Anne's blog: From the architect's notebook

8 things I learned from renovating and extending my own home It’s nearly five years now since the dust settled on a complete refurbishment and extension on my own house. But I still recall the experience regularly when I’m talking to clients about the process and complexities of extending a home. To accommodate the needs of my growing family (their physical size rather than an increase in numbers!) our choice was to move or to extend. This wasn’t the first extension I had made to my home, having built on an office for my business several years before.  But it would have a far greater impact: to allow a larger bedroom for my son, we had to rework a large part of the house and move the stairs to gain access to a new first floor space over the garage. In addition, we needed to be able to stay living in the house while the work was done, and my office had to be functional at all times to keep the money coming in to pay for it! My design didn’t create a huge area of extra space, b