We made our PREFAB dream com
Now THAT’S a flatpack... how one family survived life in a cabin, building heartache and a stretched budget to replace a dilapidated bungalow with a glorified Lego set now worth €1.7m
FOR years, they were synonymous with accommodation that placed functionality and financial prudence firmly above style. But the humble prefab — a house manufactured offsite in kit form — is coming back into fashion.
Quick to assemble and often cheaper than bricks and mortar, experts are now suggesting we take inspiration from Sweden, where 84 per cent of new homes are now prefab — compared with 5 per cent here.
So could the unglamorous prefab prove to be the unlikely saviour of our accommodation crisis?
For 14 months, the Mail has followed the fortunes of the Buckland family — Gary, 48, Emma, 46, and sons Josh, 14, and Louis, 12 — as they attempted to turn their long-held dream of building a high-end prefab house into a reality. How have they fared? Hold on to your hard hats . . .
THE PERFECT PLOT . . . WITH A MOULDY PROBLEM
UNLIKE most people, Emma has long known prefab houses don’t have to be functional affairs, having grown up in one. In 1979, her parents were one of the first families to buy a prefab home from Scandinavian company Scandia-Hus — which specialises in high-end timber frame prefabs and launched here in the 1970s.
‘I loved the enormous windows, effective insulation and wood everywhere,’ says Emma, a solicitor. ‘I’ve always wanted our family home to be a prefab too.’
The problem was finding a plot on which to build it. When Gary and Emma — who met as neighbours and married in 2003 — found the perfect 0.4-acre plot in a picturesque village in the countryside in July 2016, there was already a 1,000-square-foot decrepit bungalow on it.
‘Our plan was to repair and extend the bungalow,’ says Gary, who owns a book publishing company.
By that Christmas, however, the couple — who paid €710,000 for the property — had changed their minds. ‘We hadn’t realised how bad a condition it was in,’ says Gary. ‘It was damp, mouldy and smelly.’
After commissioning architects the following April, he recalls: ‘Emma asked if their proposals for extra insulation would stop the mould. They said they “couldn’t guarantee it”. We called Scandia-Hus that afternoon.’
In addition to the aesthetics, Emma and Gary were attracted by the lower environmental impact of prefabs — because the frames are built to specific measurements, waste and the number of builders required are reduced. And, while you used to order from a catalogue, you can now design bespoke ones.
By late 2017, they had finalised their designs for a 2,300-squarefoot, two-storey, five-bedroom home.
The basic Scandia-Hus kit — which included the timber frame, windows, insulation, and loadbearing walls — cost €220,000.
The couple allocated a further €330,000 for the rest of the works, including the foundations, other internal walls, electrical and plumbing works and appliances, using a self-build mortgage.
PLANNING APPROVAL WASN’T PLAIN SAILING
AFTER submitting their plans to the council for planning permission, objections were raised. ‘Some neighbours were supportive, but by building a modern house in a historic village we had objections as well,’ says Gary. Even the parish council objected on the grounds of potential ‘light pollution’, meaning the plans had to be discussed at a committee meeting il in December 2018 — a process Gary calls ‘a bit heart in mouth’. Fortunately, all objections were dismissed.
CABIN FEVER IN THEIR TEMPORARY HOME
IN MARCH 2019, Gary spent €33,000 on a tiny, 480-square-foot wooden cabin for the garden — their home until the prefab was finished.
‘We wanted to stay on site for security and to save money,’ he says. With a carpenter’s help, he transferred the bungalow’s bathroom and kitchen into the basic cabin, which ‘just about’ had two bedrooms. ‘We had to saw the end off the boys’ bunk beds to fit them in.’
With no carpets and one minuscule living area, conditions were cosy to say the least. ‘Our youngest son is a Doctor Who obsessive, but not all of us wanted to watch it all the time,’ says Emma. ‘Gary and I couldn’t watch a film of our own because the walls were paper thin.’ Yet at first the overwhelming feeling was excitement. ‘We were close enough to be able to live and breathe the project,’ says Gary.
MUD, GLORIOUS MUD — AND BIG BILLS ROLL IN
IN JUNE 2019, the bungalow was emptied and demolished in three days. Gary admits: ‘It was a strange feeling knocking down a house we’d paid so much money for.’
Meanwhile, the prefab frame was being constructed in ScandiaHus’s factory. It took a month for hundreds of wood panels and steel joists to be cut to measure. ‘It was exciting to guess what panel would go where,’ says Gary — who hoped they would have moved in by this March.
Unfortunately, back on site, the foundations dug that month were deemed unstable by building inspectors on account of a willow tree in the garden.The disappointed couple were told to, literally, dig deeper — a process that took six further weeks and several thousand pounds out of their budget. Gary says: ‘It felt like we’d stumbled at the first hurdle.’
Morale was further challenged by the 300 tonnes of clay excavated for the new 6ft-deep, steel-reinforced foundations. It covered every inch of the garden. The drive was too narrow to accommodate a big lorry, so it took 200 small truckloads to remove the debris. This added an extra €5,500 to the bill.
There were two upsides, however: debris from the bungalow was crushed to fill the new foundations, meaning it was effectively recycled, while the finished foundations comprised a giant concrete slab that was briefly ‘the perfect table tennis arena for the boys’.