Case Studies

Town life is all fine and dandy if you like being close to all the hubbub and amenities you might want, but if you want some garden space then that can be hard to come by and at a premium price when you do find it.

That was the problem facing David and his wife, who, until earlier this year, lived in the centre of Macclesfield. Try as they might, they could not find a house within their price range that gave them the outside space they craved.

“We are both garden lovers and really enjoy being outside especially in the good weather. We looked at a lot of properties but simply could not find one near to town, so we started looking further afield. The couple finally found a nice 1990’s semi in a village called Bosley. It had all the internal space they needed, but essentially it had gardens too. In the back garden the former owner had a large outbuilding that he had used for storage. This was soon removed to make way for the dream situation that David and his partner envisaged.

Big ideas and big dreams need big planning, so when David Cooper and his wife moved into a new home, they set about devising a five-year plan for how they wanted their new home to look – in time.

The Cooper’s new home in St. Helen’s. Merseyside offered many opportunities but one, in particular, drew itself to David’s attention. “I noticed when we moved in that the kitchen windows offered a really good view overlooking the garden. The problem was that you had to stand up to look through the windows to enjoy it, and we wanted something far more panoramic, which is why we decided we would extend the kitchen area and install big bifold doors,” says David.

When it comes to planning and research for a home development project, Andrew Paterson may be in a league of his own.

Andrew lives in a semi-detached 1930’s house in Chester and had designs on extending his home at the back for some years. Not just his home mind, the full-width extension he planned would also include the extending of his neighbour’s house so that the look of both buildings complemented each other.

“I started my preparation about two and a half years ago by visiting exhibitions and trade shows, which was when I discovered Vufold. I had a chat with the people on the stand and was impressed with their approach and products, so I took a leaflet home and kept it in my file,” says Andrew.

Big ideas and big dreams need big planning, so when David Cooper and his wife moved into a new home, they set about devising a five-year plan for how they wanted their new home to look – in time.

The Cooper’s new home in St. Helen’s. Merseyside offered many opportunities but one, in particular, drew itself to David’s attention. “I noticed when we moved in that the kitchen windows offered a really good view overlooking the garden. The problem was that you had to stand up to look through the windows to enjoy it, and we wanted something far more panoramic, which is why we decided we would extend the kitchen area and install big bifold doors,” says David.

There’s an old saying that goes along the lines of “if you want something doing well – do it yourself” – which is pretty much the tenet that Adrian Mason followed when he wanted external bifold doors fitting to the new extension built on the back of his house.

Adrian’s plans for his four-bedroom detached property on a 1980’s development included a substantial extension that would house new kitchen and dining areas, as well as creating a large open space that connected with the lounge.

Light and lots of it would be very important to the design. The extension was an unusual shape with a 14-foot aperture in an 18-foot-long wall that would lead out into the garden. Adrian and his wife knew that they wanted a durable exterior, and interior fittings that would complement the wooden materials they intended to use inside the house.

When we first saw our house in 2015 we knew immediately that there were two projects that, if we bought it, we just had to get done.

The house is built onto a south facing hill and, from the front, looks to be a conventional two stories, 3 or 4 beds. However, from the back its three stories high as the garden is a level below the entry floor. The design of the house exploited this by having an open balcony at the mid-floor, accessed both from the lounge and dining room by "old style" sliding aluminium double-glazed doors.

A previous owner had then turned this balcony into a conservatory but had retained the old doors. Downstairs a similar set of 6ft aluminium sliding double-glazed doors led from the family room to the garden. We knew we wanted to open this wall up as much as possible to "let the garden in" and turn it into our summer lounge. Upstairs the sliding doors were both an obstacle to enjoying the outlook from the mid-floor and also a trip hazard due to a difference in floor height.

When Shakespeare coined the phrase “truth will out”, it’s unlikely that he ever thought his words would in time be applied to quality – but in Steve Pinner and Vufold’s case, they certainly have.

Steve and his wife, Debbie, have lived in a four bedroom, detached Georgian house in Boston, Lincolnshire for the last 20 years. Their own children having flown the nest some while back, three years ago they realised that they needed extra space for when the growing number of grandchildren came to stay.

The pair of them sat down and talked about what they wanted to do in terms of changing the living space within the house and settled on the idea of a major extension of the kitchen to create a contemporary open-plan kitchen, dining and living area, as Steve explains.

Peter and Sandi Richmond-Swift own a four bedroom detached house in Waterlooville which used to have an old wooden conservatory attached to the dining room. The couple decided they wanted more space and an improved modern look that complemented both their aesthetic decorative tastes and their lifestyles, as Peter explains.

“The old conservatory was past its sell-by date and did not give us the room we wanted. We do quite a lot of entertaining and really wanted to be able to open up the dining room so we could extend the table out into the conservatory. The old doors that led into the conservatory were the sliding type and only opened on one side, so we could not do that; in the end we decided that we needed a new, larger conservatory and to do something that would give us a fully open eight foot space with no door threshold.”