Plenty of the older housing around Bury St Edmunds has a narrow side return that does nothing. Filling it in and running the kitchen across the full width is usually the biggest change you can make to a Victorian house for the least disruption.
The inter war semis around the town take a rear extension well because the original footprint is generous and the roof structure is simple. Matching the brick and the roof pitch is what stops it looking bolted on.
Northgate does not sub in one trade and leave you to manage the rest. We run groundworks, brickwork and blockwork, joinery and every fix stage ourselves, coordinating any specialist trade like electrics or gas that has to be signed off separately. You get one point of contact for the whole job, not a different number to ring for every stage of the build.
Most extensions end up holding a new kitchen or an extra bathroom. Because we run the build ourselves rather than handing you over to someone else once the shell is finished, that fit-out is part of the same job, the same quote and the same point of contact, not a separate contractor picking up where the last one left off.
Most people stay put. We sheet up, keep the dust where it belongs, and sequence the work so the kitchen or the only bathroom is not out of action for weeks on end. It is your house before it is our site, and we work accordingly.
We come out, look at the house and listen to what you actually want out of the space rather than selling you a standard product. That visit covers the obvious things, where the extension can go, what the ground is likely to be doing, whether the existing drainage is in the way, and the less obvious ones, like whether the room you are extending off will end up dark once you have built across the back of it. If you already have drawings we will work from them. If you do not, we will tell you honestly whether you need an architect or whether a good technician can get you through planning for less. From there you get a written quote that sets out what is included and, just as importantly, what is not.
Three separate things that people often run together. Planning permission is about whether you are allowed to build it at all, and depending on the size and your address you may not need it. Building regulations are about whether it is built properly, and you need that on every extension regardless. The party wall act comes in when you are building near or on a boundary shared with a neighbour, and it needs serving properly and in good time rather than as an afterthought. We handle the building control side and tell you clearly which of the other two apply to your job.
Once we are on site the order is fairly fixed. Dig and inspect the foundations, pour, then build up to damp course and get the drainage in and tested. Blockwork and brickwork up to plate height, steels in where the existing wall is coming out, then roof structure, felt, batten and tile. Getting the shell watertight is the milestone that matters most, because everything after it is protected from the weather and the programme becomes far more predictable. On brickwork we match what is already there, whether that is red brick, Suffolk white, flint or render, because a mismatched extension is obvious from the pavement for the next thirty years.
Electrics and plumbing go in before the walls close up, then insulation, plasterboard and plaster. After that it is joinery, flooring, the kitchen or bathroom if that is part of the job, and decoration. We snag it properly at the end and come back for anything that shows up in the first few weeks once you have lived in it, backed by twelve months of our own workmanship guarantee on every extension we complete.