selfbuilder Diaries
Nicole Collison and her husband Rob, along with their two young daughters, are moving from the coast to the countryside, renovating a Grade II listed Kent barn in search of a rural dream in their home county
There were some tweaks to the floorplan we hoped to make, so our first job was to find a good architect
e’re the Collisons! My name is Nicole and my husband is Rob. We have two young daughters five and eight as well as little una our Maltese. We decided to embark on this rollercoaster self-build journey at the beginning of 2023. For years we’ve had itchy feet and have wanted to move from our four-bed Victorian coastal home, in search of more outside space for our daughters and dog.
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However, after countless house viewings over several months, none of which really hit the mark, we decided to change up our search and start hunting for some land to build our own home. We love where we live and didn’t want to up sticks and move far away from family and friends, plus our daughters are both at a local village school, so we knew this constrained search wouldn’t be easy.
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www.sbhonline.co.uk
After registering with every local land agent and online plot finder site which we highly recommend! we finally stumbled across a site in one of our favourite local villages – surely this was too good to be true? The morning my husband and I viewed the site for the first time in midwinter, the weather couldn’t have been more horrendous – imagine torrential hail downpours plus howling wind! However, that did not stop my husband from falling in love at first sight and him putting in an offer there and then. Being soaked from head to toe, I on the other hand, would take a little more convincing. Ever the optimist, once agreeing on
a purchase price, my husband arranged for us to visit for a second time (on a much sunnier day and the beauty of the site came alive. Fields and open space
for miles in all directions – once we saw our daughters walking off hand in hand through the fields, we knew we wouldn’t regret our decision. The 1.5-acre site is surrounded by beautiful countryside including arable fields, with the bonus of a Grade II listed timber-framed Kent barn and various other outbuildings within the plot. The site already had full planning permission granted to convert the listed barn into a three-bedroom dwelling and demolish the tin-structured car port and rebuild. There were however some ‘tweaks’ to the oorplan that we hoped to make, so our first job after instructing our solicitor was to find a good local architect to amend the drawings for us and resubmit them into planning. We ended up going with the architect who did the initial drawings when the plot was up for sale
sep/oct 2023
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