The Brief:

With a new grandchild on the way, Andrea Wolstenholme and her husband, John, are keen to increase the size of their threebedroom detached home, but are at a loss to know how to do it because of what Andrea describes as the property’s ‘quite peculiar layout.’

The house in Royton, just outside Oldham, where the couple live with their two youngest children, was built in 1968. Its unconventional split-level layout means that rooms are spread over four floors and connected by half landings. There is a lounge and conservatory on the lower ground, a kitchen-diner on the upper ground with access to a utility, two bedrooms on the lower part of the first floor and a bedroom and bathroom on the upper level. There is a garage