Wednesday 27 February 2013

Designing the new house

One of the advantages of having an isolated plot is that it can give more freedom with planning permission. There are no neighbours to upset and there is no street scene to conform to.





The first intention was to knock down the house on the plot, allowing us to build over the original footprint (many local councils insist on this) whilst continuing to rent a house nearby.

However, it made a lot more sense to build the new house alongside the existing one; we would save a large portion of our budget by not paying any rent for a year, have the added convenience of being on site at all times (better than living in a caravan) and would also gain a far larger south facing garden, once the existing house was demolished. Luckily the planners were happy for us to do this.

We started with a rough idea about what kind of shaped house we'd like and where to position it (as well as what our budget allowed).





Living in the existing house allowed us to take into account the environment around the plot - for example the position of the sun throughout the day, seasons and weather patterns during the year, surrounding farmland and the track leading to our house.

The layout of the rooms was also very vague at this stage. We thought about all the homes we'd lived in through our lives - what aspects inspired us and what problems day-to day-living threw at us.


 


The design changed around a few times before we settled on a final design.






The final design.


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