On your marks..........
The plan, upon my early retirement, was to complete all the refurbishment on our house, Arlington, then sell it to finance a new self-built house on the garden to the side. It took a lot longer than I imagined, but we had just about reached this situation by April 2008. Having finally completed the work on Arlington to a high standard to achieve a position of being able to place the property on the market, we made the decision to commence the project.
As the plot is relatively narrow at 11.25 metres for the most part, we needed inspiration and guidance as to what we might be able to achieve that would be acceptable to Planners, so we put out a few emails to Architects and Architectural Technicians, achieving a minimal response. Chris Wells from A4 Architects in Truro, replied fairly swiftly, and offered to call in to see us. We had read that the relationship between Architect and customer was a critical one, and that the decision is hugely important to the success of the project. How many times have you seen Architect and Customer fall out on Channel 4's 'Grand Designs! The trouble is that, unless there are other clients to question, how on earth do you know, you have to listen, look at portfolios of work, and go on how you feel about the person in front of you. In truth I didn't have the confidence to ask to meet prior clients, and we didn't have Architects clamouring to do our work. Anyway on the agreed morning Chris turned up with his young office assistant Clare (who turned out to be a Godsend!), a big bald bloke in his 40's I guess, dressed in long cargo shorts. Well, not quite what we expected, but we both took a liking to him, and took the plunge.........for better or for worse.
He outlined the process that he would follow with us, from taking our brief under Workstage 'C' all the way through to Workstage 'L', final inspection and Certification. The cost would be based on 8% of a build cost of £140k....which was very generous as RIBA recommend 10%, and we had expected the build cost to be substantially more on the basis of high quality fittings.
We agreed the contract terms in writing, and the journey began!
At the first meeting, Chris asked us what he wanted to achieve with the house in terms of space, numbers of bedrooms and so on. We wanted a house that was basically a down-size in terms of overall accommodation, we wanted fewer bedrooms of course, but we still wanted good sized rooms, not the rabbit hutches they seem to build nowadays for down-sizers! A topographical survey would be required, and we approved an approach to 'Kemp Engineering and Surveying' to supply a detailed survey of the site. The details from the survey were electronically transferred to A4, whereupon they became site plan 2008/2202/01.
At the next meeting, Chris had drawn a plan which surprised and sort of..... shocked us both, showing a couple of flat roofed intersecting cubes, with two second floor extensions to the East and West, that we thereafter christened 'ears', and a full width balcony looking South over the town, The internal accommodation was almost spot-on from the word go, giving us rooms that were at least the dimensions that we currently enjoyed, and in many cases substantially larger. I guess this first shot was to establish accommodation rather than design, but we were never going to accept a flat roof, in any form at all (don't subscribe to the eco sedum thing I'm afraid) and asked Chris to look at other possibilities. As we drove home from Truro, we were both feeling a strange mixture of excitement and foreboding. However, over the next few days the plan really grew on us.
The next time we met, a drawing resembling what we now know as the final building had taken shape, with opposing 5 degree pitched roofs, with the incline mirrored in the ceilings of the upper rooms, and cedar cladding to different elevations. We liked it....a lot!
Chris told me about a free 3D design programme for PC, Google 'Sketch-up', and advised me to download it and play around a little with it. In doing so, we were able to build up images that gave us a better idea of how the build would look. This was immensely useful in visualising the position of windows, doors and other structural items, and helped us to hone the plans with a better understanding of the implications of any change.
The roof pitch had to be set at 5% to keep the apex within the height of the adjoining properties, but this suited the style of the house. As a result of this, the materials we could use were limited. Copper, Zinc, Aluminium, polymer/rubber compounds and mineral felt were all considered. We did research, looked at cost, noise, heat transferance and longevity, and in the case of copper, theft potential. We also spent time driving around Devon and Cornwall looking at various roofs many of which we had seen in brochures and websites.
We decided to use Zinc for the roof, mainly due to its appearance and longevity, although we expected the cost to be relatively high. We also considered the style of windows and doors, and chose a dark grey theme, with Alu-clad wood triple glazed windows, dark grey externally, off-white internally.
Finally, we asked Chris to submit the project for planning permission.
