visually great, and fulfilled all the functions,” says Erica. “As a chartered surveyor Michael was in a position to do his own drawings for the builders and we could keep control of how it evolved. I was surprised that we could achieve something of this scale, but much of it was down to Michael’s clever reworking of the house. I knew that whatever he came up with it would be stunning. I just looked at his plans and tweaked them.”


Erica particularly wanted a large, open plan kitchen and plenty of glass looking into the garden of their corner plot. Light and space were crucial elements of the remodelling. “I would have really liked to have a system whereby the entire corner of the house opened up onto the garden, but it was structurally impossible so we settled for a full wall of glass doors,” she says. Top of Michael’s wish-list was a “grand entrance”. He explains: “I like a house to have an impact as you walk through the door,” he says. In this case, a two-storey atrium opens into a spacious, art-filled sitting room and through to the structurally landscaped garden beyond.


By the time they made their application to Building Control and started working on site, it was March 2016. At this point everything started to move very quickly. Within a couple of weeks the old house had been all but dismantled, reduced to three exterior walls and a series of Acrow props supporting key structural beams.


62 www.sbhonline.co.uk


SITTING ROOM The striking fireplace was key to the initial design of the sitting room, but ventilating the fire restricted the casing’s design, and the fitting process “wasn’t straightforward,” say the owners


HIGH POINT


Moving in and living in it. It’s everything we set out to achieve – Erica


“We agreed to pull back and use the permitted


development route instead to increase the size of the house”


issue 01 2021


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