a tall, thin slot and nothing in the plan has one — so it either displaces something already agreed, or it lives behind furniture.
Seated capacity, and whether it extends as well as folds.
Deployed position in the living area — competes with the furniture plan and the swing of the French doors.
Max size deployed in the dining room — set by the room with the bed up, and by the new door’s swing.

Depends on: dining room and living area layouts. Gates: nothing — off the critical path.

Both rooms together

surveyed hall, unchanged kitchen murphy bed laundry out / storage in walking route, not a wall

The two surveys line up. The dining room’s 284 wall and the main room’s 283 wall are the same wall, so the rooms sit together without fudging. With the 7 cm kink added the dining room survey closes to within 1.2 cm on every wall. The kitchen-to-dining route works out at roughly 6 m — out of the main doorway and immediately right into the new door, which is what the door move buys you. The hall between them is drawn as a ghost for context — it is not being changed, so it has not been surveyed. The corner where the two rooms meet is inferred rather than surveyed, but the photos confirm the shape: the new door lands where the intercom wall is now.

Sar’s Office is surveyed but drawn here as a simplified box. Its full wall-by-wall walkthrough closes to about 13 cm on 7.4 m² — see its own plan for the real, stepped shape. Which of its walls actually sits flush against the dining room’s 349 wall hasn’t been matched up yet, so its position and rotation here are approximate. The hall connecting all three doors is also still just a ghost, same as before.

Critical path

Kitchen layout→ Living / party wall run→ Climate spec

Nothing is blocked. The door is settled — hard against the kitchen end of the 144 wall, hinged there, swinging into the dining room toward the kitchen. The hall is not being changed, so it does not need surveying; it stays on the combined plan as a ghost for context only.

The long pole is structural. If the old wall stub gets touched at all, an engineer’s calcs, a beam and building control sign-off sit in front of it — weeks, and they need starting well before November. Everything else here can run in parallel.

Decisions log

Decision	Sub-project	Firmness
Kitchen stays in its current pocket	Kitchen	Working assumption
Fridge relocates into the kitchen pocket	Kitchen	Agreed
Laundry & fridge enclosure demolished	Living area	Agreed
That run becomes pantry / appliance garage / coffee nook / cleaning store	Living area	Agreed
Whole party wall built in, 18 mm birch ply, split at the pier	Living area	Agreed
Washer rotates 90° in place, loadable from the kitchen side	Living area	Agreed
False wall beside the fridge comes out — only the 51 pier stays	Living area	Agreed
Wall sized for an 85″ TV even though the current set is 75″	Living area	Agreed
Single coffee setup — machine, grinder and Kenwood in the party-wall nook	Living area	Agreed
Drying cabinet above the washer, behind the double doors	Living area	Proposed
Washer faces into the room, integrated into the party wall run	Living area	Agreed
283 wall stays solid — no hatch	Kitchen / Dining room	Agreed
Dining room entrance moves to the left-hand wall	Dining room	Agreed
New door in the 144 wall; murphy bed opposite on the 178 wall	Dining room	Agreed
Existing 92 doorway blocked up to make the bed wall	Dining room	Agreed
New door hard against the kitchen end, swinging in toward the kitchen	Dining room	Agreed
Hall unchanged — not being surveyed	—	Agreed
Bed access not a constraint — hall is generous enough	Dining room	Agreed
Intercom wall comes out; the new door lands in its position	Dining room	Agreed
Handset gone — Ubiquiti intercom to phone; thermostat wireless; socket shifts left	—	Agreed
Entire black tile floor replaced — underfloor heating, engineered hardwood	Climate	Agreed
Guest bathroom off the hallway stays as is	—	Agreed
Dining table is a folding build in its own right, tied to no room	Dining table	Agreed
Dining happens in the dining room; back in the main room in guest mode	Dining room / table	Agreed
Low-profile floor build-up, not screed — decided by head height under the bulkhead (ADR 0001)	Climate	Agreed
Baseline plan signed off — every dimension cross-checks	All	Done

Why behind the decisions. Written up in docs/adr/: low-profile underfloor heating over screed, moving the dining room door to the 144 wall, why the media end's top cabinets work around the party wall duct, and the panel material spec for the whole party wall run. The vocabulary these plans use is fixed in ../CONTEXT.md.

Measurement backlog

Watch list

Risk	Why it matters
Nowhere to dry laundry	The airer lives in the middle of the living area today. The build is the chance to fix that — a rail above the washer costs no wall length, but needs extract or a dehumidifier and a door, or you are drying into the main room.
Washer on the party wall	Spin cycles transmit, and rotating it does not change that. Worth an acoustic detail rather than discovering it after the neighbour does.
Competition for wall length	The party wall run, radiators, the dining table and the murphy bed all want good walls. There are not many left.
Floor build-up vs the bulkhead	This is where the floor decision bites. A low-profile overlay at ~20 mm plus a 15 mm board is 35 mm and leaves 2165 under the bulkhead — 165 over Paul’s head. A screeded system at ~100 mm leaves 2085, or 85 over his head, which he would feel every time he walked under it. Low profile is effectively decided by the ceiling, not by preference.
Board thickness is a heat pump constraint	UFH wants the floor covering under 0.15 m²K/W. Engineered oak is fine to about 18 mm and over the line at 20 mm+. With a heat pump there is no headroom to push flow temperatures up to compensate, so this stops being a preference and becomes a spec. Confirm the board’s stated value and its UFH approval before ordering.
The hall floor is not being touched	So the new floor level is set by the hall’s existing timber if you want a flush threshold rather than a step. The depth of tile, adhesive and any screed coming out is your build-up budget — measure it once something is lifted.
Head height under the bulkhead	The stem of the T crosses open floor at 2200 — 200 mm over Paul’s head. Underfloor heating or a pendant hung under it eats straight into that.
Dining room ceiling height	The chosen bed cabinet is 205 high and needs about 208 of diagonal to tilt into position. Under roughly 215 of ceiling it will not go in at all. This room has never been measured for height, and it is now the only unknown that can still change the plan.
November start	Kitchen units and any glazing have lead times that will not care about the date.
Structural, if the stub gets touched	It is a former external wall. Engineer’s calcs, a beam and building control sign-off all sit in front of it — weeks, not days, and they need starting well before November.
Two eras of construction	Original house one side of that wall line, extension the other. Expect different floor build-ups, insulation and possibly damp detailing — and quite possibly different ceiling heights either side, which the bulkhead already hints at.
Fridge into a small pocket	The pocket is 201 × 219 with the old wall stub in a corner. Adding a full-height fridge is a real constraint, not a detail.