“Every day we see a new change on site”
Greg and Anni Le Tocq are self-building their ultimate oak frame family home outside Bristol
Afew years ago we bought a house in Devon that featured lots of exposed wood and glass. We really enjoyed living with so much light, so much so that when we moved to Somerset our house just felt dark in comparison.we began looking for something similar, but before long we had started thinking about building our own home. From there things moved very quickly and our land agent found a plot in 10 days!
DESIGN WISH-LIST
Oak frame houses are a dream for us, so we visited an Oakwrights’ open day; the company felt like it was a really natural fit. We then started working with planning consultants to understand what we could get planning permission for. Luckily the plot had a house and five outbuildings on it so we had lots of scope as the local planning policy for greenfield plot states you can increase the gross internal footprint by 50%.We had a lot of fun and games with the ecologists and bat surveys and what was going to be an office above a garage is now a bat ‘hotel’ — they have some of the nicest accommodation in the area.
In terms of the actual style of the house, we took three designs we really loved to Oakwrights, but what really interests me is that they were eager to know what our wish-list was so they could use that as a starting point. It’s a question that starts you thinking about the houses you have lived in, what you like and what you miss about those spaces, and suddenly your favourite memories magically turn into a floorplan.
NEW HOUSE, OLD CHARACTER
It’s amazing how the build is progressing — the oak frame went up about two months ago and the encapsulation system and roof are now both done. We can now walk through the house and it just works perfectly. That’s what we like about the whole process — it’s so exciting to see how quickly everything is coming together. Every day we see a new change on site.
The beauty of building an oak frame house is that although it’s brand new, it feels so much older and you can put a lot of character in it.we went down to the Oakwrights’ workshop and saw the process from logs becoming beams right through to the carpenters putting the finishing touches on the oak that will hopefully stand on the plot for a lot longer than we will be there.