I have mentioned this book in other blogs...The sensual Home by Ilse Crawford...a former Editor of Elle Decoration, arguably the best regular Interior mags on the UK market. I found the Continental issues even more interesting! When I recommended the book a while back it was available on ABEbooks for about £2.50 + P+P, sadly since she's been involved in a Stateside TV show, it changes hands for at least £65 ( Time for a reprint it seems to me), it's a very useful guide to following your senses f
My old tutor used to say 'a design is like the old joke about a spittoon...it's all in one' Dreadful I know. but I say this because it's difficult to isolate much of the reasoning behind decision making...you could be forcing the impact of a preconceived idea around the design but discounting relevant derived thinking from a site analysis. See later blog For this reason I am not a fan of plan books, certainly they may spark off a new direction of a way of handling circulation but are limiting..
I have mentioned in my design guide, that a way of building up a brief, or what you want, is to assemble a file, portfolio of images and references of likes and hates as well as must haves, desires and 'if the budget stretches to it' themes and thoughts, but you could approach the brief making with just descriptions and words. I daresay it depends how your mind works, and this is not the place to explore that, even I knew where to start. I've mentioned where this came from in another blog. Some
This is something fundamental to the approach to his design...getting rid of or reducing prejudices of what a house looks like. Houses, along with all buildings to my mind, should be designed from the inside out...sort out the needs, wants, desires, must haves and so on with as few preconceptions as possible.For many this is impossible and undesirable, but it does help to free up the thinking at the early stages. Ask serious estate agents and they will tell you that, given a choice, more people
I recently came across a Facebook article on kitchen design tends for 2018...well according to the article, there doesn't seem to be any new ideas. A larger sink was mooted, but the one illustrated was long but single...what? Surely that's pretty old thinking (You have a sink full of washing up and somebody waltzes into the kitchen with half full teacups, and err! I'm not a fan of dishwashers, especially for small loads...that's not my point: double sinks minimum please. I suppose there must be
Haven’t really kept this blog going as I’ve been flat out working on things myself, was much easier to blog when the builder was doing all the work! We passed a year since we broke ground on 27th September and should be in well before Christmas so I’m very happy with progress.
Kitchen being fitted on 16th Oct and then a few days of joinery work. Then gloss like mad and we should be somewhere close to moving in. Can’t wait!
This a subject that will crop up in every house design from entrance to back door as well as room linking. If you need to develop a long thin house or long thin extension, it should be a priority to consider the nature of the links or corridors as much as the rooms themselves. That may seem obvious, but I'm sure we've all been in offices, hotels, guest houses and even recently designed homes where evidently no consideration has been paid to the links and passages. There should at least be a natu
This is a follow-up of a discussion that has taken place on a couple of forums in the past.
A book that I have not referred to in my book to be found in cargocollective.com/selfbuildhome is Bernard Rudofsky's 'Behind the picture window' an excellent little book from 1955 by a writer, teacher and architect. (Sadly £50+ on ABEbooks.co.uk) It is written from an American perspective, though the sentiments seem to apply equally to the UK. Indeed when I worked for a speculative house-buil
Well, though in total it was almost 7 months, we finally got electricity. Life in the caravan is now much more civilised, and I can write this without ear defenders on because of the generator noise. No more lukewarm showers or worrying about flattening the caravan battery. Hooray!
On the other hand, our builder is getting increasingly vague about when he will do the stonework on the house and it is getting very much colder in the caravan now here in Northumberland - we have to keep
Wow, I cannot believe its 4 months since the last blog entry. Life has just been busy, busy, busy and for a while, there didnt seem to be much to report, even though we have been busy. The bedrooms have been plastered and painted, skirting fixed and the bedrooms doors have been bought and are awaiting fixing. The best thing was finally gettitng the bathroom fitted. Its been a while since we had a working loo and while the 'portaloo' in the cellar was adequate, the new one is fab!
Fist we
Having completed the initial groundworks last year (see Part 15) it was great to get the digger back and be able to spread the remaining sub and top soil over our site. All in all, there has been around 150 hours of digger time to get all of the site landscaped. Other than using stone excavated on site to edge parts of the driveway and round the back of the house, most of the digger time (supplemented for earth moving with a dumper) has been spent on earthworks.
At the front of the
I have always tried to design in Bay and even oriel windows in my house designs. Bay windows can often add a quite 'slot' to do the home work, read, write or draw, use a laptop, have breakfast and even admire, relatively undisturbed a sunrise or set-set, or admire your efforts in the garden. In a busy kitchen, where more people gather round these days to await or help with supper, a bay can provide the social spot, but still with work etc...more like the trad farmhouse kitchen many which seem to
Original house contained cheap UPVC windows that were ill fitted and would not match the new windows in the two extensions. So the decision was made to fit new windows throughout with the original plan to go for alu-clad wooden, nut resorted to UPVC due to cost and worries on how some of the alu-clad windows were constructed. Surprising how difficult it was to get quotes that were in an affordable category. Some companies needed numerous follow-up calls which was very frustrating in view of the
So, after the last entry, we were back to scratch again, having managed to secure an additional piece of land and an alternative access to our plot. Lots of measuring and pacing out later, we were able to basically take what would have been the 2nd floor of the planned house, and put it on the ground floor. The ground floor footprint was made considerably bigger by this, and the overall shape was much less "passive-friendly", but for our tight site, it really was the only option. After a lot of
Two years on from starting the hut I'm fitting a gravity water system...I have a wash hand basin in the toilet and sink in kitchen both of which have taps. I connected the waste pipe ages ago which drains to the soak away but never go around to providing the taps with the one thing that kinda makes them useful!
To be honest the hut isn't in any way uncomfortable to live in. We have a standpipe less than 30m away and just fill up 5l water bottles for drinking and washing. However, I've got s
This is modified blog from the first one I added referencing a small, underplayed article in the Sunday Telegraph of 3 September, which I did reference, possibly breaking a rule...or I pressed the wrong button! So you'll need to google at your own leisure. It caught my eye because in the title are the words 'Ugly Homes' and 'Nimbys'...well what is the definition of an ugly home for starters. We all have our own definition of same: mine would be ill-proportioned, jumble of materials...or too busy
In the Observer magazine...03:09:17, is an illustrated article (homes section) about a beautiful, unspoilt 60s house near Shepperton designed by Swiss architect Edward Schoolheifer (no, I hadn't heard of him either!) which would no doubt be hated by the so-called committee of self-appointed experts of the last blog. Strangely it was reviewed in 2013 when under different ownership...there is a fine photo of the bedroom with a double height hall. It is quite magnificant, in my opinion. It is sli
So apart from the long running saga getting the Northern electric network to understand their own reson d'etre, I've started to do the utility and downstairs bathroom, so as to give us facilities as soon as possible.
Coincidentally the two houses to the North of us have been bought and are being renovated and the guy doing the building work called in to see me and very kindly told me that there has been a 14% or so rise in insulation costs and another forecast for October according to his
At the end of the last episode, we were the proud owners of a landlocked, overlooked, overgrown plot in the centre of a medieval conservation area. Easy to develop, right?
The plot was accessed through a narrow close, about 2cm too narrow for a transit (even with the mirrors folded and a brave/careless driver in charge), so completely impractical for the creation of a new house. On either side, the plot is overlooked by 3 storey blocks of flats, tight up against the boundary, and at
Just a quick update seeing as I had the camera on me. As always, not as much progress as I would have liked- I was away from the build for a lot of August, but it's good to come back to it refreshed.
The painting is finally finished (that seemed to take an age), the WC is temporarily installed, and the woodburner is up and running- I'll do a separate entry for that, at some point.
The overhead beams are now sanded back and sealed with Osmo Polyx oil- I'll use the same stuff on the wind
Started external wall insulation, 240sqm in total to fix. Its Pavatherm combi, 40mm. Fixed a 40mm (cut down from 50mm) batten on the outside edge of soleplate and rested boards on top and off you go. Takes a while to then fit dpm and horizontal battens which I now need to remove and fix vertical battens first......Nearly finished the house frame except the flat roof, Seems a little odd to start covering walls after so long, I need to contact window suppliers again for more accurate quotes.
