The brief

This North Yorkshire family had run out of room but didn’t want to leave a house they loved. The answer was to build rather than move: a single-storey rear extension that added a proper, usable room and opened the back of the house up to the garden. It needed to match the existing brickwork so closely that it looked original, and it needed to be somewhere the family would actually want to spend their time, not just extra square footage.

What we did

We built a single-storey extension across the rear of the house, carefully matching the red brick and the roof tiles to the original so the new work sits seamlessly against it. The roof runs as a lean-to against the two-storey wall behind, which keeps the lines clean and lets plenty of head height into the new room.

The detail that makes this one is the glazing. Down the side elevation we fitted three tall windows that pull light deep into the room through the day, and on the end return we hung a wide set of anthracite grey bi-fold doors opening straight onto the garden. That combination means the room’s bright from two directions, so it never feels like the enclosed back-of-house space that extensions can sometimes become.

We finished the job outside as well as building it. A block-paved patio wraps around the new extension and out into the garden, framing the doors and giving a proper transition from inside to out, with fresh lawn laid up to the edge. (An extension that opens onto a muddy strip of garden never looks finished. The paving is what ties the whole thing together.) One team handled the lot, from footings and brickwork through to the final course of block paving.

Underneath the finish this was a full structural build: foundations, matched brickwork, roof, steelwork where the original wall was opened up, glazing and all the making good between old and new.

The result

A bright, generous room the whole family uses, opening straight onto a garden that now feels like part of the house. From the garden it looks like it was always there, which is exactly the compliment you want on an extension. More room, more light, and no need to leave a home they didn’t want to give up.