You know when you start to build a house that a few things are bound to go
wrong. They always do. Something won’t fit, something big will get broken, a
vital delivery won’t happen, or there will be leaks and cracks. The
important thing is to rise above the worries and plough on regardless. Some
are better equipped to handle the stress than others. Which is why I regard
Ian and Susan Vance, owners of a remarkably good new house in northwest
Essex, with huge admiration. Because they had all that – and a great deal
more.
Apart from the familiar stuff (giant, hugely expensive double-glazed sliding
windows dropped spectacularly from a height, Chinese granite lost in
typhoons – the usual), the Vances had to contend with everyone’s worst
nightmare: with the house half-built, their building contractor went bust,
owing a lot of money to suppliers ... who duly turned up demanding their
goods back.
The Vances scarcely turned a hair. This house was – is – their semi-retirement
project. He’s 60 and a telecommunications consultant who used to be chief
engineer of the Nortel company. She’s 58 and a former teacher. The house was
a project they’d been wanting to do for years, and finally – with their
three children, Tim, 30, Caroline, 28, and Jane, 22, grown up – it was time
to do it. No contractor? No problem. They sat down and decided to manage the
whole thing themselves.
The Vances are determined people. Susan knew quite a bit about building,
having come from a family in the trade. She even knew how to lay bricks,
though that didn’t prove necessary. Chasing up tradesmen became her thing.
Ian understood technical drawings and was a dab hand at specifying
equipment. They had an excellent architect, David Mikhail, whom they had
selected in a competition. In short order, they directly reemployed the best
men from the collapsed company, local businesses rallied round, and in two
weeks the project was back on track. It helped that they lived next door.
It’s a foggy winter morning when I turn up at the house, but even through the
gloom there’s no missing it. Just beyond the brick-and-tile 1930s house
where they had previously lived, up on a hilltop overlooking rolling fields,
the building emerges as an intriguing composition in glimmering white. It
appears to hover over the landscape, tethered to a huge freestanding
chimney.
Half of the ground floor consists of enormous floor-to-ceiling glass panels,
but at key points it sits on sections of lime-rendered wall that continue
out into the landscape to make a sheltered, enclosed courtyard garden. This
helps to keep out traffic noise from the nearby M11 motorway. In all, the
Vances have nearly two acres of land and are busy creating a sequence of
different gardens, from smooth lawn via herbaceous border to woodland glade,
plus a seriously large vegetable patch and even a south-facing vinery for
growing dessert grapes.
This is a five-bedroom house with a variety of living and dining rooms, a
study for each of the pair, and a semidetached workshop (Ian is an
accomplished ceramicist) with its own small living space. Broadly L-shaped,
it’s an ambitious project: Vance won’t be drawn on the money involved, but
this is the kind of house that could cost at least three-quarters of a
million – probably less in this case, as they project-managed it themselves.
“But it’s not enormous,” says Susan. “We didn’t want somewhere ostentatious.”
And yes, they used to live in the house next door. They’d always wanted to
build somewhere new – Ian pulls out an architectural magazine from the 1970s
that he found in a library at the age of 24 to demonstrate just how long
he’s nurtured this particular ambition. And finally, after they’d done the
usual business of touring various unsatisfactory plots of building land,
their next-door friends and neighbours on the edge of the village announced
they were selling up and moving somewhere smaller. Negotiations commenced,
the house was bought and a further patch of land acquired from the farmer
beyond.
They like a project: having done various extensions down the years at their
old place, they had, Susan says, “run out of things to do”. So they gave
themselves a very big thing to do, paying for the building work by selling
their old house and buying the plot from savings.
Although this is a classic case of buying a house in order to demolish it –
pretty much the only way to build a new one-off home in protected parts of
the countryside these days – it was far from replacing like with like. The
old house had been very close to its neighbour, and the Vances wanted to
place the new one farther away – hence the extra land. Mikhail’s design
helped them, Ian says, because he was the architect who best understood that
the landscape was as important to them as the house.
Everything was done rigorously: the Vances considered several architects and
ran a competition in which they paid three to submit ideas. Mikhail won,
with what turned out to be the first all-new house he had ever
done.Previously, he was known for imaginative conversions and extensions.
The Vances knew exactly what they wanted the house to contain and to do –
opening up to the gardens was a key requirement, but it also had to have
plenty of room for visiting family. And although the couple were in their
fifties when planning it, they had the future in mind. “We asked for a
ground-floor bedroom – in case we reach a point where we can’t get up the
stairs,” Ian says.
I hope that day is far off, because these are fine stairs: floating oak treads
with a glass balustrade, leading up to a sequence of bedroom suites, and
Susan’s study, with beautiful views across this pastoral corner of England.
So, for now, the ground-floor bedroom is a guest suite, while the
first-floor master bedroom is placed at the end of the south wing,
commanding the garden that is all-important to them.
There is also a single-floor section (containing utility room, garage and
Ian’s workshop) with a lush, colourful, sedum roof – not only a nice green
touch but also great to look down on from the first-floor landing. The walls
and roof (concealed behind angled parapets) are heavily insulated, and the
black granite floors downstairs are designed to absorb warmth from the sun
on winter days, and they work. On the freezing day I visit, the house is
nicely warm, yet the oil-fired underfloor heating is turned off – because it
was sunny the day before. “It stays at a pretty constant 22C,” says Ian.
With much of the ground floor open plan, the Vances – serious music lovers –
wanted a special private room to indulge their passion. It had to be
acoustically excellent, with no echo. Mikhail designed this as a separate,
slightly sunken living room on the northeast corner of the house, angling
the walls and ceiling to minimise sound reflections.
It’s an intimate space that nonetheless opens up views to the gardens and
landscape beyond. And it has a log fire in the corner, which explains the
presence of that mysterious chimney stack outside (which also has a barbecue
built into it on the garden side). Yes, the chimney could have been built
into the side of the house, but pulled a few feet away as a freestanding
campanile, it adds to the character of the place.
After all the problems – which included their joiners’ workshop being burnt to
the ground one Easter, and trying to make ecofriendly limestone-rendered
walls during a heat wave, when they needed to be kept damp for a fortnight
to set properly – the thing was done. “Whatever they do, they do well,” says
Mikhail. “They told the planners they wanted a new house that would be a
21st-century listed building. And the planners loved it.”
Just as well, given how long Ian Vance has wanted to build this house. This was
a slow-burn ambition that just had to happen. He has even bought the same
classic American chairs – still available – he saw in that architectural
magazine all those years ago. So, you want to build your own house? Be very,
very patient.
www.davidmikhail.com
