New-Build Bungalow with Twisted Brick Chimney — and the Client's Return.

The bungalow is laid out as a series of linked hipped-roof blocks rather than one long box, which keeps the massing low against open countryside and gives every principal room an external corner and two aspects.

It is faced in a reclaimed-effect multi red blend with flush struck joints, under grey interlocking tiles with anthracite fascias, gutters and window frames. Gravel margins and paved paths were run tight to the elevations with brick pavior edging — practical, and the detail that stops rain splashing dirt up the brickwork.

A barley-twist stack is built by rotating the set-out a fixed amount on every course, cutting each brick to keep the twist continuous and the bed joints true. Get one course wrong and the spiral visibly wanders by the top.

This one was laid on the scaffold, dry-set and checked repeatedly before bedding, then finished with a clay pot and lead flashings dressed into the roof. It is the piece of this house people notice from the road, and it is entirely hand work.

Years after handover the owners wanted more light into the lounge. Putting a new window into a completed, occupied house is a careful job: prop and support the wall above, cut the outer leaf and blockwork inner leaf, install a lintel and cavity tray, close the cavity with insulation and a damp-proof cavity closer, then rebuild the reveals.

Inside, the opening was formed and made good with the room protected and furniture sheeted. Outside, the tricky part is the brick blend — matching a reclaimed-effect multi years on so the infill and reveals disappear into the existing bond rather than sitting there as a patch.

The new window went in with anthracite frames to match the originals, and the surrounding brickwork was rebuilt in a blend picked to sit with the weathered original — same bond, same joint profile, same mortar colour.

We also altered guttering and downpipes to suit the changes and made good every disturbed area. Stand back from the elevation now and there is no telling which bricks are five years old and which are new.

A complete new-build house delivered under difficult conditions, and then a returning-client programme of improvements carried out around a family living in it.

Being invited back to a house you built — by owners who bought it rather than commissioned it — is the clearest verdict there is on how the original job was done.