A plain brick house turned into something with real character: multiple extensions, oak-framed gables and weatherboarding, internal alterations, an outdoor living room, an outdoor swimming pool with automatic solar cover, and terraced dry stone landscaping.
The house was already here — that is the point. Put the before shot next to the after and it is black and white. What arrived was a standard brick-and-tile house with a bay window and a bland rear elevation. What left is Willow House: oak frames, weatherboarding, render, dormers and glazing, wrapped in landscaping that makes the whole plot work.
The scope ran across multiple extensions, extensive internal alterations, a full package of external works and an outdoor swimming pool — all of it managed by the family firm from setting out to handover.
It is one of the jobs we point at when someone says their house has no character. Character is built, not bought.
Brick gable, white uPVC bay, a bit of trellis and a flat lawn. Sound enough, but no character and no relationship with the garden at all.
First move was to open the ground up and get the new footings dug alongside the existing house, working carefully around live services and the parts of the home the family were still using.
The pool was excavated by hand and machine, formed up and a reinforced base slab poured level before the shell went in.
Drainage, filtration and services were trenched and haunched in gravel around the tank, then the steel panel shell was set, braced and backfilled ready for the liner.
It was finished with an automatic cover with built-in solar strips — it heats the water and keeps the running costs down, and it disappears when you want to swim.
Multiple extensions were built and the elevations reworked: full-height oak-framed glazed gables, oak weatherboard cladding, white render panels and new dormers with rooflights bringing the roof space into use.
A fully glazed oak garden room was added on the corner, and internally the layout was opened up with extensive alterations to suit the new openings and the way the family actually live.
Even the approach was rebuilt — dry stone piers and walls either side of a stone path, gravel drive and the Willow House name post.
Off the terrace we built an oak-framed, tile-roofed outdoor living area sat on stainless post shoes, with a hand-laid brick fireplace and flue, an oak bressummer over the opening and a riven slate floor.
Brick raised beds and gravel edges tie it into the wider garden so it reads as part of the landscaping rather than a bolt-on.
The pool surround was laid in large-format limestone slabs run right around the perimeter, with a soldier course to the coping edge and falls set away from the water.
It steps out into a full terrace linking the pool, the house and the oak-clad outbuilding, with an oak screen fence giving privacy on the boundary.
The sloping garden was cut into level terraces held by hand-built dry stone walls with sawn coping, linked by wide stone steps running up to a garden room at the top of the plot.
Clipped box, gravel beds and crisp lawn edges keep it modern, and low-level uplighters wash the stone at night so the whole garden still works after dark.
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Before: brick, bay window, and not a lot else.
"One of our projects from last year looking great. Dry stone walling, landscaping and swimming pool giving a modern look to this garden."
