Floorplans are my favourite! - by Greg Penn
Floorplans are my favourite!
Anyone else come to these first when house hunting?
Apr 21, 2026
Well folks, when I wrote my book, I wanted as best I could, for it to feel like you were here with me at Admirals, wandering round with a glass of something, and I was giving you the ‘grand tour’… and the best way I could think to do that, was to have some beautiful floor plans drawn up that help you visualise where you are in the house and how the rooms relate to each other. If you did read it, I’m afraid it was up to you to charge your own glass, but I hope - in a round-a-bout way, that’s how it felt! They were drawn by the incredibly talented illustrator Andrew Cadey, and you can see more of his brilliant work below.
Andrew Cadey did the front cover illustration too - spliced with a photograph. I’d have been very happy with just his illustration but the publishers said it needed a picture of yours truly on the front - I can only apologise haha!
I don’t know if you’re the same, but whenever house hunting - in anger or indeed just ‘browsing’ (lord knows why I still browse, I’m hopefully not going anywhere!), before I look at anything else, I’m straight to the floor plans! First up, for that all important ‘overall sq ft’ figure (the Yorkshireman in me wanting good value again haha!), but then secondly working out room size, flow, layout and ultimately, whether I could make it work or not!
Obviously with a builder, structural engineer, the local planning department, enough budget and a willingness to rip out whatever might be in your way - you can pretty well do what you like inside a house. Alas, I have none of the above so really what I’m looking at with a floorplan, is whether I can make the layout work, with the restrictions in the DIYable elements and work I’m going to be able to do… relocating bits - in my last place I opened up a wall to combine two rooms - all quite modest stuff vs. say much bigger lumps of work that would involve professionals!
This floorplan I think, is from approx. 2010 and is the one right move gives you, when you look at Admirals House on there - It’s not the one that was in the estate agents particulars when I bought Admirals.
I’m going to share these one floor at a time, so I can talk you through them in detail without the post being about 3 hours long, so hopefully they’re a nice length, and sorry folks but this is for paid subscribers only. They’re also in my book so, if you’ve already bought that - you can see it there too and really that’s the best way to see them I think - there’s nothing quite like having something you can hold… But it would feel a bit unfair to those that have bought the book to then offer it f.o.c for all to see! If both a copy of the book and a paid subscription here are beyond your means - there are copies of the book in some libraries so perhaps you’ll be able to track it down that way if that helps! I might also share them on Instagram at some point too - as you can’t really see them all that well in that format - and if you are indeed reading the whole article, I’d recommend perhaps using a computer or tablet so you can zoom in a bit and get a better look at things vs. your phone screen!