REAL PROJECT SUBURBAN RENOVATION
To help create a home that reflected their love of wood, Tristian and Liz Thornhill chose their materials with care and consideration
After setting their sights on a bigger house, Tristian and Liz Thornhill were forced into a rethink when they realised the kind of period property they had in mind was out of their price range. “So the next best thing was to go for a cheaper home that we could enlarge and add character to,” says Tristian.
“We set about finding a special architect while in the process of buying a semi-derelict 1940s semi, who could lift the house out of the ordinary and design a whole-house renovation, centred around a rear extension and loft conversion,” continues Tristian. As a result of Liz spending many hours searching on the internet, they found Woodrow Vizor Architects and after meeting with one of the firm’s partners, George Woodrow, they loved the plans he came up with, which perfectly met the brief for ‘clean lines, natural materials and a strong connection with the outdoors’. In many ways, however, that was the easy part.
“Our house is in a conservation area and the planning officer seemed determined to tighten the rules beyond what had previously been allowed,” says Tristian. “Our road is a mix of beautiful Edwardian properties and post-war semis. You’d think some improvement to the aesthetic appearance of our house might be welcomed by the council, but it wasn’t. We had to amend our design substantially to remove timber cladding to the porch, change the colour of the window frames, reduce the dormers in the loft and change the roofline of the dormer.”
CONSTRUCTION BEGINS
With the couple and their young son Phineas having moved out and into rented for four months, the reconstruction finally got underway. Tristian freely admits it was ascary time —Covid was playing havoc with the building trade and there were contractors going bust at arapid rate, so the couple could only hope they had chosen wisely on the builder front which, luckily, they had. “Knowing how much we’d invested in this place, yet seeing it with no roof, no first-floor ceiling and with the back of the house demolished, made us feel very vulnerable,” he says.
With George overseeing the build on a week
