Transforming the Barn: The Approved Plans
3D renders of the plans, architectural drawings and all the gossip that I haven’t been able to talk about until now.
Welcome to HOME & HORT. The place where we talk about home and garden renovation and design, with a little bit of life, love and funny things thrown in for good measure. In the coming months and years you’ll have a front row seat on the barn and garden transformation. I’m also reporting from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show next week. If you've found your way over by some miracle but are not yet subscribed, let me help you with that. Come and join us.
I can’t believe how long planning permission takes in England these days. From our first meeting with our architects Helyer Davies (we worked with them previously on the deckhouse project) to finally getting the green light from the District Council it has now been nine months. The plans were first submitted in early October of last year. We have all been busy beavering away in the background dealing with pre-planning applications, site visits, conservation officers, bat surveys, ecological surveys, you name it. The astonishing thing is we aren’t actually extending the footprint of the building by one centimetre!
I haven’t really been able to update you since we had the amazing magic switchable glass installed last year, which was stage one of the internal alterations. Planning is very stressful and expensive. The last thing I wanted to do was jinx or jeopardise anything by writing about it here, so forgive me for keeping it quiet until now. Even then, the major information and plans in this post will be behind the paywall to ensure it’s not available to all and sundry on the internet. Got to be so careful.
In the scheme of things though, nine months isn’t actually that bad. If you remember our weatherboard home in Surrey: from starting the planning process to laying the first brick took three years. We ended up taking it to appeal (and won), which is the most stressful thing I have ever had to go through. The problem is, that even though there are very many planning rules and policies in this country, a lot of it is subjective and a matter of opinion. Get the wrong case officer and your hopes and dreams can be cast adrift to the forgotten winds of time. I’ll talk more about that later on in this post.
Today I’m going to be sharing external 3D renders of how the barn will look, plus the architect’s drawings. The internal layout is still being discussed and that will be for a later post. I’ll be telling you all the gossip, everything that has happened up until this point and what we will be doing next in order to forge ahead with the project.
You’re all going to get the chance of a front row seat on this renovation over the next year or so. I’ll be sharing everything, the good, the bad and the downright ugly. I’ll be giving mini DIY and garden tutorials whenever I do work on the barn or the garden myself. This will be the most in-depth account of a renovation/restoration I have ever done and in so much more detail than you will ever get on Instagram.
Right, let’s get down to business.
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