“We were really keen to find a property that we could renovate so we could put our own stamp on it”
BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD Going back to the drawing board they agreed to make best use of permitted development without compromising their idea of creating more accommodation in the roof space and opening up the ground floor to bring more light into the property. This meant the height of the property could remain the same and the overall footprint would not make the building stick out in the neighbourhood. Planning permission was finally granted in ovember 201, and the family moved into rented accommodation just before Christmas. With the cracks in the house getting bigger at an alarming rate, the Williamsons put the building work out to tender to begin what turned out to be a long process.
The first tender came in at 500,000 – much higher than they had hoped or expected. The next builder never came back with a quote but with the third builder – Whitshaws – they ‘struck gold’.
COVID-PROOF BUILD “By this time we were paying a lot of rent which was eating into the build budget, but Whitshaws the builders were our saviours,” says Suzanne. “They suggested it would be cheaper and easier to demolish the bungalow and effectively start again, for which we had to go back to planning for further approval.” Luckily there were no objections and in March
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2020 they were given the go-ahead, only to hit a setback they could never have predicted: the pandemic.
Fortunately the building team was able to continue working, and in June they started to demolish the bungalow, armed with a huge skip and a digger. They began the demolition at 8 am one morning. By 9 am most of the building was a pile of rubble.
“They knocked out the bowing roof timber and the whole roof caved in,” says Suzanne. Once the site was cleared the builders started work on the foundations. The original bungalow had been built directly on top of clay so there were no traditional foundations to speak of. The builders dug a one metre-deep concrete foundation before building the breeze block walls, specifically chosen for their insulating properties.
The exterior walls were eventually rendered for a modern, unifying finish. The walls went up quite quickly,” says Suzanne. “It was summer and the weather was really warm, so the builders were able to make good progress.” Suzanne kept an eye on things – “I was on site most days to make sure everything was going according to plan and to answer any questions that arose along the way.” She says that the most striking thing was that “at this stage in the build, the house looked very small. I started to worry that we hadn’t made it big enough and that we would run out of space.
jan/feb 2023
LOW POINT
Trying to get planning permission before the roof caved in, and then keeping watch on the house after the burglary. “We didn’t get a lot of sleep!”
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