Hi all
We’re at very early stages of planning a renovation (or potentially a demolish/rebuild, but we’d ideally prefer to keep what’s there, if it makes economic sense to do so).
I’ve spent many, many hours digesting this treasure trove of a forum and, after badgering from my better half, have got to the point of sharing our sketches to get some thoughts on our current layout.
I’ll try to provide some context below. A lot of it is quite personal and no doubt some will disagree with our rationale, but it’s mostly based on the way we currently live, or the way in which we would like to live, if our current house permitted.
The house has been empty for a few years. It’s habitable, but very shabby.
It sits low in a valley, on a very level plot of around 2 acres of garden and woodland. Nearest neighbour is >200m away and out of sight. The only house we can see, through the trees, is almost 300m.
The front of the house faces SSW and is around 30ft from a relatively quiet country lane. Between the lane and the house there are bushes and small trees which form a nice barrier/screen, but mean there are no notable views from the ground floor. We plan to recover a little of this space with a small enclosed/walled garden, just to take some advantage of the southerly aspect.
The views to the south from the first floor are across the valley to distant hills and there’s a particularly nice mountain view to the West, again only really from the first floor.
The gardens and woodland are mostly behind the house, to the north. This is the view we most want to exploit… several mature trees and large lawn (currently a mess) with the backdrop of the woodland. We’ll be adding shrubs, more trees, wildflower garden, fish pond, ‘bog-ish’ garden, orchard, natural swimming pond (planning permitting).
We’re much more interesting in a relatively intimate view of greenery & wildlife than views of distant mountains. The northerly aspect isn’t ideal, but the light on that side of the house is very pleasant all through the year and that’s where we plan to have the most glazing. There’s a triangular patch of ground that sees little direct sunlight, but it’s ideal for the koi pond and an area of moisture tolerant/loving plants.
At the moment, we’re focusing on the internal layout, but we’re thinking along the lines of a barn-like appearance from the road. Metal roof, first floor either timber or metal clad. There are quite a few such barns in the area and it allows us to have a relatively straightforward (no doubt some would say boring) shape to the main house and roof.
We’ve tried to ensure there are plenty of views to the garden and to bring in a reasonable amount of southerly light, while utilising the existing openings as far as possible.
We only need three bedrooms, but it’s quite a large house so it seems daft not to have a fourth. There are outbuildings that we hope to convert to an annexe, gym & workshop. The bedrooms will, as far as possible, look onto the garden at the rear. We don’t want south or west facing bedrooms.
Don’t particularly like open-plan living, but ‘broken’ plan is great… that’s, to a point, what we have now. Living area doors are never closed, so we decided not to bother with them in this place, on the ground floor anyway.
Really want a full height section in the house. And an indoor tree.
Love hanging chairs. We have one that went largely unused on our patio… brought it inside and it’s absolutely my favourite seat in the house
We have two dogs and will be adding more, so a decent size utility/dog room is important, with shower.
Nice large kitchen/diner.
Somewhere to play table tennis, darts & pool We currently have these in an outbuilding, but it’s rarely used unless the weather’s decent… so we figure we should bring it inside.
Want a walk-in pantry.
Need a dedicated home cinema.
We’re not aiming for Passive, but will invest in insulation, airtightness, MVHR, solar (nice big south-ish roof after all), battery storage, ashp etc.
Any questions, please fire away
