Things that have really worked for us...

We’re nearly ready to move in now, maybe a week or so. I can’t believe how beautiful the house is, at least to me. I’ve been thinking about all the things we’ve done and especially the things that have really worked for us.

Trust. We’ve chosen to work with people we trust. Because they’re friends, or they’ve been recommended. Hardly anyone has let us down, and if things didn’t go quite right, they were there to make it right.

Courage. We’ve never done anything like this before, and we’ve been extremely brave to do things that aren’t the normal way, and now we can see the pay off.

Simplicity. We’ve gone for a sort of minimalism, which I like to call simplicity. Some things may be considered traditional, others modern, but for me, it’s simplicity. We’ve used a small palette of materials throughout the house, and it pulls everything together.

Just in time design. You can never really decide that something is right until you can see it, and that’s quite hard when building a house as it’s very sequential, but we’ve tried to be flexible and been ok with deciding things just as we need to, and this has worked really well for us.

The temperature inside the house is great, and that was something we really worried about. We thought we’d have to put up loads of blinds to keep the south facing sun out, but because of the concrete acting as a thermal mass, and the Guardian glass, the temperature is really cool.

We’ve used local craftsmen, and they’ve become part of the team and we’re always asking them, “if this was your house, what would you do?” - and these people show so much pride in their work, our house is their CV.

We’ve used local suppliers, and they’ve been great, and really understanding when we’ve been waiting for a mortgage payment. I’ve got to say that Spinks have been outstanding in their service, competitiveness, helpfulness and understanding. We got everything from our bricks, underfloor heating system and our beautiful bathrooms from them. They have been immense.

Finally, we can’t start to explain how overwhelmingly great the encouragement and complements are that we get from our community in Thorne. It’s so nice, it really is. Thank you.