Sandy
Lane
Location | Cheam, Sutton
Scale | 3,180 sq.ft.
Bed / bath | 5 / 3
Completed | 2024
This is a house that grew up without losing itself. A substantial family home on a generous suburban plot, it had good bones and a good garden, but it had simply run out of room for the family living inside it. We were asked to make it considerably bigger, to claim the space it wasn't using, and to do all of it without eating into the garden or letting go of the character that made the house feel like home from the road. We are proud of how completely it came together, familiar and traditional from the street, open and unmistakably modern at the back.
| THE BRIEF |
A bigger house that still felt like home.
The family loved where they were and had no intention of moving. What they needed was more of everything, more living space, more bedrooms, a home that could hold a busy family life rather than constantly working around it. The instruction was clear, make it much larger, but keep the garden and keep the soul of the house intact.
| THE SPACE ALREADY THERE |
The plot had much more potential.
Rather than push the house back into the garden, we looked to the side, where a generous but underused strip of the plot was doing nothing. That became the key. A two-storey extension, a single-storey extension and a full loft conversion together transformed the scale of the house, yet because the growth went sideways and upwards rather than backwards, the family garden stayed almost entirely intact.
| THE PLAN FOLLOWS THE PLOT |
We let the shape of the land shape the house.
The new single-storey living space doesn't sit as a plain rectangle. Its plan is faceted, angled to follow the boundaries of the site, and that geometry does real work. It breaks one large open space into pockets of definition, so a single room quietly becomes several places to be. The angled glazing catches the sun as it moves through the day, and holds the garden in view from wherever you happen to be sitting.
| ONE ROOM FOR THE WHOLE DAY |
The kitchen, the table and the sofa, all in one light-filled space.
At the heart of the house is an open-plan kitchen, dining and living space that carries the family from the first coffee to the last conversation of the evening. A deep navy island anchors it, the glazing dissolves the line between inside and garden, and the whole room is built around how a family actually moves through a day rather than how a plan looks on paper.
| NOT EVERY ROOM SHOULD BE OPEN PLAN |
For every big open space, somewhere quieter to withdraw to.
A busy, sociable house needs its calm corners too. So alongside the open plan we made rooms that close in, a snug wrapped in soft sage joinery around a wood burner for the evenings, a children's playroom with its own window seat, a nursery, the small considered spaces that let a full house breathe.
| A SUITE APART |
The principal bedroom feels like a retreat
The main suite is designed to stand slightly apart from the rest of the house. A generous bedroom opens to a large ensuite, a walk-in dressing room and a private balcony over the garden, so the adults of the house have somewhere that is genuinely theirs, quiet, independent and restful, whatever is happening downstairs.
