O
ne of the most intimidating aspects
of buying a plot of land and building
your own house is worrying that you
won’t like it when the last piece of the jigsaw
finally falls into place, and you move in.
This wasn’t a problem for David and
Deanna Martin, who now live in a striking
self-build contemporary home in Emneth, near
Wisbech, Norfolk.
Realising their dream to have a sustainable
and stylish place to enjoy their retirement
together started when they bought a 1,200 m^2
plot of land next door to their existing home
in 2004.
However, they took a number of years to
carefully consider their first self-build project
before embarking on it in earnest in August
2014, moving in February 2016.
“Our previous house was a Georgian
farmhouse,” explains former primary school
teacher Deanna. “It was lovely, with lots of
period features, but it was costing a lot to
maintain and to keep warm.”
“And the floors creaked!” says David, who
worked as an agricultural consultant and is a
keen gardener. “One of the first things we
noticed about our new house was that the floors
didn’t creak at all.”
The Martins had found themselves spending
more and more time living in the conservatory at
the back of their house and began to imagine
what it might be like to have a home which
opened up directly at the back to a garden.They also enjoyed the natural light the
conservatory brought in, and this began to
inform their ideas of how they might want a new
home to look. Also, they wanted to embrace
the flexibility of integrated open-plan living
rather than working around a series of smallish,
unconnected period-style rooms as they
currently were doing.
“We were living in a house with 12 individual
rooms and using just one or two,” says David.
“Now we’re living in a house with six rooms and
using all them all.”
Their new home has three bedrooms, plus aSEASIDE FEEL
The house is located 12 miles
from the coast, so David and
Deanna liked the idea of a New
England-style cladded exteriorLOW POINT
“What we most
de&nitely weren’t
interested in was
building a boring
box. We were
looking for perhaps
what you might call
a non-conventional
architect”
“When we ordered the
triple-glazed windows
and all the first-floor
windows came back from
the manufacturers 400
mm too small. The
company took
responsibility for the
matter and replaced
them all, but it set us
back six months in the
middle of the build.”
–David Martinseptember/october 2019 http://www.sbhonline.co.uk 61I