Church Farm House,

Without question, this was my favourite development of all time.  It took longer than it should have and it cost more too, however, the end result was fantastic and I still regularly pass through the village to gaze at our achievements.

This was a very old farm house, the original being constructed of cobble with more recent extensions in stone and later still in brick.  The house needed completely stripping back to the bare bones and our plans involved joining the house onto the neighbouring barn, the former milking parlour.

The kitchen was partially buried by earth around the outside gable end wall which was not an ideal situation. Internally we wanted to open up the kitchen and so this had to be carefully dug out.

Having cleared the house out in the first instance, we set about stripping the roof which we quickly replaced with a new waterproof breathable membrane, tile lathes, Spanish blue slates, artstone ridges and new lead to all valleys and chimneys.  One chimney had to be completely rebuilt and the second repointed.  With the scaffolding in place, it was important to complete the facias and gutters and we also hacked-out and re-pointed all elevations with the exception of the front which was rendered.  The front elevations were pebble-dash rendered and so this was chiselled off to expose the brickwork behind.  Unfortunately the removal process left the bricks looking poor and so we re-rendered with a new cement render.

The kitchen needed to be opened up and to achieve this we had to demolish internal walls.  The walls were load bearing and so the floor above had to be replaced too.  The kitchen floor was on two levels which meant digging out and once this was done we discovered that the foundations were exposed and above the height of the new floor.  This meant that unfortunately we had to underpin!  A laborious task and slow to achieve.

We moved through to the parlour and having taken the roof off we looked to prepare the walls for building up on one side to make the roof pitch even on both sides.  The building had still more surprise for us because the cobbles were all loose and could not be saved through simply re-pointing.  Layer upon layer of cobbles were removed until there was barely anything left of the building.  The decision had to be made whether to keep what was left or simply start afresh.  We retained the two remaining corners, all 2m of them!

The parlour was re-built with an insulated cavity of internal blockwork and faced cobbles on the outside.  A new floor was installed to make a first floor and of course a new roof constructed with a huge steel ridge beam spanning the whole length of the building.  The planners made us cover this roof in pantiles despite my endeavours to match the house with blue slate.  Having given the roof stone copings up the gable ends this didn’t matter.  It was still a beautiful building!

We needed to link the two buildings but to do this and to create the lovely open kitchen we had to create a huge opening.  It required three steel beams to support the width of the walls above and lots of acrow props to get them in.  With the opening created we were able to pour the new concrete slab through the barn and kitchen.  The link was constructed with blockwork around the large bifolding door openings and the roof was constructed with timber around the lantern opening and fibreglassed. Cedar cladding was applied to the outside of this Bespoke link-Building and stone copings finished off the parapet walls.

Floor insulation was laid over the new slab (100mm) and then underfloor heating pipes were fixed in place.  We chose a gypsum screed to create the floor base and seal-in the heating pipes.  Due to the time of year (December), although the screed had set overnight, we were aware that a low moisture reading was crucial to our ability to tile.  We tested regularly for moisture but the floor simply refused to dry out.  We installed heaters and dehumidifiers to try and speed this process up but in the end we waited 6 weeks before feeling confident enough to start tiling.  This caused a delay with the kitchen installation.

The rest of the house (at ground level only) comprising the halls and two front reception rooms were installed with an overlay ground floor heating system.  This system worked alongside the others including traditional radiators at first floor levels, via manifolds off the oil boiler which created individual zones throughout the house.

Damp proofing works of different kinds were installed in all walls that were not new and unfortunately this comprised the majority.  The brick walls around the front of the house were given an injection DPC.  This method would have been useless in the 500mm thick cobble walls so instead these were painted with a damp-proof slurry and in some cases, drylined too.

The house was fully insulated with 35mm insulated plasterboard on the outer walls where there was no insulated cavity.  The old house roof timbers were spray treated for woodworm and fungus and thereafter 200mm of quilted insulation was laid in the loft.  The barn roof was a warm roof and so 100mm rigid insulation was fitted between the rafters and 35mm insulated plasterboard was placed below.

The house was fitted with new double glazed sash windows throughout and two new aluminium bifolding doors were installed in the kitchen link.

A new kitchen with marble worktops, three new bathrooms including a wet room were fitted along with a downstairs wc.  The original 4 panel pine doors were dipped and stripped and fully refurbished with wax finish.  Three wood burning stoves were installed and a new oil fired boiler.  The house was fully rewired and downlights were installed in most rooms..

Externally we had a great deal of work to complete too!

Bespoke Buildings,
Chapel Hill Cottage,
Thornborough,
Bedale,
DL8 2RF

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