The whole back of the house, opened up

The rear of the house in Leicester was essentially replaced with a full-width run of sliding panels, stretching across the ground floor beneath the original gabled roofline. From the garden, you can see straight through the house: the living area on one side, the dining space on the other, all connected by one continuous glass wall.

What makes a job this size work

When the opening is this wide, the number of panels, the weight of the glass, and the accuracy of the structural opening all have to line up. There’s no fudging a run this long. The steelwork above has to be right, the base has to be level, and the track has to be dead straight across the full width. Otherwise the panels won’t glide properly and the seals won’t close evenly. That conversation starts at survey stage. Smooth, quiet operation across a span this wide is an engineering result.

The mid-build reality

The photo catches the house in that honest mid-build moment: pallets still down where the patio will be, the garden not yet landscaped. But the doors are in, and they’ve changed the character of the house. The old roofline sits above like it was always meant to have this much glass beneath it. The slim profiles between panels mean nothing visual interrupts the view. The extension reads as part of the house.

What a run this size actually gives you

From inside, the garden doesn’t start at the door. It starts at the sofa. That amount of glass, with sightlines slim enough that your eye just travels through, means the view is effectively unbroken from one side of the room to the other. On a grey afternoon, the room still fills with daylight. On a clear day, you slide the panels back and the boundary between house and garden disappears. Family life plays out in widescreen.