Extending a family home

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After moving to a three-bedroom house in their ideal location, the Wilsons realised they needed more space, so they enlisted the help of a local architect to transform the property.

Renfrewshire, to the south-west of Glasgow, is popular with commuters who work in the city but prefer a less urban lifestyle. ‘I grew up in this village and always liked the look of this particular house,’ says Scott Wilson of his home in the area. ‘I was attracted by the character; it’s a bit different from everything else we looked at, being an older property. So when I saw it advertised for sale in the local paper, I decided to take a look.’

Kirsty and Scott were living five miles away in the next town and had been planning to move to a newbuild when seeing the 1960s house for sale gave Scott an immediate change of heart: ‘I didn’t really like the idea of living in a boxy new house in a row of identical properties, but Kirsty hadn’t been convinced about taking on the maintenance of an older place. The next day, I phoned up the estate agent and asked for the details. By the time we’d agreed to view it, I’d decided not to say a word. And my plan worked – Kirsty fell in love with the house without any encouragement from me.’

When the couple moved into their new home back in 2002, they didn’t have any children and the three-bedroom house felt lovely and spacious, with a large sitting room leading into a conservatory, a separate dining room onto the kitchen and a useful study on the ground floor. They redecorated throughout, laid hardwood flooring and replaced the kitchen, but after three years, they felt ready to take on a far more ambitious project.

‘We love having the dining room at the centre of the house and it’s great for entertaining – so people thought we were mad when we talked about building an extension,’ says Scott, ‘but with their sloped ceilings, two of the bedrooms were actually more like boxrooms. And when our daughters started to grow, we felt that the house was quite disproportionate and we needed more space upstairs.’

The couple approached a local architect, Donald Maclean, and immediately discovered that they were all on the same wavelength. ‘We didn’t want new bedrooms for the children on the ground floor, which meant we’d need a twostorey extension,’ says Kirsty. ‘Externally, the new part of the house needed to tie in with the old, but inside we wanted more than just an ordinary square space. Donald came up with some really exciting ideas and, when he mentioned the idea of a glass bridge to bring light into the centre of the house, we were both totally convinced that we wanted to go ahead.’

Completing the new extension proved relatively straightforward in terms of planning and construction, despite its size, with Donald taking on the role of project-manager. ‘We stayed in the house during the build, which took around five months,’ Kirsty continues. ‘At one point, we were all more or less living in a single bedroom. The whole family then came down with a respiratory virus – which wasn’t ideal on a building site! Our builders were great, though, and when the glass bridge was finally installed, that was a real highlight.’

Fitting the glass floor was the most challenging part of the entire project. When the glazing was delivered and manoeuvred into position – which took ten men – the Wilsons had a nasty surprise: the glass had been coated in an unattractive anti-slip finish, which they hadn’t specified. ‘We’d been living without a landing for five months, with this big gap in the middle of the house – so it was tempting just to accept the glass as it was,’ Scott recalls. ‘In the end, though, we had to admit that the polka-dot effect on the surface looked terrible and so we asked the men to take it away again. Then, the following week, the glazing company went bust and so wasn’t able to provide a replacement. We were left with the huge hole in the ceiling and no idea what to do next. It was just an absolute disaster.’

Luckily, alternative access to the two new bedrooms was possible via an interlinking door. But the void in the landing floor remained blocked off for safety reasons until another company could be found. ‘In hindsight, we shouldn’t have gone with the first glass company that told us they could make the bridge. By the end, Kirsty had been calling them virtually in tears because we wanted to get the house finished in time for Christmas – but it didn’t make any difference,’ says Scott. ‘Luckily, the team at the second company, Gray & Dick, made up for it with their efficiency. They really saved the day.’

Above the glazed landing space, a group of six roof windows drops light down into the heart of the house, creating an atrium effect and illuminating both the old dining room and the new family room on the ground floor of the extension. ‘Though it’s obviously safe, my mother refuses to walk on the glass floor of the landing,’ laughs Scott, ‘but little Freya has no problem at all. She likes to lie up there and watch television down through it. Even Maia crawled straight across. It’s very strange at night, though, because you do feel as though you’re about to walk into thin air.’

The Wilsons now have the best of both worlds: a home of character, with unusual, contemporary interiors designed to suit their lifestyle. Freya and Maia have spacious first-floor bedrooms in the new extension, linked to the existing house via the glass bridge. The master bedroom benefits from a new en suite bathroom. Almost triangular and fitted with a spacious walk-in shower, it has been created using some of the space from one of the boxrooms. The fourth bedroom is now used for guests.

Downstairs, a family room and playroom have been created in the extension, while the remaining layout remains virtually unchanged. ‘The girls love their new playroom and we all spend time together in the family room, where we’ve put a plasma TV on the wall. The room looks out onto the garden through glass doors,’ says Kirsty.

In some ways, the extension has been designed as a children’s wing – but it was the freeing up of the old first-floor boxroom that allowed for the couple’s adult sanctuary, their en suite, as well as forming part of the widened, irregular-shaped landing. ‘This area was a dark, narrow corridor. Now, with the glass bridge and balustrades, it’s become the main feature of the house,’ explains Scott. ‘At £6,500, the bridge took quite a chunk of our budget, but for that we gained light, space and a fantastic feature; it was worth every penny.

‘My advice to anyone thinking about starting their own project is that it’s sometimes best just to take the plunge,’ he adds. ‘We mulled over the idea for ages before finally contacting our architect, but it’s been worth it in every way.’ Kirsty agrees: ‘It’s not simply about adding value – though on paper we’ve made a substantial profit – it’s about your quality of life as a family.’

WORDS DEBBIE JEFFERY PHOTOGRAPHY NIGEL RIGDEN
Featured in the May 2009 issue of Real Homes