Moving home is often listed among the most stressful activities you can experience, so if you want more living space but can’t face the upheaval of “flitting” to somewhere bigger – and don’t want to, because you’re quite happy where you live just now – then the obvious alternative is to add some additional space to your home.
This is not without challenges, especially if the actual building is of a certain age – or, has the protection of being officially ‘listed’. Whatever the age and style of your property, however, it is absolutely vital that you get the right kind of advice by engaging the services of an experienced architect.
“Normally we have two or three meetings with a client to establish a brief for the project,” explains Colin Munro, of Inverness-based architectural practice Thomas Munro & Co. “By the end of that we’ll have a pretty good idea of what the client’s wanting. At the same time we also have a pretty good idea what the planners and listed building consent people will be looking for (in the plans), so we try to steer the client in the right direction.”
Colin has many years experience of working on such adaptations, many involving ‘B’ and ‘A’ listed buildings. “Generally, we just try to get the thing to a sensible stage before we actually do any drawings – that the brief is established and will hopefully go through planning system with only minor tweaks to it,” he adds.
The planning process can be convoluted at the best of times — even if your neighbours are on-side — but especially so when dealing with a listed building. Around 10 years ago, Colin was involved in the refurbishment of a ‘B’ listed former Manse in Kiltarlity, which required bringing in specialist stonemasons. “It was in a pretty dilapidated condition, it wasn’t great at all,” he admits of that particular project. “It had to be restored inside before a new sun-lounge was added at the back.”
As you may expect, being faithful to an existing building is often paramount when it comes to getting permission to start work. “That’s an important part of the majority of building consents,” he adds. “Particularly if you’re working on an A-listed building, you’ve generally got to match traditional building materials and traditional building methods. Quite a lot of analysis is done to make sure that the mortar you’re using is compatible with the original mortar, that sort of thing. If you’re replacing stone you try and source it from the same quarry. We’re going through that exercise at the moment on our own building; we’ve got to replace some stone on the frontage and are sourcing it from the same quarry down in Dumfries, which is thankfully still open.”
Several years ago Colin’s company designed and oversaw the construction of a ramp to a new decorative stone archway and door in the gable of the architecturally important St Andrews Cathedral in Inverness, significantly improving access to the building for wheelchair users without destroying the overall appearance. Another project was the alteration and extension of a historic stone mill in Aultgowrie, which included the creation of a new entrance hall, garage extension and utility room. The mill was also upgraded to incorporate low carbon and renewable energy systems, including ground source heat pumps and solar panels to improve the property’s overall energy efficiency and green ‘footprint’.
However, Colin is the first to point out being absolutely faithful to an existing building isn’t always the only – or even the best – option. “Just because something’s old, it’s not necessarily the case that it’s good,” he says. “There’s no point in replicating poor detailing on a building that’s failed in the past and just redoing it again. In a case like that, say a detail on the roof that has failed during the building’s lifetime — well, you wouldn’t put it back, you’d try to improve that detail. So there’s a bit of a balancing act between historical accuracy and practicality.”
While it might seem obvious to ensure that extensions to existing houses and public building look like a natural part of the whole – indeed, so the final result gives a sense of it having always been built like that, by using exactly the same materials, style of construction and proportions – there are occasions when the opposite can actually work better.
“You can put something completely modern on a building, something quite different, something which clearly states: that is the old building, this is the new,” Colin explains. “That can work quite well, and planners can actually be quite supportive of that; a good example is that we’re adding a largely glass block onto a Victorian school, to create a cafe. There’s a distinct separation between the two, but the one complements the other. It’s when you ‘fall between the two stools’, when the new build’s neither like the old nor sufficiently different to be distinct, that it is rarely successful.”
Which option is best, of course, is open to debate. “It all depends on what the client is trying to achieve, and how the building’s sited,” he says. “There are a lot of different factors that come into play.”
One such factor, of course, is cost. With an extension which aims to blend into the existing building, albeit reconfiguring it into a new ‘whole’, there can be higher expense even at the planning stage. “Particularly with research into materials and construction, it can take quite a long time to source the correct stonework and type of thing,” Colin says. “There’s usually more professional time involved in the work to historic buildings than modern buildings.”
While an extension will invariably cost well into five figures — one rule of thumb is to budget for £1,000 per square metre (10.7 square feet) plus VAT — the advantage is that it can add anything from 10-25% to the value of your home. More importantly, though, it ensures your home is better for you now; definitely a win-win situation.
Article first published by The Scots Magazine (February 2015).
