Little things!

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www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk

Last week we ordered a stamp from www.englishstamp.com  All we had to do was upload a high quality jpeg image of our Building Workshop logo and then the friendly people at The English Stamp Company made it for us.  It arrived yesterday.   The stamp has a nice wooden handle and does a great job!  We will use it to stamp lots of things, mainly envelopes, and anything else that gets in its way.    

 

 

 

A Saturday afternoon walk...

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www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk

We went for a walk up Glenogil to have a look at some of the buildings that have been beautifully restored over the past few years.  The estate has done a fantastic job of ‘make do and mend’.  All of the old cottages that were falling down are now looking very smart and proper, with careful attention to detail.  This is exactly the sort of workmanship that we like to see. 

 

 

 

Things we love - Rayburns

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www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk

 

We have just spent the weekend cow sitting at the farm and have fallen in love with the trusty old wood burning Rayburn in the kitchen.

Rayburn’s current advertising campaign mentions good food, hot baths and a warm home.  What more could you want in this cold weather?!  An older model won’t quite warm the whole home, but it keeps the kitchen lovely and warm.  And they look really good too.

With oil being so expensive at the moment, many people are reluctant to turn on the heating, but with a wood burning Rayburn (or any kind of wood burning stove) you can keep it going all day long.  As well as being a much more sustainable option, wood is the least expensive fuel for cooking, domestic hot water and central heating, and if you have your own wood supply, even better.

Collecting the wood and chopping it up is half of the fun and good exercise too.  A few weeks ago, we spent a long Saturday chopping up fallen trees in the woods, and dragging them up the bank before chopping them into logs and taking them home.  This wood would have just rotted into the ground, instead it will provide us with fuel to keep us warm all winter.    

Architect's Kitchen - Apple and Olive Oil Cake with Maple Syrup Icing

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www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk

This is the recipe for one of our favourite cakes.  It is made with olive oil instead of butter, and if you wrap it in clingfilm for a day or two before icing it, the flavours intensify.  You can either ice it with the maple syrup icing, or just dust it with icing sugar for a less indulgent cake.  Either way, it is delicious and a wonderful weekend cake!

Contemporary Farmhouse Project

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www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk

We are working on a renovation and extension to a farmhouse in Angus and it is a really exciting project.  The farmhouse at present looks a bit sad.  It is a traditional Angus farmhouse with two main rooms downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs.  The brief given to Building Workshop was to transform the house into a comfortable, contemporary farmhouse for a family, with a strong connection with the farmyard and surrounding fields.

When this house was built, in 1904, homes were very different to the way they are now.  There was no electricity, some rooms found in modern day houses did not yet exist: toilets were outside, and four people sharing a bedroom was not uncommon.  Fitting bathrooms and mod cons into the existing house has resulted in compromised internal spaces.  So, in order to make this farmhouse a great home for 21^st century family living, it will need to be extended. 

This must be done without altering the character of the building.  We have designed two single-storey extensions which connect into the existing building along a central spine: a traditional looking extension to the east and a contemporary ‘shed’ living space to the west of the house.  The traditional extension will house a new master bedroom and bathroom and the contemporary extension will be a large open plan living space, connected to the kitchen with a glass link. 

The existing farmhouse will be beautifully restored in order to contrast with the contemporary extension.  This sharp contrast is essential for this design to work. 

We make models during the design development of all of our projects.  We also model all of our projects on our 3D computer programme so that you can walk through the finished building. This helps everyone from the client to the tradesmen (and even us) understand what the end result will be even before the foundations have been been laid.

Living Architecture

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www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk

This wild and whacky cantilevered holiday house designed by Dutch architects MVRDV has recently been completed in Suffolk.  The Dutch practice was commissioned by ‘Living Architecture’ – a social enterprise that is on a mission to let people experience living in houses designed by world-class architects.

 

www.living-architecture.co.uk 

Most people only experience the work of great architects in public spaces such as airports or galleries, so by commissioning internationally renown practices to design and build these holiday homes, Living Architecture is giving everyone an opportunity to live, sleep and dream architecture!

There are four holiday homes that are now available for booking.  Each one sleeps between 8 and 10 people.  For about £20-£25 per person per night (based on a 4 night stay), it really is accessible – as long as you have some friends who are willing to go with you.

Our favourite design is the Balancing Barn.  Partly because it’s a barn, but also because it’s simple and pure.  The barn has a very rigid structure which makes the cantilever possible.  The structure balances on a central concrete core and the section that sits on the ground is constructed from heavier materials than the section that floats in mid air.  It’s as simple as that!

As well as looking very modern and shiny, the Balancing Barn is also an energy efficient building – highly insulated, ventilated by a heat recovery system and warmed by a ground source heat pump.

We think this is a fantastic idea and if we weren’t so busy designing big bright kitchens for family homes, cow sheds and barn conversions, we’d be there like a shot.

Building Workshop is online!!

We have just launched our website.  After just over a year of working away quietly in our cowshed, we thought it was high time we should be online.  So who better to make us a website than Holy Cow! – a design company in Suffolk – who also have a cowshed for an office.  They’ve done a great job.  It is a horizontally scrolling website which makes it a little bit different and gives us plenty of space to put lots of big pictures.  

Have a look at www.thebuildingworkshop.co.uk and let us know what you think.  We hope that you enjoy reading all about what we do in our recycled cow shed in rural Angus.