Welcome to Stories from Site, the podcast for renovation enthusiasts. I’m Amy Dohnalek and together with my co host Jane Middlehurst, we chat with home renovators about the roller coaster that is renovation.

Amy: In this episode, we chat with Emily about her bold transformation of an eighties bungalow on the Isle of Wight.

What started as a struggle with initial design plans evolved into a complete re-imagining of the home, turning it into a stunning villa style space with two wings.

Emily shares the technical and design challenges she faced. The importance of retrofitting for energy efficiency and the realities of managing a major renovation.

Hi Emily, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you with us.

I wondered if you could start by, talking a bit about your renovation, because it was an unusual project.

Emily: Yeah. So we did, an eighties bungalow. on the Isle of Wight and, it had been very well loved and, and looked after really nicely by the couple who were the only people who’d ever lived in it. But it hadn’t been updated at all. Everything was sort of eighties, including all the carpets.

Amy: Were they jazzy?

Emily: No, they were quite. They were quite sort of muted. Everything was quite beige.

Jane: Okay. we got the vibe.

Emily: I think the main thing, apart from needing to sort out the heating and the electrics and things like that, was it was quite dark. it’s in a lovely, really nice spot with a lovely, wraparound garden and we can see the sea a little bit. and the garden is really, really gorgeous, but a lot of the light just didn’t get into the house.

Emily: There was like a long corridor in the middle of the house that, Was how you access the bedrooms. and yeah, it just made it pretty dark. so we kind of knew we needed to do something radical. we did a complete renovation. Took absolutely everything out. I think maybe it was only three walls that stayed up and everything

Amy: Really.

Jane: Oh

Emily: Yeah, we made five rooms into one big main living area.

Amy: That’s amazing.

Emily: Yeah.

Amy: So how did you go about the process?

Emily: Well, we did a few home notes sessions,

Amy: yes, I remember.

Emily: Which were brilliant actually, because, they really made us realize what we didn’t know. so we found an architect who did A cool design, but unfortunately they weren’t really interested in trying to design anything for our budget. So the design was great, but then when we had it costed up, it was more than double what our budget was.

and when we went back and we were like, oh, this is way too much. Even if we don’t do the loft conversion and we just stick on the ground floor, it’s too much. And she was like, well, you can just phase it. And I was like, well. That’s not really what we wanna do. And she wasn’t really that keen to work differently.

So anyway, So we came back to you guys and you helped us to find somebody else. And so we found another architect, who had a really good concept, he looked at the house and, he just said, look, you have the most space in your house, like in the footprint existing in the center of your house.

So instead of being burdened by the idea that. All your bedrooms should be together in one area. Why don’t we think of your house differently and kind of think of it more like a villa and have two wings of bedrooms, like one either side, and then we could all this sort of generosity of space that you’ve naturally got in the middle of the house.

That could be your living space, your big, open, kind living space that you want.

Jane: We did a few consultations, didn’t we? Because at that moment you were struggling with the price and the design. I think you were just a bit stuck, weren’t you? It’s like, what can we do now? We feel like we’ve gone down this route and we’re having to go backwards.

So I’m just really interested to know how much of that original design stayed and how much changed. ’causeI haven’t heard anything about the project since that point of the new architect coming on board.

Emily: Oh yeah. There was nothing the same.

Jane: Oh wow.

Emily: It was a totally different design.

Jane: Oh, that’s so interesting because you’d have this quite high spec design architect do quite a good layout. When we looked at the plan, it was like. all the windows were in slightly different place than they were,So to be fair to them, maybe they would’ve resolved that later in the process, but it just felt there wasn’t really, maybe they weren’t used to dealing with people with tight budgets, you want to minimize your interventions, right? So that you kind of, dealing with what you have as much as possible.

And then when we spoke to the other architect, he was. much more from a technical background. And so I thought he would just shift the plan a little bit to kind of make sure the windows were aligned with the old windows and things like that. You know, just tweaking.

So did he just, do you a whole new, was it concept again?

Emily: Yeah. because when we got rid of sort of the loft conversion, bit of it, we’re like, okay, that’s obviously way too much to do that in any event. Like even if, like you say, Jane, we made streamline the design better. We, we had to kind of park that. the design that, that first design that had been done.

The kitchen was in the existing location for the kitchen, and it still wasn’t that big. and we do so much hanging out with friends and cooking it just wasn’t as big as we would’ve liked.

It wasn’t as generous, really. and so I think when Nick came to speak to us, he was like, well. you’ve got this really big sitting room and if we got rid of all the rooms here, I mean, it was sort of his first idea, you know, off the cuff. Really? And we were just instantly he said it and we were like, oh, of course.

It was sort of like, oh yeah, why didn’t, and then my husband Lee’s an engineer, so he’s like very mindful Jane, like what you’re saying of all the technical side of stuff. I am, much more optimistic and maybe a bit blase. So I was like, well, so what? The window’s at a different place?

But he is like, yeah, that will be more expensive and if we use the existing openings, and yeah, so, we kept a lot of openings in the same place and we did have to block some things up, but.

it was much more cost effective to do it like that.

Amy: And how is it working this villa idea with the, kind of wings of rooms, who’s in which side, how’s it working?

Emily: Yeah. No, it’s really good. on one side there’s Luke and I and we put an en suite in our bedroom ’cause there was enough room for it. And then my two littlest who are six and two sharing next door to us. And it’s a really big bedroom. And then across the kitchen, living room, is my 11-year-old.

And the TV room, which could at a later stage become a bedroom if we wanted it to. But it’s a spare room. It’s a TV room with a safe bed in it for our guests and visitors. And then there’s a bathroom, like family bathroom, that side as well. Yeah. And it works brilliantly.

Jane: That’s

Amy: Oh, That’s so cool.

Jane: that was really important to you both was the Retrofit or energy improvements to the home. And when we were looking for the new architects, that was high on the list of somebody that would be able to deal with that aspect of it. So somebody that had the right qualifications.

I’m interested to know a little bit more about how that played out.

Emily: Yeah. So, I would say that he didn’t really have anything to do with that. The architect,

Jane: Okay.

Emily: That was, so my brother is a builder and he is building things that are as environmentally friendly as possible. It’s quite high end what he’s doing, the clients he’s working for now, but he is really into research and getting things are really good quality and that work well.

So we, we went with his recommendation for that, and that was a company called Nu Heat. They design your whole system for you based on where you live geographically. We are really near the sea, so that factored into, what they recommended, the technology they recommended, and all of that kind of thing.

Jane: that was for your, you had an air source heat pump and you had under floor

Emily: Yeah.

Jane: Did you have solar panels as well

Emily: No, we haven’t got those yet. we might add them, but because the budget was tight, we didn’t do those initially.

Jane: And for the windows and the insulation, upgrading the existing building. Who was helping you with that?

Emily: My brother, really, again,

Jane: Yeah.

Emily: Yeah, yeah,

Jane: Did you, Did you insulate the walls? ’cause you were going to do external insulation?

Emily: We didn’t do any external insulation, but we did have our existing cavity wall insulation like removed under one of those government things ’cause it hadn’t been done well. So that was removed and that was expensive to remove, but luckily we got it on one of those in, you know, the insurance things.

Jane: And then we have yet to fill it back up again, but we are going to use a more modern, insulation for that. And I think becauseit was the fluffy stuff that used to blow in and had big pockets of, air

Yeah. ’cause it gets caught on all the things, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t quite kind of, spread out in the way that they want it to.

Emily: And yeah, and I think our cavity is quite uneven, so it’s really difficult to fill it, but apparently they do these little beads now, which can fill it up much better. So that’s the plan. We’re kind of in the process of, arranging for that to happen, but they don’t come to the island that often, so we just have to wait

Amy: How will you do that retrospectively?

I think they just make a a hole and they blow it. Blow it in.

Emily: Yeah,

Jane: But more interesting to know how they take the old insulation out like that must have

Emily: there’s, I think it was like a Hoover, you know, they just drilled a load of holes like round the house and just kind of hoovered it out.

Jane: I love it. Just suck it out and blow some more stuff in. We have cty wall insulation and we’ve yet to do the, I guess you do it with a heat camera, don’t you, to kind of look around and see where the cold patches are and I guess you looked around and there were lots.

Emily: yeah. And I was really lucky ’cause Luke could borrow a thermal imaging camera from work. But this is like, this is like the tricky thing that we found it’s difficult to get people interested in the different. Parts of your build. So like, you know, my brother was interested ’cause he’s my brother and a bit of a geek, so we could ask him all those annoying questions.

And Luke’s really technical, so he was really interested. He was like bothered by the technicalities. But it’s very difficult to go to a professional cold and say, can you help me with this? I don’t know, it’s hard to get the information. So I feel really lucky that we had, people in our lives that we could, to help us with that. so we kind of knew where we were. So otherwise it’s a bit stabbing around in the dark, like, well, we’ve got insulation, but we don’t know if it’s good enough or not. And the insurance companies like, definitely not. if there’s anything they can do to not pay to take it out, they will also, you know, feel lucky.

We were able to sort of prove to them that we needed it.

Amy: I think often people feel that if they can’t afford a retrofit, it’s like. Well, that’s just off the list, but I like that you’ve done what you can within this budget, but you are also kind of phasing the retrofit, like the solar panels, will they be added in the future?

Emily: probably, I think, I think it kind of depends on a few other things. Like if we at some point get an electric car, it would make more sense to do solar panels. ’cause we can use the electricity to charge, for example. So I think we are waiting a bit.

We’re gonna do the outside over the summer hopefully. so we’ve just. we’ve actually had some interior designers who have helped us landscape a bit at the back of the garden ’cause we were struggling with it. and they haven’t done a planting plan but they’ve helped us with the areas, like how to divide it up.

Amy: And what do you need to do to the outside?

Emily: We just got to do a little bit of cladding on, a section at the front of the house, which our friend is gonna do in the autumn, because that’s when he’s got a free spot. And then hopefully we’ll have done the outside work, which is really kind of connecting the house to the garden, doing the steps and things like that.

It was just all a bit too much. at the time, we were having to make so many decisions about all the internals and we just couldn’t work out exactly how, we were gonna do the steps and things. So it’s been quite nice to separate those two out,

Amy: Absolutely. And you were saying earlier that, it took you a bit of time to recover after the process.

Emily: Yeah. Yeah.

Amy: Did it feel too much like, because I guess you were basically project managing the whole thing.

Emily: Yeah. I suppose it is interesting in retrospect ’cause the guy who was kind of in charge of it all, he was a project manager and we paid him a project management fee. But really he was like a site manager. And he did do a bit of project management, but. he wasn’t project managing.

It was definitely a joint, enterprise. and it worked really well when it worked and then when it didn’t, It was very difficult. It’s only in retrospect you can look back and say, oh yeah, we hadn’t really delineated that role, or we hadn’t really, you know, there were things that he felt were his responsibility and then there were things he felt that weren’t, and it wasn’t necessarily the same as us.

Jane: Do you think that it fell into Shell / interiors? So like the building works and then the interiors was on you? Or was it a bit more nuanced than that?

Emily: It was definitely more nuanced than that. I would say it came down to like the finer details the guy project managing, and he did a brilliant job and he bought it in like on time within the budget, he said. but you know, there were, there were finishing things, we would’ve liked to have had more attention paid to And he was like, well, no, you can get someone else to do that.

Jane: He is just like, I’m done.

Emily: It’s a bit harsh to say that, but he had to move on too. know? Yeah.

Jane: It is working out. Like he had an idea of where the line was in yours was different,

Amy: But were they snagging issues or can you give us an example of one of them if it’s not too painful.

Emily: it’s not too painful at all. No. Okay. So for example, when they fitted the cooker hood, it’s like an external, extraction and it went through the roof and they just, ordered the wrong vent for it. And Luke picked up on the fact that it was the wrong vent and was like, can you get that changed and get that sorted?

And they just, they just weren’t really interested in doing it. so after the event and they’d gone, we got the roofer round. I mean, we were like, can we have the roofers number? And we bought the vent and we saw, you know, so I think it’s, It was just things like that.

Really.

Amy: That’s, quite a shock though, isn’t it?

Jane: You said he came in on the price that he said in the time that he said, so maybe that’s how he does it. You know, and maybe that’s a good payoff to have somebody that can stick to schedule because those tiny little things take up an inproportionate amount of, energy for them. So he’s like, it’s a tiny thing. You can manage that. Someone will get that sorted. Whereas if he did tie up all those loose ends, it would mean that he wouldn’t be on time for his next clients.

So,I’m not saying it’s the right thing to do, but

Amy: It’s a strategy isn’t it.

Emily: I think that’s the thing, on balance, you are left feeling like, oh, this was such a big thing, this was such an amount of money, and I guess you’re a bit shellshocked ’cause it’s all done. And then on the other hand, you’ve still a big list of things to do, and things to manage.

Emily: I think, because he was the expert he’d done projects before and we weren’t. if I was doing it again, I would just be so, clear and you, you can feel like really pedantic and annoying, but I would’ve said to him, so when you finish the house, you are gonna hand it over to us.

Right. Because what he did was he just left all of the, manuals and documents in a cardboard, like fruit box in one of the cupboards in the kitchen and was like, all your stuff’s in there. And I just was like, no. What I wanted from you was you to walk me around the house and I wanted you to show, to go through, like this is where this is, this is where this is.

You know, but like you say, Jane, he. He needed to move on, and I think I would’ve just appreciated like a chat of saying, I need to move on now.

Amy: a handover

Emily: I just wanted that clear ending.

Um,

Jane: That clear ending is very elusive in build projects.

Emily: Is it? Yeah. Okay.

I mean, my brother says he gets round it by now. He’s very clear at the beginning and he says like, snagging costs this much and we give it this amount of time. You know, and I think it’s like with everything you don’t like to hear, oh, I’m actually paying for you to correct the mistakes that you’ve made while I’ve been paying you to do something for me.

But actually, it’s much better to know that and to say, actually, no thank you. I don’t want you to do any snagging. I’ll do it all myself. Or Yes, please, I’m paying for that. And then you don’t have this thing of feeling bad when you’re phoning ’em up and being like, actually the radiator’s not working, or whatever it is.

Jane: Being clear,

Emily: yeah.

Jane: Because we just had our app built, and actually it’s a very, very similar process in a really weird way, even though it’s all digital. And they did do [00:17:00] that actually. They said, okay, so here’s the build. Then you get to test it out, which is like you moving into your house and pulling all the doors and being like, oh, the handle’s just fallen off.

and then you get to like. You get two weeks to tell them every single thing that’s wrong. And then they give it a timeframe. So they say, we have, we’re paying our developer to fix all these things in this timeframe. We had a certain amount of time to say all the things

and then we weren’t allowed to say anything else.But what was nice about it is that they said this is a never ending process.

Like there will be things that come up. We can only deal with a set amount of them in our budget. Here is the time slot and then after that you have to pay. It made sense to me that it’s a bit like how long is a piece of string situation and houses are like that ’cause it is a bespoke thing and there are so many things so it could go on forever.

Amy: But I think it’s also just the shock of that. Things won’t be perfect. I, I think that is quite shocking to renovators.

Emily: A perfectionist, it is. And that’s not me. Luke is like, you know.

Amy: Well you paid for it. It’s like,you feel that, it should all work and be perfect.

Emily: But you know, to be fair, it was, it’s like you say, it’s nuance and it is the tiny details. I mean, it was done really well and by and large, complete,

Jane: Yeah. It’s a living, breathing thing though. A house, isn’t

it? Itit carries on the process. Carries on.

Amy: You are still smiling though, Emily, which I think is a good sign.

Jane: It’s good. I’ve had a year to get over it, Amy. So it’s um. I can’t remember when we were speaking. How long did the whole process take?

Emily: Well, the building phase of it took, seven months,

Jane: October, 2022 we spoke to you.

Emily: Yeah, and so it is, you spoke to us in October 22, so that’s when we were planning it, and then we finished in March 24.

Jane: I’m kind of beating myself up at the moment that we’re not getting a move on with our renovation, but.

It does just take time and we don’t have a lot of time to think about it.

Emily: Yeah,

Jane: it just does take longer than you think to get going Two

Amy: the decisions, isn’t it? To have the conversation to make the decisions to go forward.

Emily: yeah. and you can’t just, you know, making those decisions. it is absolutely crucial. The design has to be right. You’ve got no hope I think also, making decisions on the fly is generally tricky. there’s the odd thing, like when we knocked all the walls down in our main living area,

One of the remaining ones wasn’t in line with its, opposite partner. Luke walked in and straight away was like, no, we need to get rid of that wall and put it in line. that was very obvious and the wall had a big hole in it and didn’t have a big cost implication.

But I’m so pleased now that he did that. ’cause it just gives us a bit of extra space for the table but generally speaking. I learned that it’s better not to be chopping and changing things while stuff’s, [00:20:00] underway.

Jane: So did you manage to get a bulk of your interior decisions done before you were on site, or did that happen in tandem?

 

No, it happened in tandem. And was that a juggle how do you feel about that process now?

Emily: I feel like, it was okay. We weren’t, Alex our builder did give us enough time he was like, I’m gonna need to know in, Four weeks or five weeks, what the floor is, or you’re gonna need to have ordered it by then. So we had enough time, generally speaking, for things like that, for the bathrooms and things.

and it was quite handy because I could see the space. So Luke’s really good at visualizing things from a plan, but I’m not at all, and I am much more concerned with colors and light and things like that. So the paint colors, I was able to come in. It was hard, it was a bit dingy in winter, but it was really helpful to have the swatches and be like, right, okay, this looks a bit light in here, or whatever, you know?

I think I’m happy with it. I think as long as you’ve got, as long as it’s [00:21:00] not like I need this in the next three days, I think that’s when you get into,

Amy: Panic mood.

Emily: Yeah. I think it’s really easy to make mistakes.

Amy: You had dates that he was saying by this date, was it written out in like a project plan or something?

Emily: Yeah, again, it was kind of a bit of an in-between, Luke had a spreadsheet and he tried to, get him to fill it in. in the end we sort of both did a bit of it, but he was definitely really one of his real fortes, was managing the trades coming into site and keying them up at the right times and things like that.

And so he, yeah, he was really good at that. sometimes he would be putting the pressure on and then we’d be like, we did do that. And then it hasn’t happened for three weeks. But what it meant was the things were actually there when they were needed, which was good.

Jane: Yes.

I think he probably is used to people saying they’re gonna get things sorted and then don’t. So for him, he has to be ahead of time, doesn’t he? Otherwise, he’ll have tradespeople with nothing to

do.

it is a big juggle. And just organizing all those trades [00:22:00] is, I guess from his perspective, when he says he’s project manager,

That’s what I’m talking about. But it is, zoned, isn’t it? There’s kind of Spheres of works that fell under his scope. And there are other bits that maybe aren’t as obvious

It’s interesting. So how are you all now? Now you’re finished and you’re living in the house.

Emily: Yeah, really good. I mean, it just feels so nice ’cause it reflects us really nicely. I’ve also enjoyed, although it would’ve been really nice to come back in and have all the cupboards built in and all the right furniture in the right rooms. It’s fine taking your time.

We just put our old things back in and slowly finding things and like you say Jane, it’s so difficult when you’ve got a family and work to find time to have basic conversations about things. So, I think it’s, it’s nice to take the pressure off, like you say, and just relax and, get to know the space again and how it works.

You know, for your everyday life. It’s nice that it evolves. I like that.

Amy: Oh, thank you so much, Emily. It’s so lovely to chat to you and hear all about your project.