Designed for life

week 2

Despite our best efforts (see here and here) it's clear our design skills are pretty limited. We're going to need professional help (with the design too, I hasten to add, before you go and start making your own jokes).

The line I hear a lot is that good tradesman make or break a build. I'm sure that's true (and we'll likely prove it later in this project), but for me, if you get the design 'wrong', then you've lost from day 1. With that in mind, finding a good architect is paramount to the project being a success. The question arises, how do you find a good architect. I have no real answer for that, other than through recommendation. Like anything else in this world, the best relationships are built on trust - if you have someone you trust, and they can recommend an architect (ideally through personal experience of their work) then you're likely on to a winner.

If you can't get a recommendation (and even if you can, these are things worth thinking about), make sure that your architect is on the same wavelength as you in a few areas:

• Budget - probably one of the most important and challenging aspects of any build, maing sure that your architect is aware of your budget, and keeps it in mind before he puts any proverbial pen to paper will help you massively when it comes to funding your dream project.
• Objectives - we talked about our objectives of the project here. Making sure your architect knows what your primary motivation is for the work will help him guide you in where to invest your time and money, and (probably more importantly) where not to. If you're priary objective is to improve the sociability of your kitchen, for example, then you want to be spending your time on seating, lighting and flow of that space above all else.
• Style - some indication of the way you live, and the kinds of things you like will go along way towards aligning your architects vision with something that will inspire and excite you (and be practical, if that's what moves you). Without some idea about you and your family, it'll be hard for the architect to deliver a space that ticks all your boxes.
• Trust - there's a reason these folks earn their money designing spaces for other people (and a reason we mere mortals don't). They're good at it. Yes, I'm sure there are architects that aren't as good (hence we're writing a post on selecting architects, duh), but in general, if you can build a level opf trust with your architect then it'll make the whole process smoother. You won;t be trying to do their job for them; they'll be able to turn things around quicker as they won't be reworking all the little things becuase they misunderstood, or didn't consult you; etc.

So, eating our own dogfood, we canvassed opinions of friends and relatives. Fortunately, one of our friends (former neighbour) works in the building trade as a carpenter, so was able to recommend a number of contacts he'd worked with directly, and could vouch for their work. Similarly, we could vouch for his judgement, as we'd seen the standards of his own projects (including the extension to his house), so all was good. We approached one of hos recommendations, who turned out to be someone we knew already (connection through my wife's former work). We went through an initial meeting where we discussed our thoughts around the build; our objectives; budget; styles of things we liked and disliked; etc. It went well. We seemed to be aligned in how we thought about things and he got our style and was making suggestions already that we could see would help us make the most of the space. We decided to go ahead, and commissioned him to come up with a design for our two-storey behemoth of a project (OK, in reality, he'd designd much bigger, but hey, this is the internet, everything's exxagerated). We agreed a full end-to-end contract where he'd do all the designs; help us through planning; get the structural and building control elements in place; and liaise with the builder we selected to make sure the build went to plan.

The early stages of the process were relatively painless - he came back a second time to take proper measurements of the whole house so that he could draw out the current plans and elevations; and then went away to sketch out some ideas. It took a few weeks with a few emails pinging backwards and forwards asking questions about styles and confirming some requirements, and at the end, we had two sets of shiny designs to mull over.

While the 'angled' design is super interesting, mulling it over, we decided that the more traditional 'square-backed' design made more sense as it offered better affinity to the garden, more open internal layout that would give us the space and flow to make a truly social family kitchen/living area. We loved the idea of the balcony from the new master-suite, but our architect was quick to caution us that he expected that to be something the planning department at the council were very likely to veto. His take in this was that if we started with a full-on balcony, we could compromise with the council on a juliet balcony, which would still be a nice feature.

All in all, were very pleased with our selection of architect, and the with the designs he's managed to come up with. He's ticked off all of our objectives, and come up with a design that (at least on paper) looks like it will be a great space to live in. On to the trials and tribulations of the planning department.