I Turned this Awkward Old Chapel into A Spectacular 3-Bed Home

In this video I've turned a disused chapel into a three-bedroom home. The chapel's currently for sale so I've put a sale link as usual in the video description so go and have a look at it. I really enjoyed figuring out this design and also analyzing it so that I could explain it to you. If there's anything on this channel that you see me do or you hear me say that you would like to learn more about please do get in touch either via the comments or by email So this building isn't tiny but with a floor area of 75 square meters it isn't huge either. You could create a small home on a single story with that area or a decent sized home on multiple stories but the particular challenge with this building is that there is only one level of windows and they are set at a height that sits right across the level of where a standard ceiling height would be. So that leaves you with two options. The first is to have the ground floor level really high ceiling which is fine for a living space but means that none of your rooms on any floor is able to use the windows at a normal height. So you only have high windows on the ground floor or roof lights on an upper floor. The other option is to raise the ground floor level up towards the windows which is also fine you'll just have a little entrance hall on its own at ground level which serves the purpose of getting you up the living and sleeping areas. There's actually a lapsed planning application for this building which has opted for the second of these two scenarios using an entrance hall then steps to access a raised sleeping level and then steps above that to reach a kitchen and living area in the roof. It's a scheme that works and would fit the building but what I wanted to try and do was to see if I could sort of deconstruct that planning scheme and take the best bits from both of the options to create the same accommodation of three bedrooms, two bathrooms and an open plan kitchen living dining space. I tend to feel that when you enter a building your first experience of it is what dictates your experience of the rest of the space so if that first entrance room is a bit confusing or too small it can be a bit like a story getting off to a bad start. You can't really relax into the flow of the narrative straight away so this is something that I think happens with the raised ground floor option with only a hallway at ground floor level. You can't really live in this entrance space so there's always going to be a lengthy transition up and down two stories of stairs between the front door and your living areas which for a house and not a flat feels a bit disappointing. The other thing I find problematic is the empty space beneath the raised floor. Somehow it feels like a waste even though I'm a big fan of double height spaces and feel there is real value in taking away areas of floor in a carefully considered way. At ground level having inaccessible floor area just boxed away really just seems a bit of a shame. So you can see here that there is actually a small basement in this building which is accessible via a separate lower front door so if you remove the ceiling to that you actually end up with an area roughly half the size of the building that would have a comfortable head height beneath that raised ground floor. The other half is directly in front of the main entrance and I would really like the entrance experience to tell the whole story of this building in a spectacular way. So rather than raise the floor level in this half the whole interior will be opened right up to the roof. There's an existing attic level up here so rather than strip that out I'm going to just remove the floor and ceiling finishes and expose all the joists and rafters too. Now we still need to fit three bedrooms and two bathrooms in here in addition to the living spaces. You could cram them all over on this half and stack them up over three stories but that would be a real squeeze and would really unbalance the volumes of the two halves of the building. So instead I'm going to keep the stacked idea of three stories on this side and I'm going to kick the stair out into this big open space and then halfway up between the stories you reach a comfortable head height over the open plan space. So by introducing a single floating room here you create a sort of stepping stone on your way up to the next story at the top. So this is how all that looks in plan view. This is the basement which you can access directly from the outside through a glazed door that can be closed off with a curtain. It's a long thin space so I've given this end portion that has no windows over to useful functions like plant, WC, utility and storage. That improves the proportions of the sunken area and creates a living room oriented towards the entrance floor level. You'd access that floor level via these cutaway steps that both allow the head height to move between these levels and that act as a visual connection between the two. This entrance level is then totally open plan with the main entrance through the original chapel porch. Straight away you see this cozy fireplace with a really sleek glass box sunk into the concrete and with a chimney stretching up three stories to the roof. The dining area is recessed with a fixed bench that lines through with these full height kitchen cabinets that sit under the floating box above and that line through again with some shelves you up half a story to a landing with two bedrooms. Each of these bedrooms benefits from the large chapel windows going all the way to the floor and the room's proportions get retained by using part of that landing area as recessed wardrobe space sitting back to back. Up another half story and you go into the floating box room which serves as a bathroom. There are no existing windows in this part of the external wall so instead a portion of this room stretches up to the roof to create a dramatic funnel of light. The existing rafters of the existing attic space are retained and cut through the funnel again just evening out the proportions and keeping this narrative of the building having been gutted up to roof level. The next flight of stairs takes you up through the floor joists and onto the level of the existing attic. Only the areas that need to be used to achieve the accommodation are floored the rest of it is open structure to keep the drama of the vertical views from ground level. On this floor there is a bedroom between the roof trusses on this side and a small shower room between the roof trusses on this other side and that sits above the bathroom below. level windows. You've got the raised ground floor level giving you windows at eye level and you've got the tall dramatic space with windows above eye level and when you combine them you get the benefit of a dynamic contrast which neither could achieve on its own.