CLOSER LOOK: SHELL BUILD ALLOWS FOR A HANDS-ON APPROACH

When Richard and Chrissie Baker came across a 30m2 garden plot on the Isle of Man, complete with in-principal planning permission, they moved quickly to discuss their ideas for a contemporary home with the local council before buying the plot. Richard developed the initial design himself, using 3D software, before sending the drawings through to timber frame home builder Potton, for a feasibility study and to get a price for a supply-anderect package.“thank goodness we did,” he says. “The company’s technician identified a mistake with the position of the steel beams in the basement. He saved the day for us by designing an additional laminated timber beam into the main frame.” In fact, Potton turned all of the couple’s concepts into the required planning drawings and detailed sections for Building Regulations approval. “Their price was a fraction of what we would have had to pay an architect, so it got the project off to a really good start,” says Richard.

Digging out the site and building the foundations and basement on this sloping site took around four months to complete, at which point the couple were ready to take delivery of the timber frame package. Access was pretty tight, so Potton supplied the kit on eight rigid lorries, which meant the erection team was kept pretty busy unloading materials. Despite this, the shell of the Bakers’ 285m2 home (100m2 of which is the basement) went up in just six days – at which point Richard and Chrissie took over most of the remaining works themselves, turning their hands to just about everything on their four-year self build journey.