Monthly Archive for November, 2007

Heads turned by pre-built houses shocker

Published
by
Paul
on November 29, 2007
in General Musing
. 0 Comments

In August 2007 we took a few trips out to see some new homes being built on the western edge of Milton Keynes.  The development is called Oxley Woods.

The houses are eco-friendly homes perhaps best described as ’semi pre-fab’ that use a number of technologies combined to provide environmentally friendly, efficient homes.  The designs are quite challenging due to the fabrication methods used, but the interiors are fairly conventional, and the street layout uses more traditional concepts of creating a social environment that encourages interaction between residence. Rather than the much more common approach in the area of cramming as many houses into as small a place as possible. Forget about people, gardens and car parking.

Oxley Wood

We had a good look around the infant housing estate and the show homes provided by builder George Wimpey and came away generally impressed. It’s a shame that more places cant be built like this. Not only did they look different and interesting, but the properties also did a great job of feeling homely, spacious and open on the inside.

However, when you consider what we hope to achieve with our self build, as tempting as these were to buy into, especially considering the various special rates and incentives we’ve been mailed from time to time since our visit, they’re just ‘not quite right’. That I suppose is the joy of the ideal of self build. Sure we can maybe steal some ideas and get some inspiration from what architects Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners have achieved together with Wimpey, but it doesn’t mean we have to buy into it lock, stock and barrel.

Plenty of photos can be seen on my Flickr pages.

Has it really been so long?

Published
by
Paul
on November 29, 2007
in General Musing
. 0 Comments

Crikey, a serious lack of updates to the blog! Here we are towards the end of November and nothing new since June. So what’s been going on? Well, the situation and plans have changed, but things are still shuffling around and slowly moving forward.We’re probably looking at something of a two year plan with the self build.

With a baby due in January, we’re pretty preoccupied as it is and trying to organise and manage anything on a tight schedule will be pretty much impossible with us sharing working and baby duties. You can only juggle so many things before they all fall to the floor, so we’ve been very mindful of that in our thinking of late!We figure that in a couple of years we will be more stable, the baby will be a toddler (so we can give them a hard hat and tell them to muck in I suppose!) and we’ll be in a better financial position as well. In an ideal world anyway!

This new, more relaxed schedule also gives us some breathing space and time to really focus on the design stage and planning of the entire plot, both our new place and the updating of the present building to make it all one scheme that is as thoughtfully planned and executed as possible. It will also hopefully be the case that some of the ideas and technologies we would hope to use, especially those regarding energy efficiency and sustainability, will be more widely used, builders and fitters will be more confident, and with any luck they will be more affordable too! Of course, it also provides many chances for us to dither and change our minds, so we need to stay focused.

In the New Year, probably after the baby has arrived, we hope to spend more time talking with the architects and getting our plan closer to reality, or at least into 3D models we can play with. We can move on with things like the site survey and more detailed design stages. But before we do, we also need to take more time looking through our favourite books and websites and really trying to nail the feel of the building and the surrounding environment we wish to achieve.

There is one down side to the new plan, and that is we’re having to spend more money on our current place than we wanted, fitting a new (cheap!) bathroom, while other fixtures, fittings and appliances that we thought would just about make it through a twelve to eighteen month build schedule are giving up sooner than we figured. But such is life, and in terms of anything that isn’t nailed down or plumbed in, we’re already looking forward to the new house and thinking about what could look good in our imaginary bedroom, kitchen, living room and so on.The other plan is to use this blog more again, to help me track and store ideas and inspirations as much as to vent and grumble as time goes on! We’ll see…