Our third planning application – and the Homebuilding and Renovation Show

Another week, another small step forward. Our third planning application (for our listed cottage) has been close to ready for a few weeks now, and this week our architects finally received all the necessary supporting paperwork and were able to submit it! This is a really important application for us, as it demonstrates our intention to restore the 400 year old building to the council. While we don’t plan to start it for a few years, having planning permission will enable us to do some remedial repairs to protect the building (the back lean-to is badly collapsing and was condemned by our conservation surveyor); as well as getting the groundworks done for the whole site at once, instead of starting with the barns only and leaving disruptive work until a point in future when we [hopefully!] have paying guests.  

Our ‘listed cottage’ is actually the remaining part of the original farmhouse. It still contains a lot of original features including the staircase, window panes and a large inglenook fireplace downstairs. Our architects have included lots of photos with our application to reinforce the importance of the restoration work to the council, and we’re super-excited by their final proposal. As the cottage is connected to the current farmhouse with a covered terrace, our current thinking is to turn it into a spacious honeymoon-style cottage to be rented along with the main farmhouse for special occasions. It’ll all depend on the customers we’re able to attract with our first buildings of course, as we may find a different setup that works better with our customers’ needs in future. We’ll need to give some proper thought to this though, as it could detrimentally impact our earning potential. 

The other exciting part of our week was going to the Homebuilding and Renovating Show at the NEC. A couple of weeks ago we’d visited a lovely couple to see their air source heat pump, and they gave us lots of useful building advice including a recommendation to visit different home shows to get inspiration. It felt like fate when we found this so soon after we’d heard this – and we’re so glad we went as we learnt a lot about build elements we’d not even considered yet, like lighting, flooring and sewage solutions. It also allowed us to see different options for various elements in one place, saving us a number of trips to different showrooms to investigate! 

With lighter evenings and Spring definitely on us, we’re so pleased to see the fruits of our Autumn graft. The daffodils that we planted along the edge of our wooded area have started to come up and look so colourful! There are still plenty to come – as well as the tulips, irises and other bulbs we planted – but it’s lovely to see a sea of colour where last year we only had weeds. It helps to keep us motivated with the longer jobs where it takes a while to see the rewards!