Best laid plans
Steve and Janine Carney set out to build an oak frame home for themselves, but an objection from the planners – and a change of heart – turned the project into a sizeable annexe for Janine’s parents instead
After having their original design for a self build in their garden refused, Janine and Steve Carney created a sizeable oak frame annexe for Janine’s parents instead
At first glance, you could mistake this fine oak frame building for a handsome individual house attached to the Victorian property next door. In reality, it’s a substantial annexe, evolved from a concept for a completely separate dwelling. “e planners refused our application to build an oak frame house in our garden, but allowed us to develop a self-contained annexe attached to our home,” explains Steve Carney. “e design is pretty much the same, but it’s crazy as the annexe is 433m2 and nearly twice the size of our original plans.”
Steve and his wife, Janine, live here with their children, Bobbie, 13 and Charlie, 25 (Jack, 26, and Jamie, 31, work in the yachting industry and return here when they’re not sailing). e couple decided to embark on a self build journey after years of renovating houses, both here in the UK and in Normandy, France, where Steve’s parents live. Many of the projects involved working with traditional oak framing, including their own holiday home.
“Our holiday house is a stone build, with lovely exposed oak beams,” says Steve. “We spent a long time restoring it to how it had been and really enjoyed the work. So when we decided to self build, the house was only ever going to be constructed with oak.”
e couple lived in an 1890s Victorian house in West Kirby, with a large one-acre garden. Steve had his eye on a rocky sandstone outcrop next to their property, which was too harsh to grow anything on. “It was such a waste of space,” he says. “At the beginning, the plan was to build a new home on this site and sell our existing house.”
Steve, who runs a decorating business, sketched out a design for an oak frame property, back in 2015. e goal was for the new dwelling to look as though it had always been there, using materials that blended in with the brick, sandstone and timber of their Victorian home. “We liked the vaulted ceilings of our French holiday property, but we were mindful that old buildings get cold and damp in winter,” says Steve. “We wanted to replicate the look, but have all the latest technology so the house felt comfortable all year round.”
Plot twists
e couple visited a few self build exhibitions for inspiration, then their joiner friend, Roy Corker – who the couple had brought over to France to work on their renovation projects – introduced Steve to Welsh Oak Frame. Roy had been employed on one of their projects and had worked with posts and beams first-hand.
“Roy said the house was a modern version of the old French properties,” says Steve. “I went to have a look and was very impressed with Welsh Oak Frame’s workmanship. Later, Janine and I met with company owner, Paul Edmunds and one of the design directors. We saw their workshop in Wales and were confident they were the right company to go with.”
Welsh Oak Frame took Steve’s drawings and came up an appealing design, taking heed of the difficulties of building into the rocky outcrop. Steve did some number crunching and had some concerns that they might struggle to afford to build the house. He and Janine also pondered who might move into their current home if they were to sell it. “We’re quite secluded here and we weren’t sure how we’d feel about having such close neighbours, especially if we didn’t know them personally,” he admits.
A surprise turn of events flipped the project on its head. Janine’s parents, Albert and Cathy Mitchell, showed an interest in the new house. When Steve showed them Welsh Oak Frame’s plans, they were so taken by the design that they said this was their dream home. Coming up to retirement, they wanted to split their time between the UK and their house in Spain, and were looking for a property they could safely lock-up and leave. ey suggested to
Steve and Janine that they would be more than happy to fund the build and live in the oak frame house themselves.
“It sounds crazy but Albert and Cathy’s proposal actually worked for us all,” says Steve. “ey didn’t want the hassle of looking after an old house, they’d be near to us and our kids, and we could keep an eye on the property while they were away. For us, we were having
doubts about the finances, and in all honestly, the main driver for me was the challenge of building an oak frame house from scratch, which I’d still be able to do for them.”
Planning & development
Albert and Cathy generously let Steve continue to have a free hand with his design ideas, although he consulted closely with them along the way. “I figured out where everything should go, right down to lighting, kitchen and bathroom layouts,” he says. “I explained everything to them, mindful this wasn’t my home, and we discussed all of the plans. ey were very good to trust my judgement.”
One of his ideas was to install a lift to come up from the garage. “I was thinking ahead to when Albert and Cathy get older,” Steve explains. “ey can get out of the car and into the lift with their shopping, step onto the balcony and walk straight into the kitchen. ey don’t have to use the stairs and are under cover all the way.” Steve had a number of pre-planning conversations to discuss the design before he submitted a formal application in spring 2016. “Planning kept knocking the design back as they felt the oak frame house would dominate the plot and our Victorian home, which went against their guidelines,” Steve explains. “We understood the issues and decided to hire a planning consultant for advice.”
e experts, Matthews & Goodman, deduced the couple would have better luck getting approval if the building became an annexe to their home, rather than a separate dwelling. Steve went back to Welsh Oak Frame, who altered the plans. “Although the building is an annexe, there’s no access to our house,” says Steve. “e link part forms an L-shape with two separate garages on the ground floor and a balcony and a room above. Welsh Oak Frame were great, they paid particular attention to how the roof tied in with our house without
making it dominate. Plus, when I asked them about a particular design feature, like the covered balcony, they’d come back with a solution. Everything was always possible.”
is time, the council’s planning department looked upon the design more favourably. Approval was given in late summer 2016, with the added bonus to have the annexe re-titled as a separate dwelling five years later if they wanted to. Part of the consent meant materials had to match the Carney’s Victorian home, so the couple submitted brick samples for approval and had a special mortar mix made. Steve was also keen for the smaller architectural details to relate. “I designed the entrance of the annexe with arched doors and sandstone blocks to mirror the brick arch of our porch,” he says.
Getting hands-on
Steve wanted to be involved in the scheme as much as possible, and in early 2017 with support from work colleagues, he began projectmanaging and working full time on the build. First up was organising
the works to excavate the rocky outcrop and remove tonnes of sandstone to make a level platform. “Basically, we cut out a big piece of the hill and slotted a house into it,” says Steve. “ere were four massive dumper trucks working five days a week, for four weeks taking the sandstone away, but I had the cost in the budget so it wasn’t unexpected.” e tricky terrain impacted on the structure and construction method of the property, too, which Steve describes as “like building two different houses.”
“Despite the various renovation projects I have worked on in the past, the annexe was something entirely different,” says Steve. “We built a blockwork structure for the base, and then added a skin of engineering brick to all the front elevations for the ground floor. As this level is below ground on three sides, we tanked the blockwork to waterproof it, and there was no second chance to get this right.” e first floor is constructed with a precast beam and block concrete floor and then the oak frame sits on top of this.
In August 2017, the Welsh Oak Frame workshop team spent three weeks erecting the frame, with Steve helping out. When it came to the roof, he applied his decorating expertise and thought ahead to the finish of the ceilings. “Oak naturally shrinks a little over time as it dries, and I didn’t want a perimeter of unpainted plasterboard on the ceiling to reveal itself,” he says. “We painted the inside of all the plaster boards, fixing them to the exposed beams and hiding the joints behind them as we went.”
The perfect finish
By autumn, the house was watertight and Steve began calling in trades he knew through work and sourcing the best deals for building materials. e remainder of the project progressed steadily and the annexe was finished the following October.
Now, eye-catching vaulted ceilings on the first floor welcome all into the main living rooms, echoing the traditional style of the French houses that the couple renovated all those years before – minus the cold and damp. An air source heat pump extracts outside heat to warm the hot water and underfloor heating, while a mechanical ventilation and heat recovery system keeps the house at a comfortable temperature all year round.
Steve’s really proud of how the project has turned out. “We were lucky with planning and Welsh Oak Frame’s design expertise, as the annexe looks pretty much the same as the original house drawings,” he says. “Albert and Cathy are over the moon, they love the open space, the light and the oak, and we’re really pleased for them.”