OPENING UP THE BASEMENT
The new basement family room has an entire wall of sliding doors, plus roof lights at one end so it’s flooded with light. Stone paving and wood flooring creates a sense of flow between indoor and outdoor
Having driven around the local streets looking for loft conversions in progress, Chris came across TLC who built the shell, while he sourced the glazing, staircase and ensuite fittings. Once the eight week project was underway though, the couple decided to alter the layout. “We were originally going to have the bedroom across the whole width of the dormer at the rear, with the bathroom at the front,” he says. “However that would have meant having a sloping ceiling in the bathroom, which I’ve always found annoying. As the view was phenomenal and we’re not overlooked, we decided to move the ensuite to the rear and give it a full height window instead. We use a bedroom on the floor below as a dressing room instead of having walk-in wardrobes to keep the bedroom space as open as possible, and our old master is now a proper guest bedroom.” Chris believes using a specialist loft company was about half the price of a standard builder, although it was essential to be onsite to oversee the various tradespeople. “I couldn’t fault them in the slightest, but trying to communicate the idiosyncrasies of my design was quite challenging as it’s so fast-paced,” he explains. “The first fit, second fit and third fit teams are all going from one project to another, so even though you’ve explained to the first team exactly
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what you want, the second team doesn’t always know that.”
Throughout the project, Chris and Linda were careful to blend old and new, incorporating several features that differentiate the build from a typical flat pack add-on. For instance they commissioned a replica of the original staircase up to the loft and had the dado rails reproduced to create the illusion that the new top floor had always been there.
They also painted the original wooden windows to match the new aluminium ones, and decided on an exposed brick wall which runs alongside the staircases on the bottom two floors. “We saw something similar at the stable block spa at Babington House in Somerset, and thought it looked fantastic,” says Chris. After much research, they settled on reclaimed Victorian red bricks with lime render rather than standard neat pointing, and this was repeated on the opposite wood burner wall to link the two spaces together.
“The tradesman couldn’t believe it when we asked him to slap the render on roughly, so it looks like someone’s ripped the plaster off,” says Chris. “The end effect works really well, as it makes the house feel more solid and grounded rather than a huge plasterboard box.” One of Chris’s favourite features though is the
CONTACTS/
SUPPLIERS SANITARYWARE (LOFT) Chris Stevens
www.chrisstevensltd.co.uk
KITCHEN SINK & TAP Tap Warehouse
www.tapwarehouse.com
BASEMENT LIGHTING SYSTEM
Modern Lighting Solutions
www.modernlighting
solutions.co.uk
KITCHEN LIGHTING CP Lighting
www.cp-lighting.co.uk
EXTERNAL BRICK (RECLAIMED) Travis Perkins
www.travisperkins.co.uk
PAVING Jewson
www.jewson.co.uk
OAK DECKING UK Timber
www.uk-timber.co.uk nov/dec 2020
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