Thursday 13 November 2014

Building a house.

In an effort to simplify our lives a little, we are combining our studio site as a live + work space, suitable to accommodate our 3 lads coming and going over the next few years.

This gives us a great opportunity, to create a sustainably built, highly energy efficient home.

We are lucky to have such good friends Paul + Sarah both architects http://www.ruaa.co.uk who have been very encouraging and enthusiastic about this project.

Naturally we employed their services. A year on after all their efforts, we have now have full planning permission and building plans, to convert the offices into a house. The studio will remain as it is.




Before any of this work can begin we needed to sell our house.
In need of a lot of work, I spent all my non working time during 2014 renovating, assisted by very capable son Cal who was available, keen and saving for his trip to New Zealand.

Lovely what you discover when lifting a floor!
Sad times, the estate agent didn't see the skate ramp as a sellable garden feature!

All worked out well and the house sold in Oct 2014

THE SITE:

Back in 2006, looking for a new studio space, we saw the potential in this site and set about renovating into a studio and office space to rent out.
offices before and after

studio before and after
exterior before and after

Late Oct 2014:

Once the tenants had found alternative premises, we started to convert the offices into our temporary home that would see us through this winter. In springtime it will come down and become a building plot.
So here we are, very comfortable + settled with all we need. I still need to bash a hole to connect studio and house. Currently kitchen, food and internet are in the studio, so this is where the dog and Toby can mostly be found.





Our new address is: 70a Victoria Parade, Bristol BS5 9EB 


Over the next few months lots of prep work to do, surveying foundations, drainage, services etc, detailed plans, quotes and costings etc, Oh and also working out how we can live on site during the build. To be continued.....