Grand Designs (1999–…): Season 3, Episode 8 - The Traditional Cottage, Herefordshire - full transcript
Kevin McCloud travels to Hereford to meet a very young couple who are building their first home, in the center of an ancient village, surrounded by beautiful medieval cottages.
It's a bit scary that
it's all our money.
It's everything that
we could ever borrow
or ever put together.
You don't think it looks a bit
like a nice executive paper.
Not at all, Kerry.
We do feel really lucky. I don't know,
don't we? We feel we sort of don't
deserve it almost.
People can often spend years and
years plucking up the courage to build
their first house.
It takes a lot of planning and
commitment and determination.
But this week's couple are breaking
all the rules. They're just 25 years old
and they're going to build
their brand new home,
smack bang in the middle of
this ancient, beautiful village.
It's in Herefordshire on the
English and Welsh borders.
One of those picturesque villages full
of medieval houses, some dating back
to the mid-1300s.
The couple who are brave enough to
dare build a brand new house here are Ben
and Mary Albright.
So this is your side?
This is it.
Is this all yours?
No, there are two other
houses going on the other part.
Yeah?
But we've got about a
third of it on this side.
Yeah.
Do you want to hang up?
Probably.
Go on.
Excellent.
Wonderful. This used to be an orchard?
It used to be an orchard that
belonged to the house there.
Yeah.
And so at some point that was a
very important house in the village, you
know, probably quite a lot of the land.
Yeah.
And this was the orchard for that farm.
Yeah.
So just point out to me the exact
amount of land you're going to have. You
go to those trees there?
Yeah, we go to those trees there
and we've got a third of the frontage.
Yeah, that's right.
So we've got about right here?
Yeah.
Something like that.
Quite large, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's about an eighth of an acre.
Well, how are you going to get into
your house? Because you can't climb up
the bank every day.
No, this is all being ripped out.
We'll have a sweeping
drive and then we'll
bend around into our
own plot here, yeah.
So that's the plan.
You're kind of both quite young
to be doing this, aren't you?
I'm probably older than I look.
Which makes me a quite young.
Yeah.
But I've been brought up in this
kind of thing where you do that.
So my parents have built their own
house and my grandfather before that
built his own house.
So it's something we're always
going to do, something to think about.
Yeah.
And what is it you're going to build?
What's your vision?
It's a little three bedroom
cottage, a rendered cottage.
It's got some oak detailing.
Inside it's got an oak frame to, I
suppose, complement the surrounding
buildings without detracting
from them or compromising them.
The planners won't let Ben and
Mary put up a half-timbered new house,
because they say
it'll appear confusing
next to the genuine
medieval buildings.
So Ben and Mary are
taking an experimental
route, fusing old and
new technologies.
The building starts with
a traditional oak frame.
On the exterior, the
plinth and chimney
will be built using
reclaimed bricks,
but the walls will be entirely made
from modern prefabricated synthetic
panels called sips,
a super laminated sandwich of
shredded wood boards and expanded foam.
They'll be covered with lime render
to give the exterior a traditional look.
Inside, Ben and Mary want
again to mix old and new.
They're employing local craftsmen
for some of the details and fixtures.
And upstairs in this
modest cottage, they
have two spare
bedrooms and a bathroom,
and a master bedroom
with an en suite shower room.
Their dream is of a
truly 21st century cottage.
The budget for this
project is a modest one.
The land costs them 55,000, and
the build is set at a further 65,000,
bringing the total to 120 grand.
For the last year, they've been living
rent-free in a converted shed at the
bottom of Mary's parents' garden.
At the age of 25, building their own
house is a major financial commitment.
It's a bit scary that it's all our money,
it's everything that we could ever
borrow or ever put together.
Well, that's what's
slightly concerning, isn't it?
There's no opportunity
then to go and borrow more.
No, there isn't. Well, apart from,
like I say, begging from our parents.
Yeah, there's no...
There isn't anywhere else we can go.
I could go for it, wouldn't you?
Well, yes, perhaps you do. I just
wondered whether or not you think that if
you'd waited for another five years or so,
that you might be in a more
financially secure position.
You might have that little bit of
extra edge, that little bit of extra
security, which would...
But then sometimes the older you get,
the more nervous you are, because you
have a better understanding
about how big it is.
And how much can go wrong.
Yeah, we're quite... we're excited,
we're young, we haven't got any children
or anything like that.
If it all goes horribly
wrong, it's just me and
Ben and we've got each
other, so it doesn't matter.
Building this house is a life-defining
commitment for Ben and Mary.
They've been together nine
years, got married a year ago,
and they've decided
to spend the rest of
their lives in this area,
near Mary's family.
This village has been part of
my family's life for a long time.
In fact, my sister's even a barmaid,
so, you know, hopefully we'll be able
to make a... It sounds
really cheesy, but
make a contribution
to what we've got, bring
investment back to the village.
I suppose we're young to
do it, but put down our roots.
Mary's family have built houses
in this area for generations,
and she works as a design assistant
for her father, who runs the company
that'll build their house.
Her sense is a family build. Her
dad's the architect, her uncle's helping
them project manage, and her
cousins will provide expertise on site.
Ben's an economist who works for
the council. He knows they need all the
family support they can get.
If you don't know about building, I
wouldn't say, "Come on, let's go and
build a house and just go off on our own,"
without knowing we had people who
we could ask technical questions to.
After 14 months in planning and
preparation, the ground
is finally broken on
Ben and Mary's plot, and the build begins.
They may be building a relatively
modest house, but they're working to an
extremely ambitious schedule.
They're hoping to be finished
and in in a mere 16 weeks.
This whole site
slopes, and where our
house is, is the higher
part of the ground,
and if we built off that level, then
we would be directly looking into the
other houses, onto the road,
and they would be looking into us.
The planners have asked us if we
can dig it down slightly so that our house
will sit quite nicely on the site
without screaming out or without
invading other people's privacy.
It's so good that
it's finally starting
to dig out the site
that it's happening.
Yeah, that makes a big change from
all the planning and the paperwork.
It's just been paperwork for the
last, I don't know, months, hasn't it?
Yeah, so... So it's finally something
positive or physical happening, yeah.
It's good.
It's dirty, though.
My whole mind's been blown
by what we need to know.
Sometimes I lie awake at night
just sitting there, worrying about not
knowing what kind of blocks I need.
But then if you actually thought
about it, you'd probably go insane, so it's
always best to ask somebody who does know.
That's why people are there, so somebody
wants to ask me about colouring in.
You know, I'm a girl, but I don't
know anything about technical stuff.
Ben and Mary are very, very
keen that their new house blends
into the patchwork of
ancient buildings in this village.
They're going to spend their lives
here, and they've based aspects of their
design on local buildings for
sentimental as well as aesthetic reasons.
This is where Ben and I
got married, last August.
What we've done is, our frame inside,
all the detail for the posts and the
braces have been taken off this building.
So all the stock chamfers and then
the measurements and dimensions of the
braces going over it, we
kind of copied all of these,
and then reproduced them on our
frame so that our house will have little
elements of the slitchscape.
The oak frame is being made
off-site at Mary's father's workshop.
As well as constructing and building
the frame, Mary's father John is also
the architect and designer on this project.
Is the house that they're going to
build, is that the house that you wanted
to design for your daughter, to give her?
I said, well, this is the most
cost-effective way of doing it, this is the
traditional way of producing a cottage.
And they said, well, we don't
necessarily want that, we don't want the
chocolate box, the traditional, we
want to bring the 21st century with the
16th and 17th.
I should know Mary well, and I
should know what she wants, but it was
difficult to bring Mary and Ben's
needs and aspirations together.
It's a small cottage, they can
enjoy married life in it, and it's got an
intimacy which perhaps
will translate through to them.
Once the land is
cleared, foundations
and ground works go
ahead without a hitch.
Of course, once they're out of the
ground, all local eyes will be on the
design of this building,
because despite Ben and Mary's
ambitions for a house that marries ancient
and modern technologies,
the locals will be very keen to see
a house that conforms to the local,
somewhat wonky, vernacular.
This house is going to be in a very
exposed place, right smack bang in the
middle of an historic village,
in plain view of every passerby.
Now, I know Mary is working for
the company that's going to build this.
They may have lots
of friends and family
who are going to
support them in this,
but if this house looks in any way
out of place, then they're going to face
the disapproval of the entire community.
I just hope they don't make any mistakes.
Before any 21st century technology
can come to sight, it's the traditional
oak frame that needs erecting,
just three weeks into the build.
This is a crucial part of the structure,
another prefabricated element, and
hopefully it's all the right
size and in the right place.
From the start, Mary and Ben have
wanted to use people they know and trust.
Local boys, Patrick and his
brother Gary, are building the frame.
Between them, they have over 20
years' experience working with oak.
We'll get all the posts up today,
and then they'll probably start putting
the top beams in tomorrow.
Once we've got these two posts up
here, we'll start pegging these rails up
now, this afternoon,
and then we'll put the top beams on
tomorrow, so all the oak will be up by
tomorrow, dinner time-ish.
Three, five, fifty.
Just try them on the bottom there, Ben.
Ben's taken a week
off work to get stuck in.
Mary's doing quite a lot of the
administrative side things and doing a lot
of the finding things,
and chasing people up
and all that sort of thing.
So it's only fair that I should do more
manly stuff, you know, be something
that she can't do.
Oak frames, when they're properly
designed, are phenomenally strong, and
they're self-locking,
so in theory you should be able to
turn them on their heads and they won't
distort or move an inch.
They've used 30 trees
to make this frame,
which weighs about
six and a half tonnes,
so they've got to put
it in the right place.
How far in?
Go all the way, Ben.
End of the nail now.
You all right, lads?
A little better.
Oh, he's bent a nail.
Ben's wild hammering is
the least of their worries.
Just when everything was
going so well, they hit a problem.
What was it, Nick?
Oh, well, that's it then.
That's where the discrepancy is.
I'm miles over, like.
So what's happened there then?
We are, I'm, if you're
saying nine, nine,
fifty, I'm, I've only
got nine, nine, ten,
I'm forty mil out there on the base.
The oak frame's not fitting
as it should do on the base.
I'm just trying to
find out now with a
drawer in office what's
gone wrong, really.
It's about 30 mil, which is quite a bit.
To solve the problem of the oak
frame not fitting onto the floor plate,
the entire wooden structure has
been moved 12 millimetres to the left.
Everything's back on track.
So now, is this the front door here?
Can you not tell? Isn't that obvious?
I sort of can. I mean, there's...
Yeah, this is the front door.
There's ruminants of a...
This is my favourite bit so far.
Yeah, front door, really beautiful porch.
It's Ben up there, isn't it?
Yeah.
Lending another pair of hands, apparently.
Ben, presumably it's
entirely down to you
that the frame went
up so quickly, is it?
Oh, yeah. They've only just appeared
because of the cameras, yeah.
I did most of it on my own, yeah.
It is wonderful having all these
very, very skilled people, isn't it?
I mean, I've done it all before.
I'm incredibly lucky, yeah.
Yeah, there's nobody
who's kind of a novice,
well, apart from Ben's
a bit of a novice here.
I didn't say that.
I'm very impressed.
He has skills, hidden skills.
Are you pleased?
I'm really pleased.
It's fantastic getting it,
finally getting the frame up.
It's very exciting, especially
as it goes up so quickly as well.
You can really see what's being done.
Job satisfaction.
Especially as I'm doing it all as well.
And what happens next then?
Because the sips have come on
site, so how quickly will they go up?
As soon as they finish the frame.
Yeah, so hopefully we'll finish this
today or tomorrow and then we'll start
doing the sips after that.
That's something that makes me nervous.
Different materials,
trying to marry
them together is the
odd thing, you know,
because they don't normally get together.
Well, they put a lot of
thought into it, haven't they?
But in practice, you've just
got to see whether it works out.
Well, exactly. That's what it
comes down to, is on the day.
"Can Patrick get it to fit?"
Poor old Patrick.
At its heart, Ben and
Mary's house is medieval.
The core wooden structure, the
bit that looks like the framework for a
concrete car park, is based
on medieval aisled buildings.
And they have a basic wooden
box structure, just like this one.
The roof, however, projects
beyond the basic box frame
and instead it sits on
the shorter outside walls
and that gives extra living space
all down the side of the building.
An aisle. Now Ben and Mary's house
is also wider than the basic box frame.
but their outside walls aren't
timber with wattle and daub.
They're made out of sipped panels.
Two days after the oak frame is
finished, the sipped panels arrive.
The sips will form the
exterior walls of the house.
Their design's very clever, they're strong,
their insulation meets new building
regs and they're very quick to put up.
This is the first oak
frame house with the
sipped panel construction
that I've worked on.
It's not going too bad.
We've had a couple of
panels which are not quite right
but, you know, it's not going too bad.
For the first time, you
can expect a few mishaps.
So what are sips and how on earth
can you make a building out of them?
Well, they're just that
foam core with two thin
sheets of laminated
chipboard on either side.
and that laminated
chipboard has the
structural integrity
of, well, toast, really.
Look, if I take this piece and pop it here,
that represents a wall just made
out of one sheet of the board
and this off-cut of wood
represents the weight of the roof.
That's what happens.
The board is so thin it
just deforms, it bends.
Where sips are really clever is
that they take that sponge core,
which of itself can't
take any weight at all,
and they glue the board
onto it on either side
and it's the gluing over
that huge surface area
which maintains the
integrity of the whole thing.
As a result, these boards can't
deform and the whole thing...
The whole thing
has a strength that's
much greater than
the sum of its parts.
So it can take, really,
quite an impressive load.
In fact...
Here we are.
That must represent the combined
weight of several dozen roofs.
You can see it all taking shape now.
I'm glad as well that I've done it
because I haven't been that
involved in the planned side of things
and it's all a bit of double Dutch
but now you can get a grip of what's
actually going on, so that's good.
Ben's doing really well,
he's doing brilliantly.
He's been up and straight well.
I'm trying to persuade him to
stay next week, but he won't have it.
He usually works in the office,
so this is probably a bit more
hard work than he's used to.
It takes only ten days to
put the main structure up
and for the lovely oak frame to
disappear behind the sips panels.
Now, look, I notice this
big end gable wall here,
which is... This is the sips panel.
It doesn't even touch
that upright, that post.
It's good, you know,
what, 30mm, 40mm off it.
So what happens there?
Does it just sit like that?
No, no, everything will be connected,
but where we need structural contact,
there will be solid
timbers put between
the big oak posts
and the sips panels
and then we'll bolt the whole thing
right through with 12mm diameter bolts
which will go all
the way from that
back face... All the
way through the post?
Yeah.
But now then, this being a
sips panel and this being foam,
surely, though, when you tighten this up,
because it's so soft,
won't it just squash
this material and
just deform the wall?
It would do, yeah, but you'll see
we've got these timber packers.
and this is a solid piece of timber
and if you try and
squeeze that with a bolt,
it's only going to compress as
much as the timber will allow it to.
So you'll never ever compress the foam?
No.
You're always fixing wood
through wood to wood?
Yep, there's always a solid
connection all the way through.
These sips panels may
be the future of building,
but this structure now
looks like a cardboard box.
It's little wonder that it's
attracting a lot of attention
considering the local architecture.
Although Ben and Mary have
lived in this area all their lives,
they are new to this particular village
and they're keen to alleviate the
concerns of the neighbourhood.
It's a very contentious
site, being where it is.
Some of the neighbours
are really, really nice
and others obviously are worried
about what we're going to do.
Yeah.
And until it's done, you can't really
do anything to reassure that worry.
So have you had any complaints?
We've had a few.
Yeah, about what?
Well, when we had the planning
commission, there were lots of complaints
and some of those people
have kind of come round,
you know, they come on
site and see if we're all right.
But then other people, you
know, they're just worried
about what we're going to be doing, really.
Right, yeah.
Does it worry you?
It worries me that I might upset people
and I really wish I didn't feel like that,
but sometimes you just
don't want to have the conflict
or the aggravation of people
thinking bad things about you.
Yeah.
But we're trying to do the build quickly.
We're really hoping that the
design, when people see it,
it's not, you know, that's going to
make up for the worries they have now.
I mean, what is it going to look like?
Because, I mean,
here, look, there are
two types of buildings
here, aren't there?
There's the kind of
half-timbered black and white.
Yeah.
And then there's these red bricks.
There's a lot of red brick here.
Yeah, there's quite a lot of brick.
And Georgian windows.
Yeah.
So what are the windows
going to look like, for example?
What's the ward going to look like?
Sure.
Well, ours will be rendered on the outside.
Yeah.
So like a lime-rich render, which
will weather really quite nicely
because it'll get softer and softer.
Yeah.
It's got a brick plinth
hoping to pick up
on the brick houses
we've got round here.
And we've kept the mortar light
as well because most of the bricks
have got light mortar.
Oh, right.
So you're following
brickwork pattern
in terms of brick type
colour and mortar.
Yeah.
Just so that we don't, again, the
artisans shout out as being the one
lonely new build of
that type in every village.
Do you think that having moved
it in there'll be a degree of healing
to do with a load of music?
I mean, when we're in and they
realise we're not kind of heavy metal fans.
and we're not going to kind
of eat their dog or anything,
that, you know, they'll
think we're all right.
I hope.
Well, they think the house is all right.
I don't know.
But then again, I can't change that.
If it all goes to schedule,
in a mere eight weeks,
the neighbourhood will know exactly
what Ben & Mary's house looks like.
Time is money.
It's week five on this super tight schedule
and Patrick and Gary are
now racing ahead on the roof.
But if Ben & Mary are going
to be in by mid-September,
they're going to have to keep this pace up.
We started the roof construction
on Tuesday dinner time.
So three and a half
days, it's going very well.
No problems.
It's running smooth.
Tight schedule, so everybody's
getting pushed a little bit.
MUSIC You know,
it's getting exciting now.
You don't have to imagine
what the room's going to look like.
You can see what it's going to look like.
They look a lot bigger now, the rooms.
There's before, when it's sort of open,
you can't really get an idea of
the actual size, whereas now.
Now you can, yeah.
Mary's already starting to plan
where everything's going to go
and, yeah, you can start
to go out and buy things.
They made things like flooring and lighting
and things like that,
we sorted on, so, yeah.
Just soft furnishings and things like that.
MUSIC A week later
and the house suddenly
looks like a shiny
vernacular spaceship.
It's been clad in a silver
breather membrane
that's there to gently
ventilate the SIPs panels
and no doubt gently agitate local opinion.
MUSIC We needed a
breather membrane anyway,
so if you can get a breather
membrane, that is also insulation as well.
There's no harm in having it there.
It's just something that
we thought we'd try, really.
It looks rather dashing.
Our house is going to be the
warmest house in the whole country.
Next, cement fibre ball.
It's another experimental insulating layer
but its main job is to give the
lime render something to key to
when they try to make this
modern house start to look a bit old.
You have to remember
this is an innovative build.
There are two separate ideas going on here.
The first is modern technology,
the fast track build method,
the concrete fibre board, the SIPs panels.
The second is the more
traditional craft-led approach,
the oak frame, the lime
render, the handmade bricks.
Now, the combination of the
two is really rather experimental
and the question is, of course,
in the end, will it look any good?
The fire is kind of...
still looks funny and now it looks right.
- Look at the drawing now. - Yeah.
Mary's also invested in
some reclaimed roof tiles.
New tiles tend to look a bit funny.
They're very flat and a bit...
well, they're just too clean.
Whereas reclaimed tiles, you're
going to get that dirt anyway
and that kind of fits
in with the not too
perfect element of
what we're trying to do.
We don't want anything to
look really brand spanking new
or scary or too clean and perfect.
There's a great deal of attention
being lavished on the exterior detail
but Mary's self-professed
strength is interior design
and she's determined to bring elements
of local craftsmanship into her home.
I like having control over things,
so even little things like window latches,
the door knocker, all the interiors,
Ben and I will do all of those.
It's those things that kind of
will annoy me or I'll love them,
so I have to kind of
have input into them
so that I'm not miserable
in my own house.
Mary's taken one of her drawings to
a traditional forge just down the road
where she's hoping the blacksmith
can inject some life into her design for a
door knocker.
Mary's already given me a design
and she's given me a drawing of the door
knocker itself.
Like most blacksmiths, you want
to go perhaps a little bit further
and maybe introduce a style
which she hadn't considered before.
Well, you don't have to, do you?
I was just going to buy
something out of the shop, that's it.
Mary's set aside money to
invest in craftsman-made objects,
things which are going to get
handled and touched every day.
Is it like a sort of a crocus or a
water Lily head or something?
Yes, it's a spherical
style, because as it's
a door knocker,
you've got to handle it.
So it's got to be kind to the
touch, and I believe when it's made,
you'll have this wonderful
three-dimensional effect,
and people will come to the door
and say, "Is that a door knocker? Do I
press it? Do I pull it?"
So it's just a little bit more
than a door knocker, really.
It is what, two or three
weeks since I came last?
I didn't say that.
And in that time, you've
almost finished the exterior.
Not far off.
It's phenomenally quick, isn't it?
It feels like it's really quick.
It does seem very quick, yeah.
Yeah, really quick.
And now that you've got kind of some
vague notion of what it's going to look
like when it's finished, are you pleased?
Yeah.
Yeah, we are, I'll say that.
You don't think it looks a bit
like a nice executive home?
Not at all, Kevin.
Well, I'm a nice
executive, so that's all right.
You know, I think I'd rather die
than live in an executive home,
so I'll do everything I need to do
to make it not an executive home.
It is so quick, isn't it?
Yeah, it does feel really quick.
Yeah, the window's pre-made
and they're all made off-site.
Yeah, the joint event knows he's
got his own workshop by his house.
About two miles up the road.
Yeah?
Nice detail to that.
Yeah.
You designed that?
Yeah.
Well, it's taken from what obviously
there's nothing clever about it.
It's just a very nice detail.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And oak windows?
Yes.
What finish is going to go on these?
We found an oil we think will
be the best of it, bad choice.
Basically, we love the,
just the natural colour,
so we want to leave it
as natural as we can.
Yeah.
And then just let it go silvery over time.
Have you tried the stuff out?
Yeah, it's a piece of... So
that end there has got a line.
So this is the UN, this is the UN.
That's just untreated.
And then that's treated?
That's treated.
Just that top bit there.
Oh, right.
This one hasn't got
any UV protection in
it, so basically the
sun will make this...
Will degrade it.
...till it goes silver.
But we don't mind that yet.
Isn't that what you want?
Don't you want it to go silver?
Yeah.
That's exactly what we want it to.
Otherwise it really will
look like an executive home,
with it being like these
kind of brown windows.
Yeah, I'd rather put them
in and have fingers crossed.
And they'll look like softwood.
I mean, there's no point having oak.
No.
Exactly.
So when do these go in?
Now.
And when do you
do your first fix, wiring
and plumbing and
under-fore heating?
They're starting tomorrow.
They do?
Yeah, they let us... On this build,
it's not next week, next month,
it's like tomorrow or the day after.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The next stage of the build is crucial.
Ben and Mary are counting
on it to turn their executive home
into a cottage with rounded edges.
It's week eight and time for all
the modern high-tech materials
to disappear under a layer
of traditional lime render.
As usual, labour materials
come from local tradesmen.
So Nigel, what are the
advantages of using it here?
The material itself is more flexible.
And also I think the actual finish,
the aesthetics of the
finish is attractive as well.
And in a building like this, which is,
it's being designed
and built with a lot
of that in mind, it's
obviously irrelevant.
Yeah.
Traditional lime render may
give you a lovely, rustic finish,
but it's tricky stuff to mix.
It's a careful blend of lime and sand,
with horsehair thrown in
to knit the mixture together.
It's already on the hair, really.
It needs a bit more hair in there.
But in the hands of a skilled
tradesman, it's not difficult to apply.
Well, Joe, do you like working with
this as opposed to cement render?
Is it... Yes, it's good.
It's good to work with.
Yeah? What about?
Yes, well, it's...
You see, it's just nice and creamy.
And I gather that John the Arctic
tells you that he wanted it rough.
Yeah, that's why he got us to do it,
because he reckoned with
the roughest in the county.
I don't think it's so rough, mate.
Can I have a go?
Certainly.
Don't be surprised at how slow I am.
No, it makes it slow.
So you just sort of, you
know, just... That's the way.
Squeeze it all in now.
You really, really
push it into the surface.
Push it into that... It's
quite a physical job, isn't it?
Quite a bit used to it, don't you, Ray?
You can tell I'm not used to physical work.
Thank you.
It's now week ten, and the
exterior's virtually complete.
The roof's tiled, the
chimney's finished,
and the third coat
of render is on.
But inside, Ben and Mary
have yet to stamp their Mark.
It's going to be quite... I suppose
it's contemporary, but it's not modern,
and it's quite relaxed and gentle.
Sometimes you get, like, a moment,
and it's just worrying that
you might have got it wrong
or that you sometimes do
doubt what you had in your head.
It's like a house, but
not a house, but it's good.
Won't be long.
I'm hoping that Mary's
taste and attention to detail
will deliver an interesting
and well-designed interior.
Outside, I'm not so sure.
From the start, Ben and Mary
wanted to make a contribution
to their home, to their village,
to build a timber-framed house
that exploited all the
natural honesty of green oak.
But what seems to be emerging
is something very different.
It's not modern, and it's
not a historical replica.
It's simply pretending
to be old, and
I don't feel very
comfortable with that.
The challenge they now face
is how to finish off all the
external details of their house
to stop this place from turning
into just another executive home.
It's the end of August,
and Ben and Mary
are getting round
to the final finishes.
If they're going to get this bit
right, they've got a lot of work to do.
What about all those finishing details?
Who's doing all of this? You, too.
- Yeah. - Me. That means me.
Yeah, too, Ben.
I'm awful. I'm so impatient.
I do five minutes, then my arm hurts.
I know. I admit I am really bad,
but then, Ben, you actually like it.
You pot you around up there.
He can stay there till 10
o'clock, 11 o'clock at night.
I think working by yourself with no
help, Ben, anything's an achievement.
Yeah, that's the good thing.
If you've only done
one door, at least
it's one door more
than she's done, so...
What with so much to do,
Mary's called in her family and
friends to help put up the garage.
Well, there's loads of
things happening today.
Ben and Nathan, my cousin,
and my other cousin, Will,
who's Mark's son, are
putting up the garage.
Paul, my other cousin, he's been doing
some touching up on the plasterboard
and painting the basin unit for us.
And Terry, who's no relation to me
whatsoever, is painting the other rooms,
the last couple of rooms,
and some external doors.
And I am just buffing around
and waxing and stuff like that.
It's been 19 weeks since Ben and
Mary poured the foundations of this house.
And not only is it finished, but
they moved in three weeks ago.
-Hello. -Hello.
-How are you? -Good to see you.
-How are you, Kevin?
-Very well. How are you?
-Good, thanks. -How's your house?
-Good. -It's finished. It really does.
This is very nice. Very different
to how it was gonna look, isn't it?
-Yeah, it is amazing.
-Beautifully finished.
Nice hallway.
Surprisingly spacious, isn't it?
-Yeah. -It's quite broad, yeah.
It's got to take my shoes off.
You're not wearing any shoes, are you?
-Cream carpet. -Yeah, that's why.
Oh, and of course, underfloor heating.
-Yeah, can you feel it? -Yeah, no, it's...
Cos a lot was on this
morning, but it's off now,
so it retains the heat and the floors.
-Yeah, it really comes with, yeah. -Yeah.
Kind of makes you want
to walk around in your bed.
-It does, yeah.
-Exactly, lounge around and...
-Yeah. And a beautiful floor, too. -Yes.
Oak, like the beams, like
these posts, like everything.
-Like the doors, the lining, and things.
-Yeah.
Yeah, except the
fireplace, though, is stone.
-Yeah. -That I haven't seen before.
This is from where?
Well, it's actually come from Belgium.
We bought it from Belgium,
but the limestone is French.
It's like a French
fireplace, cos it's huge.
-It is. -Yeah.
Maybe a bit big for a room, but we like it.
-It's quite broad.
-It is, it's very over-scale.
It's like your porch,
it's very, you know,
it's kind of over-scale
porch, over-scale.
Lots of sort of
architectural elements
in this building,
which are kind of big.
My dad thinks it's like a
doll's house, you know,
all the pieces of furniture, it's too big.
Maybe it's cos I'm small.
It's taller than you.
It's a bit kind of, you know, a bit freaky.
The lighting here is very contemporary.
-Yeah. -Was that a deliberate decision,
to kind of keep the
modern stuff very modern?
Yes, because, well, I suppose
it's because we're young,
you don't have to kind of
stop using things you like,
just cos you're kind of
building an old friend house,
so we didn't really go down
the kind of ye olde England,
Elizabethan route, if we could help it.
I suppose the
television in its stand
would have rather
represented that fusion.
-Yeah. -Vernacular and...
-Pieces of off-cut. -...modern engineering.
Yeah.
And the kitchen is
also a mixture, like that?
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
Yeah, you've got a lot of
stainless steel in this kitchen.
-Yeah. -Big cooker.
Yeah, nice big cooker.
I'm a semi-professional
cook, you see, so...
Yeah.
The floor in here is very,
erm, very beautiful, actually.
It's, what, polished, honed stone?
Yes, I think it's black limestone.
What I like about this
is that it's not all perfect,
so I was really worried
about having a new house
being all kind of pristine
and, like, so terrified to live in it
that you'd spill something
or that it looked really kind of
like an executive home.
But we kind of
chose things like, you
know, the oak's
going to split and crack
and the floor's not entirely perfect,
hoping that we can just break
down the edges of it, really.
What's in here?
-Utility in there. -That's favourite rooms.
-That's big, isn't it? It's big.
-It's really good, yeah.
-Yeah.
-Much bigger than we thought, isn't it?
We've got the tumble
dryer, the washing machine...
Dishwasher.
The fridge freezer, dishwasher,
sink, everything's in there.
I'm relieved to say
that the interior works.
The fusion of old and new
has been eloquently worked out
so that the services and
facilities are bang up to date.
On the other hand, the
furniture, flooring and fixtures.
are a carefully chosen
mixture of old and new.
So you moved in when?
Erm, two and a half weeks ago.
Nearly three weeks.
But your house was
finished before then, wasn't it?
Yeah, we could have moved...
Well, it was five or six weeks
ago we could have moved in, yeah.
Why didn't you?
I got a bit frightened about leaving
my mum and dad and my sister
-and it was just too... -Leaving home?
Yeah, I suppose, leaving the garden.
It's a bit strange sort of coming in
and the first time you sleep here,
it's like sleeping in someone else's house.
It turns from being
a project, you know,
to actually accepting
that it's your house.
Upstairs, Ben and Mary's
house is just as well appointed,
with two well-proportioned guest rooms.
The main bathroom is understated.
A fashionable blend of
twinkly halogen lighting,
Victorian tongue and
groove and chrome.
The master bedroom
is squarely framed
by the mighty timbers
of the oak structure.
And their en suite shower
room is a surprisingly
contemporary and
indulgent statement
in what is otherwise a
modest and simple home.
But up here, as down below,
there's an incredible quality,
both in terms of the build
quality but also the finish
and I wonder if that
hasn't proved a nightmare,
getting that all absolutely tickety-boo,
because there's nothing
here which hasn't been done.
I suppose you're really
lucky that because
the people that were
working on the house,
that's their standard
of workmanship,
that's just what they
do day in, day out.
But without people like my
dad and Mark and Patrick
and all the other people that really
were kind of people that get it going
to this level, we would have
just been like a pair of numpties.
We do feel really lucky.
I don't know, we feel we
sort of don't deserve it almost.
We do now because
we put what I do in,
because I've put
quite a lot of work in.
But you do it at some stage, you think,
"Crikey, I can't believe we're only
25 and we've got a really nice house."
This was, after all, an experimental build
that combined old and new
technologies for the first time.
In that respect, it's a great success
and it's arrived more or less on
budget and dead on schedule.
And outside you've made a deck.
Yep, nice to come out
on a sunny morning,
sit out on the deck,
have breakfast.
Yeah, I suppose you need it really,
because the garden isn't quite there.
Needs a little bit to be
desired at the moment, yeah.
Yeah, so you've laid some turf, Ben.
Just the minimalist one strip, yeah.
And where does your garden go to?
Is it just here?
Just the edge of the decking
and then to the end of the fence.
So you're bang up close to
the next house, aren't you?
Yeah.
All this brickwork you've got,
really noticeable this end, isn't it?
Because you've got this enormous
three-storey chimney stack.
A monster chimney.
It is a monster chimney.
And you're coming round that
corner now, you really notice it.
Yeah.
Are you happy with that, the scale of that?
Yeah, I think what
would change this is when
other houses have
been built next to us,
so you'll never see
that end in profile ever.
Right.
Because from here, it looks
charming, just sticking out of the roof.
Yeah, that's what you'll see.
Just a cool logo.
Their houses will
block the RN profile,
so you'll never get
a full gable shot.
And the render, are you
happy with the render?
The way it's turned
out, the colour variation
and the lime in it,
that won't change.
I think it's softer and
softer all the time.
So after this, the weather we've
had recently, we've given it a proper...
So it's taken it paler.
I think when it first
was unveiled, when
scaffolding came down,
it was quite a shock,
because it's quite bright.
Yeah.
Nice texture.
It is, it is really nice, and you'll
be starting to get used to it.
I hope it will weather down a little
bit, and you can already see that the
porch has started to...
Yeah.
...tick over in the windows as well.
And the porch will go completely grey.
Yeah.
So that won't look honey coloured at all.
No.
This has turned
out to be a red and
yellow house in a
black and white village.
So those oversized
elements, like the chimney,
the bulging line in
the yellow render,
and the church porch, really
need to mellow and grey with age.
How much did you spend in the end?
I think we were up to about 130.
Yeah.
Plus the cost of the site.
No.
That's increasing.
That is incredibly cheap.
That's what kind of you have to pinch
yourself to believe we couldn't buy a
house like this for
£130,000 in this county.
And what's it worth now?
I think it's about
£280,000, but I don't know.
You see, that's an
extraordinary difference,
isn't it, between
cost and value.
Yeah.
Presumably you're happy, you're pleased
with how successful it's turned out.
There isn't a word to
say what you feel about it.
It's more than being pleased.
It's not kind of like pat on the
back, "haven't we done a nice job?"
It's just it becomes so
much more than that.
What did you put that down to?
When so many people fail and so
many people are disappointed by their
ambitions when they're realised.
Maybe it's because it wasn't
beyond what we could achieve.
So we set ourselves a target
that we knew we were going to do.
So you never kind of set yourself
up for that element of failure or
compromise or, you
know, nearly but not quite.
Which are your favourite bits?
We keep trying to do... Top ten.
Top ten.
Top ten favourite bits in the R&U.
It always ends up being top 20 or 30.
I like the porch the most, but
that could be because it's my dad.
He drew that on paper and I saw
him draw it with a pen and then give it to
somebody and say, "Could you make that?"
It's just such an amazing thing that
not many people get to live in a house
that their dad designed or thought through.
You've lived up an idea.
Yeah, it's just... What did
you think about the building?
I think he likes it because it's our home.
He likes it that we live
here and things like that.
He doesn't like what
necessarily we've done inside.
It's not his taste, but then it would
be horrible if he had the same kind of
taste as your parents, wouldn't it?
This may not be everybody's idea of
the future of the R&U, but it is a very
important one.
It's not the idea of
the future of village
housing, certainly
not avant-garde,
but it is a home which
reflects everything
that Ben and Mary
want and believe in.
Craftsmanship,
simple, honest materials,
modern comforts
and a certain modesty.
I actually think that
they are all exemplary
qualities for a
21st-century cottage.
it's all our money.
It's everything that
we could ever borrow
or ever put together.
You don't think it looks a bit
like a nice executive paper.
Not at all, Kerry.
We do feel really lucky. I don't know,
don't we? We feel we sort of don't
deserve it almost.
People can often spend years and
years plucking up the courage to build
their first house.
It takes a lot of planning and
commitment and determination.
But this week's couple are breaking
all the rules. They're just 25 years old
and they're going to build
their brand new home,
smack bang in the middle of
this ancient, beautiful village.
It's in Herefordshire on the
English and Welsh borders.
One of those picturesque villages full
of medieval houses, some dating back
to the mid-1300s.
The couple who are brave enough to
dare build a brand new house here are Ben
and Mary Albright.
So this is your side?
This is it.
Is this all yours?
No, there are two other
houses going on the other part.
Yeah?
But we've got about a
third of it on this side.
Yeah.
Do you want to hang up?
Probably.
Go on.
Excellent.
Wonderful. This used to be an orchard?
It used to be an orchard that
belonged to the house there.
Yeah.
And so at some point that was a
very important house in the village, you
know, probably quite a lot of the land.
Yeah.
And this was the orchard for that farm.
Yeah.
So just point out to me the exact
amount of land you're going to have. You
go to those trees there?
Yeah, we go to those trees there
and we've got a third of the frontage.
Yeah, that's right.
So we've got about right here?
Yeah.
Something like that.
Quite large, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's about an eighth of an acre.
Well, how are you going to get into
your house? Because you can't climb up
the bank every day.
No, this is all being ripped out.
We'll have a sweeping
drive and then we'll
bend around into our
own plot here, yeah.
So that's the plan.
You're kind of both quite young
to be doing this, aren't you?
I'm probably older than I look.
Which makes me a quite young.
Yeah.
But I've been brought up in this
kind of thing where you do that.
So my parents have built their own
house and my grandfather before that
built his own house.
So it's something we're always
going to do, something to think about.
Yeah.
And what is it you're going to build?
What's your vision?
It's a little three bedroom
cottage, a rendered cottage.
It's got some oak detailing.
Inside it's got an oak frame to, I
suppose, complement the surrounding
buildings without detracting
from them or compromising them.
The planners won't let Ben and
Mary put up a half-timbered new house,
because they say
it'll appear confusing
next to the genuine
medieval buildings.
So Ben and Mary are
taking an experimental
route, fusing old and
new technologies.
The building starts with
a traditional oak frame.
On the exterior, the
plinth and chimney
will be built using
reclaimed bricks,
but the walls will be entirely made
from modern prefabricated synthetic
panels called sips,
a super laminated sandwich of
shredded wood boards and expanded foam.
They'll be covered with lime render
to give the exterior a traditional look.
Inside, Ben and Mary want
again to mix old and new.
They're employing local craftsmen
for some of the details and fixtures.
And upstairs in this
modest cottage, they
have two spare
bedrooms and a bathroom,
and a master bedroom
with an en suite shower room.
Their dream is of a
truly 21st century cottage.
The budget for this
project is a modest one.
The land costs them 55,000, and
the build is set at a further 65,000,
bringing the total to 120 grand.
For the last year, they've been living
rent-free in a converted shed at the
bottom of Mary's parents' garden.
At the age of 25, building their own
house is a major financial commitment.
It's a bit scary that it's all our money,
it's everything that we could ever
borrow or ever put together.
Well, that's what's
slightly concerning, isn't it?
There's no opportunity
then to go and borrow more.
No, there isn't. Well, apart from,
like I say, begging from our parents.
Yeah, there's no...
There isn't anywhere else we can go.
I could go for it, wouldn't you?
Well, yes, perhaps you do. I just
wondered whether or not you think that if
you'd waited for another five years or so,
that you might be in a more
financially secure position.
You might have that little bit of
extra edge, that little bit of extra
security, which would...
But then sometimes the older you get,
the more nervous you are, because you
have a better understanding
about how big it is.
And how much can go wrong.
Yeah, we're quite... we're excited,
we're young, we haven't got any children
or anything like that.
If it all goes horribly
wrong, it's just me and
Ben and we've got each
other, so it doesn't matter.
Building this house is a life-defining
commitment for Ben and Mary.
They've been together nine
years, got married a year ago,
and they've decided
to spend the rest of
their lives in this area,
near Mary's family.
This village has been part of
my family's life for a long time.
In fact, my sister's even a barmaid,
so, you know, hopefully we'll be able
to make a... It sounds
really cheesy, but
make a contribution
to what we've got, bring
investment back to the village.
I suppose we're young to
do it, but put down our roots.
Mary's family have built houses
in this area for generations,
and she works as a design assistant
for her father, who runs the company
that'll build their house.
Her sense is a family build. Her
dad's the architect, her uncle's helping
them project manage, and her
cousins will provide expertise on site.
Ben's an economist who works for
the council. He knows they need all the
family support they can get.
If you don't know about building, I
wouldn't say, "Come on, let's go and
build a house and just go off on our own,"
without knowing we had people who
we could ask technical questions to.
After 14 months in planning and
preparation, the ground
is finally broken on
Ben and Mary's plot, and the build begins.
They may be building a relatively
modest house, but they're working to an
extremely ambitious schedule.
They're hoping to be finished
and in in a mere 16 weeks.
This whole site
slopes, and where our
house is, is the higher
part of the ground,
and if we built off that level, then
we would be directly looking into the
other houses, onto the road,
and they would be looking into us.
The planners have asked us if we
can dig it down slightly so that our house
will sit quite nicely on the site
without screaming out or without
invading other people's privacy.
It's so good that
it's finally starting
to dig out the site
that it's happening.
Yeah, that makes a big change from
all the planning and the paperwork.
It's just been paperwork for the
last, I don't know, months, hasn't it?
Yeah, so... So it's finally something
positive or physical happening, yeah.
It's good.
It's dirty, though.
My whole mind's been blown
by what we need to know.
Sometimes I lie awake at night
just sitting there, worrying about not
knowing what kind of blocks I need.
But then if you actually thought
about it, you'd probably go insane, so it's
always best to ask somebody who does know.
That's why people are there, so somebody
wants to ask me about colouring in.
You know, I'm a girl, but I don't
know anything about technical stuff.
Ben and Mary are very, very
keen that their new house blends
into the patchwork of
ancient buildings in this village.
They're going to spend their lives
here, and they've based aspects of their
design on local buildings for
sentimental as well as aesthetic reasons.
This is where Ben and I
got married, last August.
What we've done is, our frame inside,
all the detail for the posts and the
braces have been taken off this building.
So all the stock chamfers and then
the measurements and dimensions of the
braces going over it, we
kind of copied all of these,
and then reproduced them on our
frame so that our house will have little
elements of the slitchscape.
The oak frame is being made
off-site at Mary's father's workshop.
As well as constructing and building
the frame, Mary's father John is also
the architect and designer on this project.
Is the house that they're going to
build, is that the house that you wanted
to design for your daughter, to give her?
I said, well, this is the most
cost-effective way of doing it, this is the
traditional way of producing a cottage.
And they said, well, we don't
necessarily want that, we don't want the
chocolate box, the traditional, we
want to bring the 21st century with the
16th and 17th.
I should know Mary well, and I
should know what she wants, but it was
difficult to bring Mary and Ben's
needs and aspirations together.
It's a small cottage, they can
enjoy married life in it, and it's got an
intimacy which perhaps
will translate through to them.
Once the land is
cleared, foundations
and ground works go
ahead without a hitch.
Of course, once they're out of the
ground, all local eyes will be on the
design of this building,
because despite Ben and Mary's
ambitions for a house that marries ancient
and modern technologies,
the locals will be very keen to see
a house that conforms to the local,
somewhat wonky, vernacular.
This house is going to be in a very
exposed place, right smack bang in the
middle of an historic village,
in plain view of every passerby.
Now, I know Mary is working for
the company that's going to build this.
They may have lots
of friends and family
who are going to
support them in this,
but if this house looks in any way
out of place, then they're going to face
the disapproval of the entire community.
I just hope they don't make any mistakes.
Before any 21st century technology
can come to sight, it's the traditional
oak frame that needs erecting,
just three weeks into the build.
This is a crucial part of the structure,
another prefabricated element, and
hopefully it's all the right
size and in the right place.
From the start, Mary and Ben have
wanted to use people they know and trust.
Local boys, Patrick and his
brother Gary, are building the frame.
Between them, they have over 20
years' experience working with oak.
We'll get all the posts up today,
and then they'll probably start putting
the top beams in tomorrow.
Once we've got these two posts up
here, we'll start pegging these rails up
now, this afternoon,
and then we'll put the top beams on
tomorrow, so all the oak will be up by
tomorrow, dinner time-ish.
Three, five, fifty.
Just try them on the bottom there, Ben.
Ben's taken a week
off work to get stuck in.
Mary's doing quite a lot of the
administrative side things and doing a lot
of the finding things,
and chasing people up
and all that sort of thing.
So it's only fair that I should do more
manly stuff, you know, be something
that she can't do.
Oak frames, when they're properly
designed, are phenomenally strong, and
they're self-locking,
so in theory you should be able to
turn them on their heads and they won't
distort or move an inch.
They've used 30 trees
to make this frame,
which weighs about
six and a half tonnes,
so they've got to put
it in the right place.
How far in?
Go all the way, Ben.
End of the nail now.
You all right, lads?
A little better.
Oh, he's bent a nail.
Ben's wild hammering is
the least of their worries.
Just when everything was
going so well, they hit a problem.
What was it, Nick?
Oh, well, that's it then.
That's where the discrepancy is.
I'm miles over, like.
So what's happened there then?
We are, I'm, if you're
saying nine, nine,
fifty, I'm, I've only
got nine, nine, ten,
I'm forty mil out there on the base.
The oak frame's not fitting
as it should do on the base.
I'm just trying to
find out now with a
drawer in office what's
gone wrong, really.
It's about 30 mil, which is quite a bit.
To solve the problem of the oak
frame not fitting onto the floor plate,
the entire wooden structure has
been moved 12 millimetres to the left.
Everything's back on track.
So now, is this the front door here?
Can you not tell? Isn't that obvious?
I sort of can. I mean, there's...
Yeah, this is the front door.
There's ruminants of a...
This is my favourite bit so far.
Yeah, front door, really beautiful porch.
It's Ben up there, isn't it?
Yeah.
Lending another pair of hands, apparently.
Ben, presumably it's
entirely down to you
that the frame went
up so quickly, is it?
Oh, yeah. They've only just appeared
because of the cameras, yeah.
I did most of it on my own, yeah.
It is wonderful having all these
very, very skilled people, isn't it?
I mean, I've done it all before.
I'm incredibly lucky, yeah.
Yeah, there's nobody
who's kind of a novice,
well, apart from Ben's
a bit of a novice here.
I didn't say that.
I'm very impressed.
He has skills, hidden skills.
Are you pleased?
I'm really pleased.
It's fantastic getting it,
finally getting the frame up.
It's very exciting, especially
as it goes up so quickly as well.
You can really see what's being done.
Job satisfaction.
Especially as I'm doing it all as well.
And what happens next then?
Because the sips have come on
site, so how quickly will they go up?
As soon as they finish the frame.
Yeah, so hopefully we'll finish this
today or tomorrow and then we'll start
doing the sips after that.
That's something that makes me nervous.
Different materials,
trying to marry
them together is the
odd thing, you know,
because they don't normally get together.
Well, they put a lot of
thought into it, haven't they?
But in practice, you've just
got to see whether it works out.
Well, exactly. That's what it
comes down to, is on the day.
"Can Patrick get it to fit?"
Poor old Patrick.
At its heart, Ben and
Mary's house is medieval.
The core wooden structure, the
bit that looks like the framework for a
concrete car park, is based
on medieval aisled buildings.
And they have a basic wooden
box structure, just like this one.
The roof, however, projects
beyond the basic box frame
and instead it sits on
the shorter outside walls
and that gives extra living space
all down the side of the building.
An aisle. Now Ben and Mary's house
is also wider than the basic box frame.
but their outside walls aren't
timber with wattle and daub.
They're made out of sipped panels.
Two days after the oak frame is
finished, the sipped panels arrive.
The sips will form the
exterior walls of the house.
Their design's very clever, they're strong,
their insulation meets new building
regs and they're very quick to put up.
This is the first oak
frame house with the
sipped panel construction
that I've worked on.
It's not going too bad.
We've had a couple of
panels which are not quite right
but, you know, it's not going too bad.
For the first time, you
can expect a few mishaps.
So what are sips and how on earth
can you make a building out of them?
Well, they're just that
foam core with two thin
sheets of laminated
chipboard on either side.
and that laminated
chipboard has the
structural integrity
of, well, toast, really.
Look, if I take this piece and pop it here,
that represents a wall just made
out of one sheet of the board
and this off-cut of wood
represents the weight of the roof.
That's what happens.
The board is so thin it
just deforms, it bends.
Where sips are really clever is
that they take that sponge core,
which of itself can't
take any weight at all,
and they glue the board
onto it on either side
and it's the gluing over
that huge surface area
which maintains the
integrity of the whole thing.
As a result, these boards can't
deform and the whole thing...
The whole thing
has a strength that's
much greater than
the sum of its parts.
So it can take, really,
quite an impressive load.
In fact...
Here we are.
That must represent the combined
weight of several dozen roofs.
You can see it all taking shape now.
I'm glad as well that I've done it
because I haven't been that
involved in the planned side of things
and it's all a bit of double Dutch
but now you can get a grip of what's
actually going on, so that's good.
Ben's doing really well,
he's doing brilliantly.
He's been up and straight well.
I'm trying to persuade him to
stay next week, but he won't have it.
He usually works in the office,
so this is probably a bit more
hard work than he's used to.
It takes only ten days to
put the main structure up
and for the lovely oak frame to
disappear behind the sips panels.
Now, look, I notice this
big end gable wall here,
which is... This is the sips panel.
It doesn't even touch
that upright, that post.
It's good, you know,
what, 30mm, 40mm off it.
So what happens there?
Does it just sit like that?
No, no, everything will be connected,
but where we need structural contact,
there will be solid
timbers put between
the big oak posts
and the sips panels
and then we'll bolt the whole thing
right through with 12mm diameter bolts
which will go all
the way from that
back face... All the
way through the post?
Yeah.
But now then, this being a
sips panel and this being foam,
surely, though, when you tighten this up,
because it's so soft,
won't it just squash
this material and
just deform the wall?
It would do, yeah, but you'll see
we've got these timber packers.
and this is a solid piece of timber
and if you try and
squeeze that with a bolt,
it's only going to compress as
much as the timber will allow it to.
So you'll never ever compress the foam?
No.
You're always fixing wood
through wood to wood?
Yep, there's always a solid
connection all the way through.
These sips panels may
be the future of building,
but this structure now
looks like a cardboard box.
It's little wonder that it's
attracting a lot of attention
considering the local architecture.
Although Ben and Mary have
lived in this area all their lives,
they are new to this particular village
and they're keen to alleviate the
concerns of the neighbourhood.
It's a very contentious
site, being where it is.
Some of the neighbours
are really, really nice
and others obviously are worried
about what we're going to do.
Yeah.
And until it's done, you can't really
do anything to reassure that worry.
So have you had any complaints?
We've had a few.
Yeah, about what?
Well, when we had the planning
commission, there were lots of complaints
and some of those people
have kind of come round,
you know, they come on
site and see if we're all right.
But then other people, you
know, they're just worried
about what we're going to be doing, really.
Right, yeah.
Does it worry you?
It worries me that I might upset people
and I really wish I didn't feel like that,
but sometimes you just
don't want to have the conflict
or the aggravation of people
thinking bad things about you.
Yeah.
But we're trying to do the build quickly.
We're really hoping that the
design, when people see it,
it's not, you know, that's going to
make up for the worries they have now.
I mean, what is it going to look like?
Because, I mean,
here, look, there are
two types of buildings
here, aren't there?
There's the kind of
half-timbered black and white.
Yeah.
And then there's these red bricks.
There's a lot of red brick here.
Yeah, there's quite a lot of brick.
And Georgian windows.
Yeah.
So what are the windows
going to look like, for example?
What's the ward going to look like?
Sure.
Well, ours will be rendered on the outside.
Yeah.
So like a lime-rich render, which
will weather really quite nicely
because it'll get softer and softer.
Yeah.
It's got a brick plinth
hoping to pick up
on the brick houses
we've got round here.
And we've kept the mortar light
as well because most of the bricks
have got light mortar.
Oh, right.
So you're following
brickwork pattern
in terms of brick type
colour and mortar.
Yeah.
Just so that we don't, again, the
artisans shout out as being the one
lonely new build of
that type in every village.
Do you think that having moved
it in there'll be a degree of healing
to do with a load of music?
I mean, when we're in and they
realise we're not kind of heavy metal fans.
and we're not going to kind
of eat their dog or anything,
that, you know, they'll
think we're all right.
I hope.
Well, they think the house is all right.
I don't know.
But then again, I can't change that.
If it all goes to schedule,
in a mere eight weeks,
the neighbourhood will know exactly
what Ben & Mary's house looks like.
Time is money.
It's week five on this super tight schedule
and Patrick and Gary are
now racing ahead on the roof.
But if Ben & Mary are going
to be in by mid-September,
they're going to have to keep this pace up.
We started the roof construction
on Tuesday dinner time.
So three and a half
days, it's going very well.
No problems.
It's running smooth.
Tight schedule, so everybody's
getting pushed a little bit.
MUSIC You know,
it's getting exciting now.
You don't have to imagine
what the room's going to look like.
You can see what it's going to look like.
They look a lot bigger now, the rooms.
There's before, when it's sort of open,
you can't really get an idea of
the actual size, whereas now.
Now you can, yeah.
Mary's already starting to plan
where everything's going to go
and, yeah, you can start
to go out and buy things.
They made things like flooring and lighting
and things like that,
we sorted on, so, yeah.
Just soft furnishings and things like that.
MUSIC A week later
and the house suddenly
looks like a shiny
vernacular spaceship.
It's been clad in a silver
breather membrane
that's there to gently
ventilate the SIPs panels
and no doubt gently agitate local opinion.
MUSIC We needed a
breather membrane anyway,
so if you can get a breather
membrane, that is also insulation as well.
There's no harm in having it there.
It's just something that
we thought we'd try, really.
It looks rather dashing.
Our house is going to be the
warmest house in the whole country.
Next, cement fibre ball.
It's another experimental insulating layer
but its main job is to give the
lime render something to key to
when they try to make this
modern house start to look a bit old.
You have to remember
this is an innovative build.
There are two separate ideas going on here.
The first is modern technology,
the fast track build method,
the concrete fibre board, the SIPs panels.
The second is the more
traditional craft-led approach,
the oak frame, the lime
render, the handmade bricks.
Now, the combination of the
two is really rather experimental
and the question is, of course,
in the end, will it look any good?
The fire is kind of...
still looks funny and now it looks right.
- Look at the drawing now. - Yeah.
Mary's also invested in
some reclaimed roof tiles.
New tiles tend to look a bit funny.
They're very flat and a bit...
well, they're just too clean.
Whereas reclaimed tiles, you're
going to get that dirt anyway
and that kind of fits
in with the not too
perfect element of
what we're trying to do.
We don't want anything to
look really brand spanking new
or scary or too clean and perfect.
There's a great deal of attention
being lavished on the exterior detail
but Mary's self-professed
strength is interior design
and she's determined to bring elements
of local craftsmanship into her home.
I like having control over things,
so even little things like window latches,
the door knocker, all the interiors,
Ben and I will do all of those.
It's those things that kind of
will annoy me or I'll love them,
so I have to kind of
have input into them
so that I'm not miserable
in my own house.
Mary's taken one of her drawings to
a traditional forge just down the road
where she's hoping the blacksmith
can inject some life into her design for a
door knocker.
Mary's already given me a design
and she's given me a drawing of the door
knocker itself.
Like most blacksmiths, you want
to go perhaps a little bit further
and maybe introduce a style
which she hadn't considered before.
Well, you don't have to, do you?
I was just going to buy
something out of the shop, that's it.
Mary's set aside money to
invest in craftsman-made objects,
things which are going to get
handled and touched every day.
Is it like a sort of a crocus or a
water Lily head or something?
Yes, it's a spherical
style, because as it's
a door knocker,
you've got to handle it.
So it's got to be kind to the
touch, and I believe when it's made,
you'll have this wonderful
three-dimensional effect,
and people will come to the door
and say, "Is that a door knocker? Do I
press it? Do I pull it?"
So it's just a little bit more
than a door knocker, really.
It is what, two or three
weeks since I came last?
I didn't say that.
And in that time, you've
almost finished the exterior.
Not far off.
It's phenomenally quick, isn't it?
It feels like it's really quick.
It does seem very quick, yeah.
Yeah, really quick.
And now that you've got kind of some
vague notion of what it's going to look
like when it's finished, are you pleased?
Yeah.
Yeah, we are, I'll say that.
You don't think it looks a bit
like a nice executive home?
Not at all, Kevin.
Well, I'm a nice
executive, so that's all right.
You know, I think I'd rather die
than live in an executive home,
so I'll do everything I need to do
to make it not an executive home.
It is so quick, isn't it?
Yeah, it does feel really quick.
Yeah, the window's pre-made
and they're all made off-site.
Yeah, the joint event knows he's
got his own workshop by his house.
About two miles up the road.
Yeah?
Nice detail to that.
Yeah.
You designed that?
Yeah.
Well, it's taken from what obviously
there's nothing clever about it.
It's just a very nice detail.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And oak windows?
Yes.
What finish is going to go on these?
We found an oil we think will
be the best of it, bad choice.
Basically, we love the,
just the natural colour,
so we want to leave it
as natural as we can.
Yeah.
And then just let it go silvery over time.
Have you tried the stuff out?
Yeah, it's a piece of... So
that end there has got a line.
So this is the UN, this is the UN.
That's just untreated.
And then that's treated?
That's treated.
Just that top bit there.
Oh, right.
This one hasn't got
any UV protection in
it, so basically the
sun will make this...
Will degrade it.
...till it goes silver.
But we don't mind that yet.
Isn't that what you want?
Don't you want it to go silver?
Yeah.
That's exactly what we want it to.
Otherwise it really will
look like an executive home,
with it being like these
kind of brown windows.
Yeah, I'd rather put them
in and have fingers crossed.
And they'll look like softwood.
I mean, there's no point having oak.
No.
Exactly.
So when do these go in?
Now.
And when do you
do your first fix, wiring
and plumbing and
under-fore heating?
They're starting tomorrow.
They do?
Yeah, they let us... On this build,
it's not next week, next month,
it's like tomorrow or the day after.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The next stage of the build is crucial.
Ben and Mary are counting
on it to turn their executive home
into a cottage with rounded edges.
It's week eight and time for all
the modern high-tech materials
to disappear under a layer
of traditional lime render.
As usual, labour materials
come from local tradesmen.
So Nigel, what are the
advantages of using it here?
The material itself is more flexible.
And also I think the actual finish,
the aesthetics of the
finish is attractive as well.
And in a building like this, which is,
it's being designed
and built with a lot
of that in mind, it's
obviously irrelevant.
Yeah.
Traditional lime render may
give you a lovely, rustic finish,
but it's tricky stuff to mix.
It's a careful blend of lime and sand,
with horsehair thrown in
to knit the mixture together.
It's already on the hair, really.
It needs a bit more hair in there.
But in the hands of a skilled
tradesman, it's not difficult to apply.
Well, Joe, do you like working with
this as opposed to cement render?
Is it... Yes, it's good.
It's good to work with.
Yeah? What about?
Yes, well, it's...
You see, it's just nice and creamy.
And I gather that John the Arctic
tells you that he wanted it rough.
Yeah, that's why he got us to do it,
because he reckoned with
the roughest in the county.
I don't think it's so rough, mate.
Can I have a go?
Certainly.
Don't be surprised at how slow I am.
No, it makes it slow.
So you just sort of, you
know, just... That's the way.
Squeeze it all in now.
You really, really
push it into the surface.
Push it into that... It's
quite a physical job, isn't it?
Quite a bit used to it, don't you, Ray?
You can tell I'm not used to physical work.
Thank you.
It's now week ten, and the
exterior's virtually complete.
The roof's tiled, the
chimney's finished,
and the third coat
of render is on.
But inside, Ben and Mary
have yet to stamp their Mark.
It's going to be quite... I suppose
it's contemporary, but it's not modern,
and it's quite relaxed and gentle.
Sometimes you get, like, a moment,
and it's just worrying that
you might have got it wrong
or that you sometimes do
doubt what you had in your head.
It's like a house, but
not a house, but it's good.
Won't be long.
I'm hoping that Mary's
taste and attention to detail
will deliver an interesting
and well-designed interior.
Outside, I'm not so sure.
From the start, Ben and Mary
wanted to make a contribution
to their home, to their village,
to build a timber-framed house
that exploited all the
natural honesty of green oak.
But what seems to be emerging
is something very different.
It's not modern, and it's
not a historical replica.
It's simply pretending
to be old, and
I don't feel very
comfortable with that.
The challenge they now face
is how to finish off all the
external details of their house
to stop this place from turning
into just another executive home.
It's the end of August,
and Ben and Mary
are getting round
to the final finishes.
If they're going to get this bit
right, they've got a lot of work to do.
What about all those finishing details?
Who's doing all of this? You, too.
- Yeah. - Me. That means me.
Yeah, too, Ben.
I'm awful. I'm so impatient.
I do five minutes, then my arm hurts.
I know. I admit I am really bad,
but then, Ben, you actually like it.
You pot you around up there.
He can stay there till 10
o'clock, 11 o'clock at night.
I think working by yourself with no
help, Ben, anything's an achievement.
Yeah, that's the good thing.
If you've only done
one door, at least
it's one door more
than she's done, so...
What with so much to do,
Mary's called in her family and
friends to help put up the garage.
Well, there's loads of
things happening today.
Ben and Nathan, my cousin,
and my other cousin, Will,
who's Mark's son, are
putting up the garage.
Paul, my other cousin, he's been doing
some touching up on the plasterboard
and painting the basin unit for us.
And Terry, who's no relation to me
whatsoever, is painting the other rooms,
the last couple of rooms,
and some external doors.
And I am just buffing around
and waxing and stuff like that.
It's been 19 weeks since Ben and
Mary poured the foundations of this house.
And not only is it finished, but
they moved in three weeks ago.
-Hello. -Hello.
-How are you? -Good to see you.
-How are you, Kevin?
-Very well. How are you?
-Good, thanks. -How's your house?
-Good. -It's finished. It really does.
This is very nice. Very different
to how it was gonna look, isn't it?
-Yeah, it is amazing.
-Beautifully finished.
Nice hallway.
Surprisingly spacious, isn't it?
-Yeah. -It's quite broad, yeah.
It's got to take my shoes off.
You're not wearing any shoes, are you?
-Cream carpet. -Yeah, that's why.
Oh, and of course, underfloor heating.
-Yeah, can you feel it? -Yeah, no, it's...
Cos a lot was on this
morning, but it's off now,
so it retains the heat and the floors.
-Yeah, it really comes with, yeah. -Yeah.
Kind of makes you want
to walk around in your bed.
-It does, yeah.
-Exactly, lounge around and...
-Yeah. And a beautiful floor, too. -Yes.
Oak, like the beams, like
these posts, like everything.
-Like the doors, the lining, and things.
-Yeah.
Yeah, except the
fireplace, though, is stone.
-Yeah. -That I haven't seen before.
This is from where?
Well, it's actually come from Belgium.
We bought it from Belgium,
but the limestone is French.
It's like a French
fireplace, cos it's huge.
-It is. -Yeah.
Maybe a bit big for a room, but we like it.
-It's quite broad.
-It is, it's very over-scale.
It's like your porch,
it's very, you know,
it's kind of over-scale
porch, over-scale.
Lots of sort of
architectural elements
in this building,
which are kind of big.
My dad thinks it's like a
doll's house, you know,
all the pieces of furniture, it's too big.
Maybe it's cos I'm small.
It's taller than you.
It's a bit kind of, you know, a bit freaky.
The lighting here is very contemporary.
-Yeah. -Was that a deliberate decision,
to kind of keep the
modern stuff very modern?
Yes, because, well, I suppose
it's because we're young,
you don't have to kind of
stop using things you like,
just cos you're kind of
building an old friend house,
so we didn't really go down
the kind of ye olde England,
Elizabethan route, if we could help it.
I suppose the
television in its stand
would have rather
represented that fusion.
-Yeah. -Vernacular and...
-Pieces of off-cut. -...modern engineering.
Yeah.
And the kitchen is
also a mixture, like that?
Yeah, I think so, yeah.
Yeah, you've got a lot of
stainless steel in this kitchen.
-Yeah. -Big cooker.
Yeah, nice big cooker.
I'm a semi-professional
cook, you see, so...
Yeah.
The floor in here is very,
erm, very beautiful, actually.
It's, what, polished, honed stone?
Yes, I think it's black limestone.
What I like about this
is that it's not all perfect,
so I was really worried
about having a new house
being all kind of pristine
and, like, so terrified to live in it
that you'd spill something
or that it looked really kind of
like an executive home.
But we kind of
chose things like, you
know, the oak's
going to split and crack
and the floor's not entirely perfect,
hoping that we can just break
down the edges of it, really.
What's in here?
-Utility in there. -That's favourite rooms.
-That's big, isn't it? It's big.
-It's really good, yeah.
-Yeah.
-Much bigger than we thought, isn't it?
We've got the tumble
dryer, the washing machine...
Dishwasher.
The fridge freezer, dishwasher,
sink, everything's in there.
I'm relieved to say
that the interior works.
The fusion of old and new
has been eloquently worked out
so that the services and
facilities are bang up to date.
On the other hand, the
furniture, flooring and fixtures.
are a carefully chosen
mixture of old and new.
So you moved in when?
Erm, two and a half weeks ago.
Nearly three weeks.
But your house was
finished before then, wasn't it?
Yeah, we could have moved...
Well, it was five or six weeks
ago we could have moved in, yeah.
Why didn't you?
I got a bit frightened about leaving
my mum and dad and my sister
-and it was just too... -Leaving home?
Yeah, I suppose, leaving the garden.
It's a bit strange sort of coming in
and the first time you sleep here,
it's like sleeping in someone else's house.
It turns from being
a project, you know,
to actually accepting
that it's your house.
Upstairs, Ben and Mary's
house is just as well appointed,
with two well-proportioned guest rooms.
The main bathroom is understated.
A fashionable blend of
twinkly halogen lighting,
Victorian tongue and
groove and chrome.
The master bedroom
is squarely framed
by the mighty timbers
of the oak structure.
And their en suite shower
room is a surprisingly
contemporary and
indulgent statement
in what is otherwise a
modest and simple home.
But up here, as down below,
there's an incredible quality,
both in terms of the build
quality but also the finish
and I wonder if that
hasn't proved a nightmare,
getting that all absolutely tickety-boo,
because there's nothing
here which hasn't been done.
I suppose you're really
lucky that because
the people that were
working on the house,
that's their standard
of workmanship,
that's just what they
do day in, day out.
But without people like my
dad and Mark and Patrick
and all the other people that really
were kind of people that get it going
to this level, we would have
just been like a pair of numpties.
We do feel really lucky.
I don't know, we feel we
sort of don't deserve it almost.
We do now because
we put what I do in,
because I've put
quite a lot of work in.
But you do it at some stage, you think,
"Crikey, I can't believe we're only
25 and we've got a really nice house."
This was, after all, an experimental build
that combined old and new
technologies for the first time.
In that respect, it's a great success
and it's arrived more or less on
budget and dead on schedule.
And outside you've made a deck.
Yep, nice to come out
on a sunny morning,
sit out on the deck,
have breakfast.
Yeah, I suppose you need it really,
because the garden isn't quite there.
Needs a little bit to be
desired at the moment, yeah.
Yeah, so you've laid some turf, Ben.
Just the minimalist one strip, yeah.
And where does your garden go to?
Is it just here?
Just the edge of the decking
and then to the end of the fence.
So you're bang up close to
the next house, aren't you?
Yeah.
All this brickwork you've got,
really noticeable this end, isn't it?
Because you've got this enormous
three-storey chimney stack.
A monster chimney.
It is a monster chimney.
And you're coming round that
corner now, you really notice it.
Yeah.
Are you happy with that, the scale of that?
Yeah, I think what
would change this is when
other houses have
been built next to us,
so you'll never see
that end in profile ever.
Right.
Because from here, it looks
charming, just sticking out of the roof.
Yeah, that's what you'll see.
Just a cool logo.
Their houses will
block the RN profile,
so you'll never get
a full gable shot.
And the render, are you
happy with the render?
The way it's turned
out, the colour variation
and the lime in it,
that won't change.
I think it's softer and
softer all the time.
So after this, the weather we've
had recently, we've given it a proper...
So it's taken it paler.
I think when it first
was unveiled, when
scaffolding came down,
it was quite a shock,
because it's quite bright.
Yeah.
Nice texture.
It is, it is really nice, and you'll
be starting to get used to it.
I hope it will weather down a little
bit, and you can already see that the
porch has started to...
Yeah.
...tick over in the windows as well.
And the porch will go completely grey.
Yeah.
So that won't look honey coloured at all.
No.
This has turned
out to be a red and
yellow house in a
black and white village.
So those oversized
elements, like the chimney,
the bulging line in
the yellow render,
and the church porch, really
need to mellow and grey with age.
How much did you spend in the end?
I think we were up to about 130.
Yeah.
Plus the cost of the site.
No.
That's increasing.
That is incredibly cheap.
That's what kind of you have to pinch
yourself to believe we couldn't buy a
house like this for
£130,000 in this county.
And what's it worth now?
I think it's about
£280,000, but I don't know.
You see, that's an
extraordinary difference,
isn't it, between
cost and value.
Yeah.
Presumably you're happy, you're pleased
with how successful it's turned out.
There isn't a word to
say what you feel about it.
It's more than being pleased.
It's not kind of like pat on the
back, "haven't we done a nice job?"
It's just it becomes so
much more than that.
What did you put that down to?
When so many people fail and so
many people are disappointed by their
ambitions when they're realised.
Maybe it's because it wasn't
beyond what we could achieve.
So we set ourselves a target
that we knew we were going to do.
So you never kind of set yourself
up for that element of failure or
compromise or, you
know, nearly but not quite.
Which are your favourite bits?
We keep trying to do... Top ten.
Top ten.
Top ten favourite bits in the R&U.
It always ends up being top 20 or 30.
I like the porch the most, but
that could be because it's my dad.
He drew that on paper and I saw
him draw it with a pen and then give it to
somebody and say, "Could you make that?"
It's just such an amazing thing that
not many people get to live in a house
that their dad designed or thought through.
You've lived up an idea.
Yeah, it's just... What did
you think about the building?
I think he likes it because it's our home.
He likes it that we live
here and things like that.
He doesn't like what
necessarily we've done inside.
It's not his taste, but then it would
be horrible if he had the same kind of
taste as your parents, wouldn't it?
This may not be everybody's idea of
the future of the R&U, but it is a very
important one.
It's not the idea of
the future of village
housing, certainly
not avant-garde,
but it is a home which
reflects everything
that Ben and Mary
want and believe in.
Craftsmanship,
simple, honest materials,
modern comforts
and a certain modesty.
I actually think that
they are all exemplary
qualities for a
21st-century cottage.