25 days and counting...
The Riverways rebuild project involves building a new family house for Thea, Jeremy and Emma Butler in a very special Devon village.
We bought Riverways in 2012 and have been living in it since, loving its location but eager to get started with its rebuild. When we bought Riverways we wanted to make a long-term home and we told the neighbours our plans before we even bought the place. We were nervous about how they would take our ideas of rebuilding but they were and continue to be fantastic in their support and open mindedness for which we are very grateful.
This is Riverways mark 1 which we believe was probably built in the late 40s or early 50s and its had a lot of 'bits' nailed on to it since. It has charm in its own special way. When we bought it we it was pretty shabby but we drafted in our parents, scrubbed the floorboards, whitewashed the walls and laughed at the bathrooms and the fantastic retro kitchen. We have had a fantastic time here. It will always occupy a special place in our hearts as it's where we lived when we got married and Thea was even born in the front room in June 2013.
We had been sketching house designs for at least a year before we found Riverways and once we had settled in we got down to the business of redesigning. After a bit of a false start with the wrong Architect in 2012, we did the initial design with Chris Donoghue of CDA who Emma had worked with on the Forum Project at The University of Exeter.
The Riverways rebuild project involves building a new family house for Thea, Jeremy and Emma Butler in a very special Devon village.
We bought Riverways in 2012 and have been living in it since, loving its location but eager to get started with its rebuild. When we bought Riverways we wanted to make a long-term home and we told the neighbours our plans before we even bought the place. We were nervous about how they would take our ideas of rebuilding but they were and continue to be fantastic in their support and open mindedness for which we are very grateful.
This is Riverways mark 1 which we believe was probably built in the late 40s or early 50s and its had a lot of 'bits' nailed on to it since. It has charm in its own special way. When we bought it we it was pretty shabby but we drafted in our parents, scrubbed the floorboards, whitewashed the walls and laughed at the bathrooms and the fantastic retro kitchen. We have had a fantastic time here. It will always occupy a special place in our hearts as it's where we lived when we got married and Thea was even born in the front room in June 2013.
All offers considered?
One of the best things about this place is the view.
We had been sketching house designs for at least a year before we found Riverways and once we had settled in we got down to the business of redesigning. After a bit of a false start with the wrong Architect in 2012, we did the initial design with Chris Donoghue of CDA who Emma had worked with on the Forum Project at The University of Exeter.
As you can see - he's a cool guy!
Chris helped us take our design from inception to Planning submission and we are incredibly grateful to Chris for his hard work and dedication during this time. We dig Chris. This is what he gave us. The sports car in the drive is definitely wishful thinking.
With Chris we submitted our planning application in 2013. We had a number of objections, but one letter of support which really meant a lot to us and gave us some hope. We attended the Parish Council when they considered our application. It wasn't pretty. We were later refused.
While we were waiting for the planning decision we came across the Passivhaus Handbook...
and since the guys behind it were just down the road we started talking to Adam and Jonathan from Passivhaus Homes in Totnes as we explored the idea of building our house as a Passivhaus. This began with modelling the design in the Passivhaus Planning Package and an initial costing for building it as a Passivhaus.
This is Adam
This is Jonathan
After we got the refusal we decided to appeal and submitted our appeal in late 2013. We were successful and got consent for the original design in the summer of 2014.
Once we had won the appeal we moved forward with developing the design with Passivhaus Homes where we have been working closely with Jonathan Willams. It has taken us about 8 months to finalise the detail of the design that Jonathon has done in the main using ArchiCAD his BIM tool. Exported to Sketchup as seen below:
The start date for the project is now scheduled for March 30th 2015 which is when the demolition of the existing bungalow is due to start.
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