The worm-eaten Old Lodge is reborn… as a kit house!
When it came to “renovating” one of the dilapidated houses on the Straloch estate, north of Pitlochry, Lucy Holt was faced with an option she really didn’t like – to demolish and start again.
“When we had professionals look at the houses it was discovered that the Old Lodge, which dated from around 1840, was riddled with woodworm,” she says. “They told us that, in fact, the whole roof needed to come off, all the plaster needed stripping out, all the lintels needed replacing in the windows – we were essentially going to end up with four walls, no roof and great gaping holes where the windows were.”
Bringing the building up to modern standards, it turned out, was going to be “unbelievably expensive”; hence the advice that she should start from scratch. “That went totally against my mother and I’s instincts, because we would always prefer to renovate rather than demolish and rebuild, but we consulted various other professionals and everybody came up with the same advice,” she says.
What undoubtedly eased the decision, however, was that Lucy’s online research had led her to Hebridean Homes, a kit house company whose standard “Whitehouse” design looked very much like the house that she was proposing to knock down. “They want to offer affordable homes in the Scottish countryside that sit well in the Scottish countryside,” Lucy says. “Their houses are based on the traditional design of farmhouses – and of old barns – and do sit very well in the countryside.”
“Hebridean Homes are more affordable because they’ve already done the plans; you’re not starting from scratch with architects’ drawings,” she says. That doesn’t mean, however, that those designs are set in stone. “You can tweak their design to suit your needs. When they came on site and looked at the original houses, we agreed that – for my purposes – a house with a slightly higher roof height would actually suit me better.
“Also, I flipped it round; they have this beautiful glass extension on the left-hand-side, but I wanted it on the right-hand-side in order to capture the view. So there is an element of flexibility with these kit houses.”
Despite all the potential savings, Lucy had to downsize her plans somewhat once a full costing had been done. “You should always get your project costed by a quantity surveyor before you start,” she insists. “It’s money well-spent.” Unfortunately, this change required the plans to be resubmitted to the local authority.
“Getting planning permission was no problem because we were building on the footprint, almost, of an existing building, and we were also replacing it with a building that was very similar. It just took a lot longer than I ever could have imagined; probably a year longer. So I think my advice to people would be just think of a time frame – and double it, because there are always issues that come up that you don’t anticipate.”
The foundations for the new building were completed just before Christmas, 2014. “In January, the house arrived – on the back of a lorry!” she explains. “It was very snowy and icy that day. The big lorry couldn’t get up to the house, because we’ve got quite a narrow access road, so it had to park on the main road and they used a loader to get the sections, which came wrapped in plastic, up to the site.
Hebridean Homes uses a Structurally Insulated Panel (SIP) system, which they believe will replace timber frame as the standard kit construction in the future. “The first part of the build was incredibly fast; it’s all in sections, made in the factory, that slot together,” she says. “They made the house wind and waterproof within 48 hours, which is pretty amazing.”
Lucy opted to employ the architect’s preferred builder Jim Cook, who happened to be locally based, to do the whole job. “Because they’re very experienced at these houses, I thought they’d be quicker – and actually that proved to be the case. The tradesmen that he employed – the joiners, mainly – were from the West Coast and so were living locally, and they worked incredibly long hours because they were away from home. They would arrive at 8am, and were often still there at 8pm; they were extremely skilled and worked very hard.
“The most important thing is your selection of builder. You need to like your builder and get on with him,” she insists. “Tim always had a ‘can-do’ attitude, which was fantastic. Also, I knew he only employed really skilled joiners, plumbers and electricians. I had complete trust in him, and that the job was going to be done well. From the moment the build started, it was all plain sailing. I thought the build was going to be the stressful bit, but actually – because the builder was so organised and the workmen were so skilled – it wasn’t.”
Lucy is the first to point out that she relied on many decisions made by the company. “The skirting boards are already chosen, the doors are already chosen, they have recommended handles – you can choose different ones if you want, but they have, I think, very good taste, so that makes it a lot, lot easier.” She was more particular when it came to the positioning of power sockets and light switches, but even then she often went with what her builders advised. “I also went with their recommended bathroom and kitchen supplier; they have a kind of look that is very contemporary; and the range they have selected is very good quality, but more affordable than what you might think. Again, you don’t have to – you can go to any bathroom place and choose your own, but I decided for the sake of simplicity just to go with what they recommended, and I’m very pleased with the results.”
Arguably the biggest exception to this was Lucy’s choice of heating system; while Hebridean Homes recommended an air-sourced heat pump, her preference was for biomass. “The house is on a working estate; we have a lot of forestry, and there’s a lot of waste timber – trees that just fall down naturally. So for us a log biomass boiler made sense.” Indeed, the biomass boiler system – installed by Kinross-based Glendevon Energy – now heats three houses on the estate.
Initially, Lucy aims to recover some of her costs by renting out the new Lodge as a holiday home, and she brought on board a skilled interior designer. “Having someone who knows about these things just makes the whole process so much easier, and actually I really enjoyed it. I gave her a brief as to what I wanted, and she came up lots of suggestions and did mood boards and things like that, so that was a very enjoyable bit.
“That’s one of my key messages; if you can find people you trust and you enjoy working with, its all going to be quite an enjoyable process,” Lucy adds. “We’ve all worked with builders for whom everything’s a problem, and you just don’t want that attitude; so I find the whole thing’s been really very enjoyable and successful, and I’m really pleased with the end result.”
More:
Stalker’s Lodge Holiday Home: www.straloch.com
Hebridean Homes: www.hebrideanhomes.com
First published in The Scots Magazine, April 2016.
