What a difference a year makes

So here we are, two renovated holiday cottages. Sitting finely in the landscape of the southern part of Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park.

Its so very easy to forget how the buildings used to look before we started building work last May. After many months of design and feasibility work we took the plunge to renovate two very tired and long disused farm buildings and bring them back to life. When you're undertaking a renovation project its very easy, and very necessary, to be involved in the detail of how design and construction are going to work. Often there are unexpected problems, measurements on site which don't tally with drawings, work which needs doing that was never anticipated (so costing more money and more time) and so on. Sometimes you think back to what was there before but mainly, we find, that you just don't; as a function of renovations, working and family life you don't always take that step back to appreciate what is being created. Looking back at photos really reminds us of how it used to look, 12 months ago it all looked very differently. And we are happy with the outcome. Very happy and very proud.

One of the things which constantly changes in its detail but never changes in its power to soothe and calm, uplift and invigorate is the view to the north of Ben Lomond, the hills and the Loch.

The Old Dairy - Interiors

The buff stone featured above was crafted to snugly fit a void in the red sandstone wall on the west gable of the two bedroomed cottage. It fits well with the building and the natural tone of the original stone.
We've also got some interiors shots to show you...

This view is taken from the first floor landing, the open plan living space in this cottage has the full height of the building and lots of natural light, it really feels good in here.

Beds have crisp fresh white linen topped with stylish throws, some cotton, some silk. In this cottage oak is the predominant material and features in every room, further adding to the warmth and beauty of the place.

In the kitchen we have all the usual bits you would expect, yes there's a dishwasher, hob, oven, fridge and kit like a toaster, kettle and plenty of crockery, glassware, pots and pans. There will be some welcome goodies to greet guests. Happily the hens have started laying again now the daylight hours are longer so we'll be including a complimentary half dozen for holiday guests, zero food miles and they taste absolutely gorgeous (in our humble opinion).

The first floor landing leads to a double bedroom with ensuite. The landing overlooks the living space in a rather grand fashion and you can look straight out a high level window which looks across the fields with views of the Campsie Hills.

We hope you like it!

Really really nearly there

The Old Dairy (sleeps 4 in two bedrooms) and Curlew Cottage (sleeps 8 in four bedrooms).

I keep saying 'yes, we're nearly there' to friends and family who enquire after the holiday cottages progress and it is true we are. We've tested the showers, the kitchens and the sofas. We know the heating and hot water system works, as its been operational for months now and it really feels very pleasant in our two holiday cottages. We know the solar panels are producing electricity and hot water and in the past few weeks of fine early Spring we're very pleased with their contribution of renewable energy to the cottages; on some days we have been exporting power to the national grid, and that is terrific.

By the end of the week we'll have a website to launch and I'm very excited about that too, as well as being desperate to share it with the world.

In the meantime I'm chasing my tail getting the pile of rubble near the gate cleared away, the driveway finished and checking we've got everything to make our holiday guests happy. That's why I keep saying 'nearly there'. The cottages are ready to welcome guests and even have beds ready to sleep in, the external areas are less kempt but give me a week, plus a tractor and trailer it'll all look much better. We are hoping to take bookings for Easter and the April school holidays and the website will give all the relevant information. For anyone considering an early booking please feel free to give me a call on 0790 509 3997 and I shall be happy to chat through your requirements.

We have had some guests staying on an informal let in Curlew Cottage, which very comfortably sleeps 8, and today I received a testimonial comment which was so so nice to receive (unsolicited!) and which I would like to share with you......

"Stayed in the lovely Curlew cottage recently with friends and had a lovely time. The views were incredible from all the living areas and with the wood burning stove, comfy sofas and flow through the great kitchen and dining area, I was hard pushed to want to leave. Helpful hosts, a well thought out kitchen, access to fresh laid eggs and enough bathrooms to lounge around having a soak for hours – what more could one need!

Great walks from the house too and the view from the top of the dumpling is not to be missed if you do manage to drag yourself away from the cottage."

Here's the kitchen for Curlew Cottage, plenty of space for the whole family to help the cook!

Here's How We're Doing

A flurry of snow, beautifully clear skies, sunshine and a hurricane all in 24 hours. Work on site with the two holiday cottages has progressed well and we're pleased to dust off the blog to show you some updated photos.
The view here of the cottages from the east shows the two bedroomed stone building on the left of the photo and the four bedroomed one on the right. The larger cottage is finished partly in white render and will also have larch clad areas on the unfinished section you can see. The brown material visible is Pavatherm which is a compressed wood fibre board used as an external insulation material. That area will be larch clad which will age fairly quickly to a mellow silvery grey. The materials used fit very well with the local vernacular and have also been used on our own house. The red sandstone is well over 150 years old and is typically 2feet thick. The official naming of the two bedroomed cottage...

We commissioned a name stone which is placed high on the west gable of the cottage. I'm really pleased with the way the whole building looks now, the cleaned up stone is looking all the more splendid in the winter sunshine. For a quick reminder of how it looked check here.

Both cottages have access ramps and at grade entrances for wheelchair users. They also have plenty of big windows to maximise those views of our beautiful surroundings, being strong on energy conservation the windows are Argon filled double glazed with sustainable timber frames.The interior of The Old Dairy. The living space is a full height room with high level windows as well as ground floor sliding doors to the patio. You can just see the pipe which will serve the wood burning stove on the left.
The living space of the larger cottage is impressively large and, again, has big windows for big views.

The view below is of the Campsies (to the south-east) from one of the bedrooms.

One kitchen....

Solar thermal panels on the south facing roof....

and photovoltaic nicely generating electricity to serve both cottages.

Progress...

... has been fairly rapid during the long days of a Scottish summer. Since pouring the floor slabs the timber frame has gone up in a matter of weeks, with work now starting on building up the old dairy's stone walls another 400mm to roof eaves level so our guests will have plenty of headroom upstairs!

Construction design is similar to the house, using an insulated timber frame clad with woodfibre board on the outside for extra insulation and to reduce thermal bridging. This keeps the wind out and, with the help of fancy tapes and membranes on the inside, the heat in. Heating is to be from a ground source heat pump and solar thermal panels, with solar PV offsetting electricity use. Inside we just have underfloor heating on the ground floor which will keep things cosy during the chilly winter months!

Over the next couple of months we should see the roof windows in and the roofs slated, then hopefully, the windows and doors will have have arrive so the cottages can be wind and watertight before the cooler and wetter months...roll on Autumn!

Holiday Cottages Underway

So here we are starting a new and exciting adventure at East Cambusmoon. Three years ago we moved into our house, beautifully designed and immensely energy efficient, see here. We adopted a very low energy approach to the design and the construction detailing which focussed on significant levels of insulation, a high standard of air-tightness, strong passive solar design and a ground source heat pump for the heating and hot water, supported by a small PV array and mechanical heat recovery and ventilation. When we were at the design stage 4 years ago this approach was not widely taken but, even in the short time since we moved in, more people and architects are looking more broadly at how homes and buildings are managed environmentally. We joined the AECB and adopted their Silver Standard for energy use and carbon emissions. In truth the house has far out-performed this standard and even in the last particularly cold winter was warm all day every day at very low cost.





The main difference between the projects are that the house was a new build and the holiday cottages are a conversion of two very tired farm buildings. Notwithstanding our intentions to replicate some of the approaches we took with a brand new building we are very aware that we are renovating an old dairy and byre and will certainly be retaining the architectural features the buildings; the red sandstone which was quarried locally, the arch over the doorway and the window recess with wooden lintel. Here we are creating two adjoining holiday cottages, one of two bedrooms, one of four. As we are in Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park we hope that some of the year-round visitors to this stunningly scenic area might like to come and stay in the cosy warm luxury of our holiday cottages. As you can see we're just starting the conversion works and we'll do our best to record the journey on this blog.

The building story so far has been one of rapid change. The roofs have fallen in and the rubble cleared out; in the stone building (which will have two bedrooms) the 'hole' for the sliding patio doors has been punched through and the stone stockpiled for reuse; in the larger unit, which was brick built in the 1950s, the walls collapsed so extra blockwork and labour will be required; floor levels were equalised as existing floors sloped. Then we get into the first stage of serious insulation - the floor. So much heat is lost through the floor, don't waste it!

In the past week 200mm of polystyrene and polyeurathane insulation boards have been laid throughout the buildings and on top of this will float 30 tonnes of steel and concrete in the 4 bedroom unit and 15 tonnes of the same in the two bedroom unit. Before the concrete is poured the underfloor heating pipes are installed; this is done by fixing the pipework (large diameter polythene pipe ideal for use with heat pumps) to the steel reinforcement mesh with tie-wraps. This approach works well with ground source heat pumps which have lower operating temperatures than the more frequently used shallow tray form of underfloor heating. The concrete provides the thermal mass necessary to stabilise the temperature and keep those cottages lovely and warm when needed.We're using Anderson Floorwarming for the underfloor heating, hot and cold water systems, installation of the ground source heat pump and solar. We are happily working with the same builder, subcontractors and architect as we did on the house so its nice to see familiar faces back on site.

New Beginnings

What do you mean that doesn't look like the sort of holiday place you're thinking of for a dream vacation in Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park? The patio areas certainly need a good sweep and, if there were any windows, they would need a good clean so that you could see the splendid views.
RENOVATION WORK STARTS 16th MAY 2011, hurray!
The sun is shining and we are very excited at the prospect of renovating these lovely but very very tired buildings and creating two tip top holiday cottages for visitors.
The plan is to create this. As you can see by the date of the archive entry this has been 'work in progress' for a long time. Lots of unremarkable reasons for that - life work family balance - but we are really keen to see these buildings brought into vibrant and viable use and to share this lovely part of the world with a few people. We'll post more detail on the design and construction approach in due course but, yes, they will have the same high standards as the house we built 3 years ago (can't believe its been that long!). We'll be adopting the AECB silver standard as a target for high levels of thermal efficiency and air tightness to ensure excellent comfort levels for our guests and to promote a more environmentally conscious approach to renovation and building.

In the meantime here's a few moments of Spring beauty present at this time of year...

daffodils at the very end of their prime, blossoms coming forth on the fruit trees...

clusters of primroses in the shady spots...

and a wee bit more apple blossom to show how pretty it is. We planted some fine old varieties of apple 2 years ago to create an orchard and I'm pleased to see that is really taking shape and providing interest now. We planted a mix of culinary and dessert apples and hope the mix will provide a decent long season of apple picking for us and our guests.

The Next Phase - Renovation of the Dairy

Welcome to your new holiday home..........needs a bit of work to get that roof sorted out but you can see the potential for the restoration of the stonework arch. We've been working on the design for the two holiday properties we're going to create out of the former dairy and these have been through the planning process so now the detailed drawings are underway before a building warrant application is submitted. We've used the same architect Thomas Robinson Architects (see links) because we like their ethos and design approach. The renovation will continue the low energy principles, using high quality materials and a sympathetic but contemporary design.

The design for this south elevation makes the most of the existing stone arch as the main entrance to the house and also brings some more light into the property with full height glazing both on and adjacent to the door. The stonework will be cleaned up, the slate roof completely replaced using the existing slate alongwith the slate we retrieved from the original farmhouse and there'll be a small area of larch cladding to tie in with materials on the adjoining holiday house and the main 'new' house. This is the East elevation - the stone building on the left is the one whose elevation and entrance door are shown above. The large doors on both holiday houses will open onto patios and terrific views across the fields towards the Campsies. So this is where I envisage guests may be sitting munching their cornflakes in the morning sun planning their day ahead!

We've found the camera so here's a few pics from the holiday lodge we're renting. For the past 10 days we've had cold, dry and mainly sunny conditions which has been marvellous. It has been very cold at night so we're glad to be out of the caravan for the time being. The lodge has 3 bedrooms so we've got plenty of space to play with and its generally very pleasant to be in a real house again. The lodge is set in woodland at the end of a long track and there is plenty of wildlife around, particularly deer and pheasant but we also have owls and woodpeckers both of which make plenty of noise at different times of day.

Future Plans

This week we've instructed the architect to commence work on plans for the former dairy. We're looking into the possibility of converting the building into holiday accommodation and prepared a brief to that end. We are very fortunate to live in a beautiful part of the world and the National Park designation has further enhanced this area's popularity for visitors. As you can see the slate roof is hanging together but there are some nice features to the building and we would like to bring it back into good use. The building is to the north of where our house will sit.

The brief still adheres to our low energy principles but with an exisiting shell the approach will be different. At this stage we are looking at what sort of space we can create within the structure as it stands and exploring the planning situation.