A Stylish Timber Frame Kit House

Building a house had been Roz Abraham’s dream for many years. “We’ve moved 11 times, and spent a lot of money and effort on each property, but as soon as we finished we were always looking to move on again,” she explains. “This seemed like the only way to get exactly what we wanted. We’re both retired, and didn’t want to wait much longer to get started because we guessed it would be fairly hard work.”

Roz and Mick were living in a developer-built new house in Hertfordshire, where they had the opportunity to choose many of the final fixtures and finishes while the house was still being completed. Inspired by this experience, Roz began searching the area for a plot of land where the couple could design and build from scratch. For his part, Mick's love of cars and motorbikes meant that as long as the new house came with a spacious garage he would be more than happy.

Driving through Elstree one day, Roz noticed a house on a corner plot with a ‘For Sale' sign. Mick wasn't keen on viewing the property, but after some time it still hadn't sold and Roz dragged him along to have a look. The couple could instantly see that it was really quite a substantial plot, with a long rear garden and enough space for Mick's dream garage. Unwilling to reveal to the homeowners that they were planning to demolish and replace their 1950s house, Roz and Mick went on to negotiate a purchase price for the chalet-style property.

"We would never have found a single building plot in this area, so this was really the only way of doing it," explains Mick, who previously owned a printing business with Roz. "A developer wouldn't have chosen this route because the house we've built doesn't really reflect the property prices in the road, and we have probably over-built for the location, but this time we aren't planning on moving on."

Gaining planning permission for the replacement house proved slow but relatively straightforward, despite the fact that the Abrahams proposed extending the original footprint to one side - leaving just one metre between the building and its boundary. Externally, the new property has been designed as a virtual mirror image of one of the neighbouring 1950s houses, with redbrick walls, clay roof tiles and a single rendered gable.

"To be honest we would have done virtually anything that the council asked of us, because we didn't want to waste time going to appeal," admits Roz. "I've always liked new properties, and as the years have gone on my taste has become increasingly modern, so I wanted to build something contemporary and minimalist. I would have preferred to build a much boxier-looking modern exterior, with white render and a black roof, but it wasn't worth spending a year fighting to get planning permission. We just wanted to get on with building."

One of the planning conditions dictated that Roz and Mick could not exceed the height of the previous two storey house, but excavating the entire site by one metre meant that they were able to incorporate rooms in the roof space which are lit by rooflights and special rakedhead windows - adding a significant amount of living space and a bathroom on a third storey. This floor has been designed primarily as a hobbies area for Mick, who enjoys model-making, painting and collecting everything from robots and watches to cameras.

"Dropping the whole house down meant that the drainage system was far more complicated and costly than it should have been," he says. "The houses in our road all have different ridge heights, so we could have fought the height restriction, but we just opted for a quiet life."

There have been no such compromises inside the house, however. Roz designed the entire interior layout herself, incorporating a stunning triple-height entrance hallway, which features a galleried glass landing and an open staircase with oak treads and glass risers. The wow factor is further increased by star-like twinkling fibreoptic lights inset beneath the galleried landing, handmade blown-glass wall lights framing the entrance and sparkling floor tiles which reflect the light.

A vast open plan kitchen/dining area faces south through glass doors, which may be folded back and open onto decking. The master bedroom runs across the entire back of the house and has a double-height vaulted ceiling above the bed area, with a high-level triangular window which floods the bedroom with light.

"We went to Scandia-Hus for our timber frame kit, and they were fantastic," says Roz. "I'm impatient and like to see fast results, and that's just what you get when you build a timber framed house. Within two weeks we could actually walk around the rooms and feel the space. Unfortunately the rest of the build dragged on for much longer than we'd anticipated, and we later discovered that the builder we'd selected was having all kinds of financial problems and has since gone bankrupt."

The first stage of the build had involved erecting a huge and luxurious garage in the garden for Mick, which doubled as a storage space for the couple's belongings when they sold their previous house. As luck would have it the owners of a neighbouring bungalow got chatting to Roz about their build, and kindly offered the Abrahams the use of a self-contained one bedroom flat right next door to their site - which made overseeing the project far simpler.

"We never intended to act as project managers," Roz says, "but our main contractor kept letting us down at each stage of the work, and it was just easier to subcontract out various elements to keep the build going. We made the mistake of giving him a £10,000 deposit, and ended up organising virtually everything ourselves because he was over-running on another job. It was crazy that, as novice self-builders, we were the ones hand-holding the professional, but our motivation was to make sure we finished the house before the money ran out."

A neighbour had requested that the couple build through the winter so that they could still use their garden in the summer without being disturbed, and work therefore started in September when the original house was demolished. Mindful of the need to complete the footings in time for the timber frame delivery, Roz and Mick went on to organise the foundations and deducted the bill from their contractor's overall fee.

Once Scandia-Hus had erected the timber frame the same thing happened with the roofing, until the builder finally brought his team on site. In the end Roz took on the role of ordering virtually all the materials herself, shopping around, buying ex-display items and negotiating for the best prices, which were then knocked off the builder's final bill. Despite these setbacks the house was still completed in just eight months and boasts a number of hi-tech features.

"We've incorporated a full home media and entertainment system, Lutron lighting, CCTV and remote everything - right down to the curtains," says Mick. "There's underfloor heating, whole-house ventilation and air conditioning, and the television in the sitting room is hidden behind a painting which can be slid out of the way at the touch of a button. As novice self-builders we're proud of what we've achieved, and the house feels very much a part of us because we were so involved in the whole build. The most important thing, though, is that it really is a home and we finally feel that we can stay put and enjoy the fruits of our labour."

Further reading:

• A Timber Frame Self-build
• A Georgian Style Self-build with Home Automation
• Smart Homes and Intelligent Technology