Bath may be famous for its Georgian architecture, but Tiffany Wood and her husband Jonny have chosen it as the location to build themselves a striking Modernist home, just a mile from the city centre.
Rather than go down the traditional building route, Tiffany and Jonny opted for a German pre-fabricated kit house with great green credentials. Watch the first part of Tiffany's video diary to find out about her vision for the house.
But before they could even think about building their house they had to prepare their site: a fiercely steep hillside. Tiffany and Jonny embarked on the biggest ground works project Grand Designs has ever seen, costing around £300,000. Tiffany talks through the plans and timelines in the second part of her video diary.
And, just when they were about to complete these mammoth works, the weather turned bad and disaster struck. Their neighbour's wall collapsed in a storm. The resulting damage could have cost them nearly £100,000. Watch Tiffany's video diary on the problems with the build.
Determined to carry on, even through 80 tonnes of extra mud, Tiffany and Jonny persevered, and a year into their project, were finally able to go to Germany to choose their house. Every fixture and fitting had to be decided and, once made, no changes were allowed. In her video diary, Tiffany talks about the special day her Tarmac arrived!
Now, with the promise of the house taking only five days to go up on site, and with no possibility of landslides, hopefully their build will now run smoothly...
Budget And Build
Estimated Budget: £1,000,000
Final Budget: £1,000,000+
Tiffany and Jonny funded the build with equity from their own house, plus a very large mortgage. The estimate included land, house and expensive groundworks.
Sited in the centre of historic Bath, the land on which the kit house was built cost £325,000.
The groundworks had a 'worst case' estimate of £300,000, but with all the problems Tiffany and Jonny faced, they ended up costing at least that.
The original estimate of £1,000,000 - split roughly equally across the land, the house and the hole - was probably conservative.
Tiffany and Jonny's part of the hill is sandwiched between Regency and Georgian style properties, but because there have never been any historical buildings on the site, the planners were very supportive of a contemporary build.
First, Jonny and Tiffany carved a huge chunk out of the hill to make a level platform.
They started by forming sixty reinforced concrete piles, each 12 metres deep, that are then connected by a capping beam. Together they formed a gigantic retaining wall buried in the ground. Only then was huge wedge removed, ready to receive the house.
First to arrive was a preformed basement with storage, wine cellar and garage, followed by a super-green carbon positive house factory-built in Germany. Because it was pre-fabricated, it went up in just five days. Watch Tiffany talking about finally being to walk around her house in the fifth part of her video diary.
The complex design of six staggered floors feeds off a central elliptical staircase which provides an interesting, fluid circulation throughout the building.
The large open plan living room has views over Bath and views over an integrated bespoke kitchen that's worth a very expensive German sports car. Tiffany gets the first few bits of her kitchen delivered and can put her first mug away in the sixth part of her video diary.
There's a second lounge and a music room, all with great insulation, not just for its thermal performance, but to eliminate noise.
Five bedrooms and three bathrooms are organised over two further floors. Much of the design - both inside and out - is simple and modernist. In the final part of her video diary, Tiffany prepares for Kevin's visit - what will he think of it all?
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Want to be a self-build guru? Then read on....
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