family used to sail, and I was used to sleeping in very compact little cabins – everything stowed away, and nothing left out. That’s the look I wanted to recreate. I put the timber up the walls, there’s a small cabin-like window which overlooks the church and a compact wood burner which we’ve never even lit; the house is too warm.” The bedroom is reached by a large sliding


door, an idea that first suraced in he rt House “The doors are two MDF doors sandwiched together to get the right width and being MDF they won’t warp. The ironmongery came from Hafele Sliding Gear.”


Another nod to family life on the waves is the


rope handrail on the staircase. “I think metal ones are too oficelie  used a company called Rope & Splice for The Art House and they were really helpful, so I went back to them, and they helped me design and measure what I needed. It arrives in a box, and you simply screw it into the wall.” Throughout this project Jane has had her eye on every minute detail but how did she honestly


24 www.sbhonline.co.uk


find the eperience o tacling several diverse roles on her build? She says that it helped her have a better idea of the ‘big picture’: “Moving from being an architect to a project manager, I now appreciate when a contractor says to me there’s been a delay on something. You see eve- rything more in the round, and that was good, but you also realise how much you don’t know.” Jane adds: “I can design a window head, but I


rely on the uilder to properly fit the damp proo courses and extend them the right distance into the wall cavity. When you have someone asking you that question you need to do your research to give them the right answer. I’m a huge fan of YouTube!”


Jane concludes: “Building your own house is an apprenticeship in everything and I would recommend every architect to do it at some point and the earlier in their career the better. The whole process has been, I imagine, a bit like skydiving – I found it thrilling when I was in the middle of it, but would I really want to do it again?”


mar/apr 2022


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