Our homework is to make your home work for you!
August 4, 2022
Your home is your pride and joy, the neighbourhood is great and the location couldn’t be better. Sadly though, the space no longer works for you. Sound familiar?
Cube receives a fair amount of enquiries that call for a complete reconfiguration as families work from home, expand or perhaps feel the time is right to modernise their home to better address their needs.
We’ve been through our portfolio of delivered projects to highlight some great examples that could turn your house around by taking advantage of our end-to-end services and solutions:
Opt for open-plan
One of the most transformative home improvement projects is the open-plan kitchen diner. What were once small, dark rooms evolve into opened up, bright spaces in which to cook, entertain and socialise – think skylights and large bi-fold doors opening onto the garden. Particularly families with small children benefit from being able to keep an eye on them as they go about their own activities. We’d recommend thinking about creating zones within your open-plan space to ensure it lives up to your requirements.
Head to our blog for plenty more open-plan kitchen inspiration.
Turn awkward space into awesome space
A lot of Victorian terraced properties, especially in London, have a strip of land along the side of the ‘outrigger’ which is often dark and underutilised.
Imagine the outrigger as the original rear extension behind the main house, usually two storeys high underneath a pitched roof. This redundant space these extensions created offers great opportunities. One way to create more space is to extend sideways to open up, say, an existing kitchen and introduce a much-coveted light-filled feeling.
Cube can advise you on possible options and help arrange a full survey to ensure everything runs smoothly right from the start of your project.
Unlock your loft
Compared to an extension, loft conversions are a less costly way to transform your home. How about an extra bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, a home gym or your own home office tucked away from the busiest part of the house? There are so many different ways in which you can convert your loft, and browsing our loft conversion project portfolio is definitely a good reference point for your research. Cube will guide you through the entire loft conversion process, however it’s a good idea to think about the number of rooms to be added, head room, roof insulation and potentially acoustic windows to minimise issues concerning both temperature and noise.
Add convenience with an en-suite
Let’s get straight to the most common myth – no, an en-suite bathroom doesn’t actually require that much space, just some clever planning! If anything, the challenges of smaller or more awkward spaces are a chance to get extra creative and make your en-suite more personal.
In some cases you may need to work around lower head height, for example if your en-suite will be located in your converted loft. Our top tip: install Velux windows. You’ll be surprised by the difference they can make to both head height (up to 75mm/2.95’’) and perception of the space itself when they’re the correct size and accurately positioned. Again, it’s something we’ll take care of if you’re instructing Cube.
Not enough room for a traditional door? Pocket doors provide a great solution that can also enhance privacy. Reintroduce harmony to a busy household and skip queuing for the bathroom with an en-suite. Here are some small but mighty Cube favourites from past projects:
Hide the clutter
Practical, stylish and organised – a utility room can be all that without taking up too much space. Whether you’d like to build it into existing space or incorporate it as part of an extension, keeping laundry tasks, washing machines and the like more separate, can really make a positive impact on your home and everyday life. Sometimes it’s worth considering combining a utility room with a boot room to keep muddy pets, shoes and sports gear neatly in one place.
Get your garage into gear
Are you one of the 53% of drivers who don’t actually use their garage to store their car in? Well, keeping it as storage for junk is literally a waste of space given it could be anything from a home gym or Granny Annexe to a potting space. Whatever your conversion goal, repurposing the garage is a relatively straight forward project to undertake providing the build quality and insulation is good. Increasing your home’s value by as much as 15% is certainly a nice side effect but if you’re still unsure if a garage conversion is for you, grab a coffee and read our blog “16 great garage goals”.
Merge outdoors with indoors
Any home improvement project should also enhance everyday wellbeing. Bringing nature inside with the likes of glass walls, glazed roofs or Juliet balconies could brighten up your home and mind substantially. Designing with light in mind and positioning windows cleverly is crucial to maximising your home’s potential.
A vaulted ceiling was the icing on the cake for a house that we extended in Twickenham as it lifts the space of the kitchen diner, making it feel brighter and more spacious. Grouping Velux windows, installing bi-fold doors or introducing large picture windows which frame your garden can equally add a real wow factor.
Re-plan & reboot rooms
Luckily the number of bedrooms in your home is not always set in stone. Sometimes it’s worth merging two small bedrooms into one or splitting one large bedroom into two. As with everything in your home, your requirements lead the changes. Say you have two children who have been sharing a room since they were little, they may well benefit from a small room each as they get older. Or if your children have moved out, you might be keen to adjust your home for a new chapter by reconfiguring its layout and introducing more light.
Cube have moved walls, staircases, even entire rooms to reinvent our clients’ homes. A great project example to look at is this large side and rear extension in Surbiton. We completely modernised this home by removing walls, installing steel beams to support the original structure and totally transformed the rear of the house. Rooms are now flooded with natural light and the garage was converted into a home gym with a dedicated area for storage and planting. The project summary will give you a full picture of what we achieved for this semi-detached property and it goes without saying that we’d be delighted to design, manage and build whatever it takes to transform your home.
Ready to extend your imagination with Cube?
E: space@cubelofts.co.uk
T: 020 8432 9676