In the beginning........

In the beginning, there was a family hunting for a house. Like any family, they had a budget. They had wants, needs and expectations. After 6 months or so it became clear that it wasn't going to be possible to get them all to meet.

We were looking in Hampshire, where we had been living since we were married in 1987. Over Christmas 2003 we decided to start looking in the South Cotswolds, where Jan was brought up. We still struggled to find the perfect house, but the early signs were good. The housing stock was more to our taste, and the prices not quite so silly as in Hampshire.

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ASIDE. Why do news items about property price rises always convey the message that house price increases are a good thing. I don't think they are. The amount of money that we, in this country, have to spend on our housing is verging on the obscene. The British disease in this respect is now spreading into Europe, and I don't think they will thank us for it.
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Mindfull of the mantra "location, location, location" and accutely aware that the house we had owned before, in Portsmouth, was a wonderful house in a poor location (yes, we did suffer the consequences when it came to sell it); we finally settled on a totally unsuitable house in an excellent location. Well, I say unsuitable, but that would be an untruth. It is a perfectly adequate house. It is just that it is much smaller then where we were before and THIS family are going to stuggle with the confines.

There is a final, BIG plus point to this house, which gives meaning to this blog. It comes with planning permission for an extension. It has not been costed, quoted or even looked at by a builder, but the plans are approved. For us, that made a big difference to it's appeal.

The house as it stands today started out as a two-up-two down Victorian cottage set on the side of a hill. Fairly early in it's life an extension was added to the front to add an entrance hallway and an upstairs bathroom. This also allowed the staircase to be moved out of the living accomodation. Some time later (probably 60's or 70's) another extension was added to one side (North elevation) to give a new living room downstairs. At some later time, the loft space created above this new living room was opened out as a dressing room to the second bedroom.

The current set of plans, for a third extension, add again to the North elevation (the lie of the land really pushes development in this direction). A new living room would be added downstairs, a large bedroom & en-suite above and, because the house is built into a bank, a half width basement room to the rear elevation.

The front an rear elevations are shown below in rather poor quality scans of the drawings :

Original plans, front elevation


Original plans, rear elevation

While we are more than happy to have a set of approved plans for making this house meet our needs, we think we can make some improvements. In particular :

• The basement room is only half the depth of the house. Can we make it the same size as the building that will be above it ? I am sure this will make construction easier. I appreciate more digging will be required, but we have a disused quarry in the garden, and I'm sure it will swallow the spoil.
• The basement room only has outside access. Yeuch.
• As you can see from the plans, the new construction will create three levels in roof line. The existing extension is a step down from the original house, then we will step up to the new bit. We would like to build up the existing extension to meet the new part. This has the added advantage of........
• .......addressing the problem of needing a second staircase to access the new bedroom. There is insufficient head height for a corridor through to the new extension on the first floor, unless the second bedroom and it's dressing area are partitioned. This severly restricts their size. If we "raise the roof" a corridor can be fitted and the second staircase is not needed.

What we need, is a discussion with the local council, and an architect. Watch this space.