Anybody embarking on a full-scale home renovation will have to consider where they are going to live when their home is being ripped apart.
Hardy souls may cut costs by remaining in situ, living with the dust, noise and builders’ mess. Others will stay with friends or bite the bullet and find somewhere to rent.
Marty Orton, 51, took a more unusual route.
Before he and his wife Jayne Sibley, 49, had their four-bedroom, 1970s house in St Cross, Winchester renovated, he spent the best part of a year building a spectacular waterside timber cabin for the family – including two children, now aged 13 and 15 – to live in while the work was being completed.
The 258sq ft timber cabin stands cantilevered over a section of the River Itchen which flows through the family’s quarter-acre garden.
It has built-in bunk beds, a mezzanine sleeping area, a living space, a deck and an outdoor kitchen (the family were able to use a bathroom within the house during the build).
Building in the garden, particularly post-pandemic when families craved extra space, has become an increasingly commonplace alternative to moving house – and one which can make good financial sense too.
Building costs vary wildly and you will need to get your head around some fairly convoluted red tape. But whether you want a home office, a fresh income stream, a teenage hangout, or a place for hobbies, garden rooms can be as flexible as you need them to be.
Marty and Jayne live within the South Downs National Park, which means that for them going through the planning process was mandatory.
They hired AR Design Studio to design a cabin with a brief to create a family-sized space simple enough to be self-built using sustainable and locally sourced materials.
“I looked at renting and it was going to cost £25,000,” said Marty. “I decided to build somewhere where the whole family could live for six months, although in the end it turned into almost a year.”
Work on the house began in 2021 and the family moved into the cabin, bringing minimum possessions with them.
“It was lovely,” said Marty. “I can’t remember any negatives. In fact when the house was finished and the family moved back in I stayed for another month.”
Once Marty had moved out, he and Jayne used it as an office for their fintech start-up Sibstar, a debit card and app designed for people with dementia.
Having added a bathroom, they started renting it on Airbnb for between £150 and £250 per night, helping to offset the original £70,000 cost of building it. “It has been a very good investment,” said Marty.
For Katherine and Chris Reid, building in their garden was more about enhancing family life than making money.
The couple had long been aware that life in a rural village some eight miles south west of Cambridge with no amenities and precious little public transport might be lovely for them, but posed a problem for their children, now aged 17 and 15.
So when the couple were extending their Grade II-listed thatched cottage, they decided to include a separate garden annexe to give the children somewhere to hang out and entertain their friends.
“We were very much thinking of teenagers stuck in a rural village,” said Katherine.
Katherine and Chris, both 51, have owned their house for around 12 years and just before the pandemic they decided to upgrade the five-bedroom house by adding a large wrap-around extension designed by Snell David Architects, plus a loft extension.
Beside the house stood a “really unattractive” garage; the original idea was to rebuild it with a glass walkway linking the new building to the main house. The idea was turned down by planners so it evolved into a separate garden room designed to mirror the extension with cedar shingles, panels of powder-coated aluminium, and glass sliding doors. It cost around £110,000 to build.
“It is really a multi-purpose space,” said Katherine, a speech and language therapist. “It is somewhere I could use as a clinic room if I stopped working for the NHS, or Chris, a financial analyst, could use it as an office. It has an ensuite bathroom so we can use it as a spare room for guests.”
The modern design was something Katherine and Chris let their architects take the lead on. “But we all agreed that something quite different would be exciting and complement the very chocolate box country cottage look of the house.”
When designing his garden room, Ariel Klein decided to ignore the old adage about never mixing business with pleasure.
The cedar clad space contains an office which he uses for his property development and renovation businesses, and a climbing wall where he can indulge his love of bouldering.
Ariel’s family home is in Hampstead, north London, and his company owns a converted house which is rented out as flats just around the corner. At the end of the garden was an ageing, unappealing and little-used shed which Ariel thought could be replaced by an office for his company. But during the pandemic, when climbing gyms were closed, he decided to ask for a climbing wall to be added to the space.
A combination of the tapering shape of the garden and the need to dig down in order to give the climbing wall enough height meant that he couldn’t buy an off-the-peg garden pod. Instead he hired William Tozer Associates to design him a bespoke space.
The circa 400sq ft space cost him just over £300,000 (plus VAT) but Ariel, 52, has rationalised the expenditure in two ways. Firstly the space is well-used and enjoyed by his children. Secondly it could represent a solid investment in time.
“It would certainly have been cheaper to get something prefabricated but because of the irregular shape of the garden it required a bit more creative thinking,” said Ariel.
Planning permission was required for the project, not because of its size but because consent is automatically required if the main building is divided into flats.
The room was built over six months in 2022. And as a condition of winning planning permission for the cedar-clad building, Ariel had to agree to install a green roof.
To justify the expense, Ariel points out that having a new office has freed up the flat in the building he was previously using as office space and can now be rented out. And, should he decide to, he could rent out the space to another business, providing an extra income stream.
Using it as living accommodation is not allowed at present, but should planning rules change it could be converted into a charming, if tiny, house.
“From one perspective it is a bit of a bonkers outlay,” admitted Ariel. “But there is a rationale behind it.”
2024-07-14T12:32:16Z dg43tfdfdgfd