Julia Kendell: How my own self-build became a DIY SOS but it won't stop me doing it again

Having already completed one modernist self-build house, Julia Kendell, best known as a presenter of BBC1’s DIY SOS, is about to embark on her second.

This is in spite of having to launch an SOS of her own during a fraught phase of the build at the £750,000 plot she had bought on the banks of the Thames at Charvil in Berkshire.

Her partner, Andrew Hughes-Hallett, 47, a management consultant, was perched precariously on a ladder while his 82-year-old mother was visiting the site. As he hurried down, the ladder slipped and he fell backwards, trapping his left leg between two rungs and snapping it ‘clean in two’, says Julia, 42.

‘His mother was amazing. She’d been a
nurse and took control,’ says Julia. ‘She was concerned he might have
severed a main artery, but she straightened the leg, bound it up and
then we waited for the ambulance to arrive. Andrew was losing a lot of
blood and I genuinely thought he was going to die.’

He spent ten days in the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading before being sent home in a wheelchair.

Julia claims she was too traumatised
to return to the site, and Andrew, in bed in the couple’s rented
accommodation, would be visited by the site manager for a daily update.

‘They always say you put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into a selfbuild.

In our case, that was very true,’ she says.

Undeterred by the experience, the
couple have bought another riverside plot, a one-and-three-quarteracre
site at Wargrave, near Henley in Berkshire, for £900,000, getting a
‘whopping’ mortgage from the bank.

 

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‘This one will be more like a giant treehouse with soft curves rather than sharp angles,’ says Julia.

The modernist house at Charvil is currently rented out and the tree-house will be the couple’s family house, shared with Julia’s daughters Madeleine, 20, and 17-year-old Sophie. ‘A small cottage will be built in the grounds to give the girls their independence,’ says Julia.

If the Government has its way, self-building is about to become a lot more popular. At this week’s Grand Designs Live show at London’s ExCeL, Housing Minister Grant Schapps will promise more help to self-builders, who build one in five of every new home in the country.

 

Self-build: DIY SOS presenter Julia and her husband Andrew Hughes-Hallet rent out their Charvil eco house

That’s actually one of Europe’s lowest figures, and Schapps is determined to increase it by cutting down barriers and red tape and making available more publicly and privately owned land. Details of this are to be announced shortly.

Julia is taking the lead in the construction of her new house, although the couple are no strangers to the building game. They had already renovated a detached Victorian house in Henley, which they sold in 2007 for £1.4million to fund the Charvil project. The Charvil site had a rundown four-bedroom bungalow on it and the couple were allowed to build another storey, but not increase the footprint of the original house.

‘Planning officers and the Environment Agency are very vigilant on properties close to water,’ says Julia.

‘We were careful not to extend the footprint of the bungalow.’

Local architect and friend Chris Tapp came up with the design for a wood-framed structure on 3ft-high stilts, as the site was on a 100-year-old flood plain.

Tapp included a double garage on a hydraulic lift system with a float switch that senses a rise in the water level and automatically lifts the floor of the building by 3ft so that any cars are raised above the incoming water. ‘As far as we know,’ says Julia, ‘it’s the first garage in the UK that employs this system.’

 

Property ladder: The interior of the home where Andrew's accident happened

She adds: ‘Everything is designed to have minimal wastage of space: all the post sizes and the insulated wall panels fit precisely within the structure. In many ways, it’s like a giant Meccano set.’

Inside is all open-plan, with kitchen and living area taking full advantage of the river views, while upstairs there’s a master bedroom with his and hers bathrooms, and three more bedrooms with en suites.

Work began in January 2008, with the foundations laid using steel helical screw piles that were driven into the ground to a depth of 28ft.

JULIA'S TOP 10 TIPS TO STAY SANE

1. Employ a good architect who will really listen to your requirements.
2. Only attempt to project-manage if you have enough time.
3. Plan everything ahead of the build, down to the doorknobs.
4. Put as much detail as possible into the tender.
5. Build overruns and overspend into the plan.
6. Don’t change your mind after the build has begun.
7. Get expert advice at all stages, available free at self-build shows.
8. Try not to compromise: this is your dream home, remember.
9. Stick to an agreed stage-payment plan with your builders.
10. Keep a sense of humour at all times.

Bad weather almost immediately resulted in the site flooding – its close proximity to the river always making this a possibility – and everyone had to down tools for a week.

But by December, the house, a finalist in the Grand Designs Best Eco House Award, was complete and Julia, Andrew and the girls were able to celebrate their first Christmas there, albeit with Andrew still on crutches.

And that might have been that.

‘We weren’t looking for another site,’ says Julia, ‘but then one came up near Wargrave.’

Now she is starting work on the ‘treehouse’ plans, which will borrow a little other-worldliness of The Lord Of The Rings films, with a staircase that will look as though it has been hollowed out of a tree trunk.

The exterior of the house will be an oak-framed construction incorporating the latest renewable-energy technology.

‘This sounds like a contradiction in terms but I’m aiming for a contemporary rustic feel, soft on the outside, industrial inside,’ she says.

Assuming they get planning permission, work should begin in the autumn for completion next year.

‘Then we’ll hopefully sell the existing modernist house for more than £2million and all but eliminate our mortgage,’ says Julia. ‘It’s been a financial stretch. It doesn’t take interest rates to move much to have an impact on a £1million mortgage, but this time I really think we’ll put down roots.’