When it came to the design of our new house we were very particular on some aspects – as every self-builder seems to be – but very open in many others.

Unfortunately for our architect we had nearly no idea of how we wanted the outside of the house to look.  All of our concerns were related to the rooms, the interrelationship between the rooms, the technology to be used within the build, the performance of the house in terms of energy and water usage and generally how we would use the house.  Whilst we did not think the 'style' used in most spec build sites would suit us we really abdicated all responsibility on the external design to a professional.

You can see the brief we gave to our architect in Design Brief.

The first design which Neill Lewis, our architect came up with was wonderful – an 'open arms' house in a modern almost villa based style.  We would have been very happy to go with this BUT we had to compromise on the design to ensure that the planning situation wasn't made any worse.  It was felt that this design would just appear to bulky for the site and could detract from the application rather than improve our chances.  So should anyone have a sloping site and want a really great design then get in contact with Neill.

The second design is a modern 4 bedroomed house that presents an interpretation of a lateral chimneyed Welsh farmhouse to the bordering public right of way.  There are some quirks – what appears to be a chimney in the east elevation is in fact the entrance hall!

The intention of this design was to be able to package up a complete solution that wasn't the normal rendered bungalow, that had some merit such that it could be shown to be a positive addition to the local housing stock.  This was adding weight to the planning application to offset the move from the existing cottage to a new larger house inside an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  During the design we made use of an HMSO book – 'Houses of the Welsh Countryside', focussing on Monmouthshire so we could show a strong local vernacular influence on our plans.