Building an extension: forward planning can pay

By Brian Stater Published: 1:39PM GMT 05 Mar 2010

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Previous of Images Next Transformed: the accomplished two-storey build, with double-height glassy atrium Photo: JEFF GILBERT Brian Stater, left, and his designer Nick Cuddon examination the plans Photo: CLARA MOLDEN

So far as I can remember, it all began in the pub. Nick Cuddon, my most appropriate friend, is an designer and we had met, as we have given propagandize days, to report and put the universe to rights. It had been a prolonged and bibulous dusk when I tentatively referred to that Jackie (my wife) and I had been meditative about extending. We felt we longed for a bigger residence and wondered if we could grasp it by construction a whole an extension. We knew it wouldnt work if we attempted to set up on the behind but how about putting it on the front?

Nick looked at me, scratched his head and scribbled a blueprint on a drink mat. He incited it over, thought for a while, and said: "Yes. That could work utterly nicely."

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And so it all started. Jackie and I had lived for scarcely twenty years in an surprising Sixties residence in Blackheath, south London. The skill is on an infill plot, once the behind grassed area of a Victorian villa. In 1965, when the tract was developed, the designer was compelled by a large hunger in the center of the site, so he wrapped the residence around it, producing an L-shaped plan. Much had happened in the inserted years. The tree had been taken down a small time in the Seventies. And the accommodation, deliberate inexhaustible when the residence was built, had turn unsound by 21st-century standards. There was customarily one bathroom, and it was tiny; the dining room could chair hardly some-more than four; the gymnasium was dim and dingy; there was nowhere to eat in the kitchen.

We favourite where we lived, but felt the residence indispensable in allege surgery. If we could get it just as we longed for it, that would be preferable to moving. We would goal to stay for, say, a serve 10 years and afterwards realize the value of a good, family-friendly residence when we came to sell.

The behind grassed area is cramped, so construction a whole in to that was impossible. But we wondered if we could pull brazen at the front, from the bottom of the "L". And that is where Nick came in. Over multiform months that beer-mat blueprint developed in to plans that gave us an additional bedroom, dual bigger bathrooms and a rather intelligent top-lit dining room. Finally, similar to a rabbit from a conjurors hat, Nick constructed a double-height glassy atrium, crossed by a potion bridge.

All this competence have prompted a coronary in the internal formulation department. But the intrigue was upheld but legislative addition or objection. The legislature was, I think, responding to a serious, veteran project, that kept the outmost changes as sensitive as probable to the strange residence and reputable alternative buildings in the street. Astonishingly, we even had a minute of await from the customarily sniffy Blackheath Society.

Nick and I crawled over the intrigue relentlessly. I think we both came to suffer these sessions, conducted over mugs of tea in his bureau on top of a guitar emporium in Sohos Manette Street. The customarily time we came close (actually, really close) to slaying each alternative was during a quarrel over a cloakroom sink.

But, unresolved over all this, was the subject of cost. Before a trowel had been put in the ground, the fees built up. Jackie and I knew we were entering domain we hadnt envisaged. Could we means it?

Oddly, the retrogression came to the rescue. Both of the mothers had not long ago died and we had a small hereditary income in the bank, earning no interest. Suddenly, the residence seemed a essential long-term investment for that money. The downturn in the construction a whole industry additionally seemed to be to the advantage. It led Keith Harrison, the constructional engineer, to fun (well, I hoped it was a joke) that we could be appropriation the greatest construction a whole site in south-east England.

At this point we were still laughing, nervously. But afterwards came the initial low point. With the residence ready to to be pulled apart, we had to move out. We found a prosaic to rent and, in frozen Jan 2009, set about make-up up and throwing out roughly twenty years value of junk. On the day the removal men arrived there was 4in of sleet in the garden. Then there was the tender Mar sunrise when we arrived for a site assembly and found the front of the residence seeking similar to there had been a gas explosion. We asked ourselves: ""Why are we profitable someone a lot of income to fall short the house?

By mid-April, it seemed the misfortune was over. All the rough work had paid off. Foundations and drains had left in but a hitch. The walls had left up and a derrick that seemed to fill the travel had arrived to pitch in the new steelwork. The roof tiles went on, plumbers and electricians changed in… and the difficulty started.

It was roughly inaudible at first, but a pursuit that had been forward of report stalled over summer. It was similar to being on a boat that had been launched in to a satisfactory wind, but found itself becalmed. Weeks came and went, Jun morphed in to July, afterwards August, and the sails seemed to flap, watchful for a summer breeze.

Why? Well, we had sealed up with a Hertfordshire organisation that allocated a immature and fresh foreman. And they never seemed to supply him with the manpower he needed. So he looked increasingly out of his abyss as the problems mounted.

And the each day tour opposite London valid a bugbear for a small of the workmen, who changed to some-more available sites. Those that stayed infrequently gave the sense that the construction a whole retrogression was, actually, operative opposite us; they seemed in no precipitate to finish a pursuit that competence be their last for utterly a while.

As summer incited to autumn, the incident got worse. Almost each bespoke object in the residence the potion bridge, the opening shade and the metal cover over the front doorway arrived temperament small propinquity to Nicks designs and had to be remade. A bone-headed truck motorist flattened a H2O hydrant, flooding the street, and gathering off around a neighbours hedge.

To be fair, the builders never stopped perplexing to get the pursuit right and were ready to scold mistakes. And there were moments of charm. Take the cat flap. This indispensable to be punched by the side wall of the kitchen, rising in to a space in between the refrigerator and the oven. It worked fine, but looked a small stark. It was remade when, utterly unasked, one of the carpenters got to work with a small offcuts left by the Magnet kitchen fitter. The outcome is Londons initial oak-lined cat tunnel.

But the bigger design was most less fun. The delays were removing utterly irrational and took a complicated fee on family with neighbours who had formerly been bargain and supportive. The immature director went off ill and never came back, and Nick worked himself in to the belligerent to secure the finish and detailing we demanded.

Autumn incited to winter and still the play continued. We had to give notice on the prosaic and released an meaningful final to the builders that the pursuit contingency finish by Friday Nov 13. And, yes, they longed for the deadline. Just when it couldnt get worse, I fell off my bike and really bad pennyless my elbow, so was stranded in sanatorium days prior to the move. And when the removal outpost eventually pulled up outward the residence there was still a driver up a ladder in the kitchen.

It would be stupid to fake that the experience hasnt left a couple of scars. But a small of the suffering was eased by a satisfactory monetary allotment with the builders. And, anyway, when did you last listen to of a residence prolongation that accomplished on time?

So, dual years and a lot of income later, that blueprint on the drink pad has grown in to something deeply satisfying. The residence has been transformed, Nick and I are still most appropriate friends, and the mishap of the construction a whole routine will ease as winter turns to spring.

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