What do you do if you want a new house but don't want to move? That was the problem facing Anna and Derek Felton and their family a few years ago. Their solution has been to knock down their old home and cause a new one to rise like a phoenix from its ashes. While this saved them the cost of buying a site, it also meant they had they had no assets to realise towards funding their new home. This led in turn to a creative approach towards sourcing furniture and fittings.
Five years ago Anna bought a large notebook in a pound shop and on page one started a wish list regarding her future home. "It began with a wooden house with wooden floors, under-floor heating, open plan, a big central fire place, more space, I'm not sure if I mentioned the utility room," she says.
At the time the couple, their three grown-up children, two cats and a dog were living in Shankill, Co Dublin in a 40-year old white, flat-roofed bungalow full of character and draughts. The site on fifth of an acre had one remaining wooden cabin built in the 1920's, which formed the oldest part of their home. They had moved there 1978 and loved both house and location, but as the years went on, the accommodation became unsatisfactory.
"The roof was always leaking, the windows wouldn't close properly, we installed central heating in 1984 so we were now losing a lot of expensive heat. It wasn't big enough, we were spending a lot of time living and working together in one large room, and while there were aspects of that we liked, we were bursting out all over, " says Anna. Wife and husband work from home. Derek is a tree farmer, and Anna, works in craft and graphic design.
The crunch came one day when the soggy ceiling fell on their daughter's bed, luckily unoccupied. Estimates to replace the roof began at £12,500 which would still leave the rest of the house untouched. At about this time, Anna saw an ad in a local paper for wooden homes which could be built on existing sites. It was inserted by an Irish builder who had spent many years working in Sweden and was interested in constructing Scandinavian style wooden houses in this country. (He has since moved on to projects new). The cost at £45,000 was very attractive to the Feltons who made contact, and began what was to be a collaborative and satisfactory relationship with their builder.
He co-operated fully with the family in terms of planning and design. She did the drawings herself and they were accepted by Dun Laoghaire Urban Council. This initial planning work took four to five months to completion of plans and a month from submission to granting of planning permission.
Then the real work began. They had to get ready to vacate the house, see it razed to the ground, find somewhere to live in the interim and store the accumulated furniture and possessions of a lifetime. "Do your homework on storage companies, as prices vary and some are much more reasonable than others," says Anna. "We had planned to live in a caravan in the grounds, and put our stuff in storage. We had some property stored in plastic tunnelling. Then we had a fire which destroyed some items. I believe in the cleansing properties of a fire, it got rid of a lot of junk in one fell swoop and made that decision for us."
She believes too in the power of positive thinking in helping to create the reality one wishes to achieve. It seems to work. Just before they planned to move into the caravan, a house in Bray belonging to a relation became vacant, and the family was asked if they would like to move in to caretake it. The timing was perfect and meant that they had a home from home when they needed it. "I would also say that if you are contacting the planning office, builders, trades people, ESB, telephone company, anyone - pick up the phone believing they are on your side and that you are going to get what you want. If you are negative, you are less likely to have things working out," she says.
"The house was knocked on January 18, 1999. The night before we sat down as a family lit some candles, recalled the many happy memories we had in this house and said farewell. At lunchtime the next day we went to the pub for lunch, sat in a window seat and looking out saw the crane and bucket in the sky coming over to begin the demolition. We drank a toast, when we came back things were well under way."
The 1,500 sq ft dormer bungalow is constructed in environmentally friendly Norway spruce. The main structure was up in March, and the house was habitable by September. It has taken another year to source all the furniture and fittings, and the garden still needs to be fully designed and landscaped. The ground floor accommodation comprises hall, a kitchen and living room which runs the whole length of the front of the house, home office, bathroom and utility room. Upstairs there are three bedrooms, one en suite.
The house is floored in Norway spruce, with all internal parana pine doors bought from Buy &Sell magazine. "We got wonderful value, 16 doors for £50," says Anna; "we got a lot of fittings and equipment from Buy &Sell, including the kitchen sink and wall tiles. The open-plan kitchen/dining and sittingroom which overlooks both front and side gardens has pale lemon-coloured walls. Anna has painted the floor cupboards a soft powder blue. The room is lit by large windows which are dressed in bamboo blinds spotted in a charity shop. The area is spacious enough for three easy couches, two are small stylish seats upholstered in buff coloured fabric bought at auction. A third is a striped blue and white three seater.
A jotul wood burning stove, also bought second-hand, set in tiled surround heats the sitting area of the room.
"I became very good at stopping at skips and seeing was there anything there that we could use," says Anna.
The pine staircase is wider than the norm as they hope to build bookshelves along the walls. They roofed the curved ceiling in the stairwell themselves in Scots pine, a professional looking DIY job. The main bedroom has a large walk in wardrobe, and a very good-sized en suite tiled bathroom. The toilet seat is made of midnight blue plastic glass and covered in tiny gold stars. "I know," says Anna, following my fixed gaze, "it cost £60 - I couldn't resist it."
Outside, they have planted some silver birch trees. The new front lawn arrived in one piece straight from the set of a television commercial in which friends were involved.
The house the Feltons built represents very good value for money. The original £45,000 (57,138) for five bedrooms was knocked down to £37,000 (46,980) for four bedrooms. The price also reflected the fact that their builder regarded it as a pilot project undertaken in a spirit of mutual collaboration and learning. They estimate it cost another £10,000-plus (12,697) to demolish the old structure and to refurbish, furnish and re-equip the new dormer bungalow. The result is exactly the house they want in the location they want for a price tag of £50,000 (63,487) - which has to be unique value these days.
"The original house was called Violet Bungalow," says Anna. "We are thinking of renaming this Two Blue Moon House. when you have two full moons in the same month, it heralds good fortune. We had two blue moon months in January and March when the house was being erected; it seemed like a good omen at the time and it is proving so to be."
