Stapley is close to the Somerset/Devon border, within the Blackdown Hills, designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. I grew up in the area and only just discovered this rural village on Thursday and hope to be able to help some new clients achieve their dream home. What has become the constant in the Practice is the need to extend a kitchen (the heart of the home) into a family room that can accommodate many generations of one family for celebrations and festivals. It is not unusual to be given a brief which includes ‘must be able to seat 22 […]
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Another two applications for listed building consent approved by Dorset and East Devon for alterations to listed buildings, one retrospective and the other for the insertion of a wood-burning stove, raising a chimney and replacing all the modern C20 windows with double glazing on the roadside. There has always been a very different approach to alterations depending on each local authority. Some councils object to even raising the chimney to an existing wood-burning stove (to make it compliant for insurance and Building Regs purposes) and others are so consistently helpful it is hard to believe that we are all playing […]
This week has been spent submitting two applications for listed building consent and planning permission in Dorset and East Devon. The two sites could not have been more different – one in the centre of a large village – Broadwindsor, and the other on the periphery of a dispersed village – Dalwood. The applications are for very different types of uses, one is an annex to the existing family home to accommodate adult children and the other is the conversion of redundant outbuildings for a home/office, changing room and swimming pool but what they both have in common is that […]
It is with some trepidation that we approach the dark, cold autumnal days that always, without fail, dictates its’s time to get the Bosch Zamo out and set off to survey a redundant farm building or three nestling into the hillside as if they were planted. Every year I expect it to be different but we still find ourselves outside on these bright, cold days frantically trying to record everything before the light goes. Only then do we realise that this is the best time of year, between half term and the Christmas panic. The light is perfect, there’s little […]