so we ended up having quite a row about where the kitchen should be,” Daryl says. Most Huf houses follow a similar pattern with
the kitchen in the front right hand corner room. But the Clarkes were very keen on having it in the middle of the house, which is very unusual. Daryl’s wife wanted to be able to see both the front and back garden from the kitchen and to stand on the balcony and be able to look onto the kitchen. “We had quite a fight about it. At some point
Peter said ‘I don’t want to build the house’ and I said ‘Well we are paying for it. Surely we can choose what goes where?’ But now he really likes the design and he’s used it in other houses afterwards,” he says. “We were also pretty happy with the design otherwise.” Once they agreed on the design it was a
case of the planners re-submitting the plans to Maidstone Borough council. From then it took about four months to go through their planning. The council had no objections. “When we said we were going to build a Huf Haus they were all delighted,” Daryl says.
Euro headache Although planning was not an issue the weak- ening of the pound came as an unexpected challenge for the couple. The planning and building of the house was done from November 2007 through to the early part of 2009, a period in which the euro rose against the pound quite dramatically. “We were paying in Euros and that was a problem. We started the process when the euro rate was at 1.4 to the pound but then it moved towards parity,” Daryl explains. How did they deal with this problem? “We
hedged quite a large number of euros and I’m glad we did because I kept thinking it won’t get any worse but it [did]. We hedged at 1.25, which was a fantastic rate in comparison with what was available when we finished. We would have probably had to cancel the build had we not hedged.” Others like Daryl should consider this when
signing up to a Huf house. “This should not be a problem as Euros can be fixed at the early stage of the design process, hence there is no need for unforeseen surprises,” Peter Huf says. But the rise of the euro did impact on the
house. In the end they had to scrap their plans of building a swimming pool because the garden landscape budget kept rising. Although the house was finished by May 2009, Daryl and Sarah didn’t move in straight away because they had to then fit the kitchen and the bathroom, which they decided to
...continued on page 23 selfbuilder & homemaker
www.sbhonline.eu 21
The Clarkes were very keen on having their kitchen in the middle of the house, which is very unusual
DARYL CLARKE
HUF HAUS
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