All posts by LearnerMother

On Architect in the House

House Project, , , , ,

AITH

I recently wrote about my tips on choosing an architect – hopefully it gave you some food for thought if you’re about to start a building project. But what if you’re not yet sure what you want to do to your house, or if it’s even possible to do anything, or if you’re just not sure about the moving/building dilemma?

Then you should definitely check out Architect in the House, a collaboration between  Shelter and RIBA.

Shelter is the housing and homelessness charity for the UK; they do sterling work, and not only in terms of advising and supporting those who are homeless or  in danger of becoming so. Shelter also campaign and lobby on a wide range of issues linked to housing; including improving standards in rented accommodation; reducing the number of homes standing empty; and building more houses so that homes – whether rented or bought – become more affordable. These are issues that affect us all – if we’re lucky, we’re affected indirectly, but, make no mistake – we ALL stand to benefit from the work Shelter does.

Shelter have teamed up with RIBA – the Royal Institute of British Architects – to offer homeowners the opportunity for a consultation with an architect, in exchange for a donation to Shelter. The suggested donation is £45, but you can give as much or as little as you like – and you don’t have to give anything at all, but that’d just be cheeky. This scheme is brilliant if you want some early stage advice, without any commitment, on the possibilities for changing your house. We took part in the scheme three years ago, and it gave us a really good basis for working out which of our ideas were feasible, and which were just mad fool crazy.

Taking part is really simple – you just need to sign up here, and Shelter will match you with a local architect, who will contact you directly to arrange a home visit at your convenience. And when you register, you’ll be entered into a draw to win a Warren Evans bedroom or a very funky brushed steel wall clock from Art Marketing. But a word of warning – the scheme is VERY popular and usually oversubscribed – we missed the boat the first time I tried to sign up and had to wait for the next year, so though the deadline is 21st August 2013, I’d sign up asap.

So head over to Architect in the House, sign up, and start your journey!

More information on the work of Shelter where you are:

Shelter Cymru

Shelter in Scotland

Shelter in  Northern Ireland

Shelter in England

On choosing an architect

House Project, , ,

You might remember that we are about to embark on a  hugely exciting family journey over the next 18 months  – the house project. I have a feeling that before the end of it, I will be heartily sick of anything and everything to do with builders and decorating. But for the moment we’re in the exciting planning stage, where anything seems possible, and all the horrible stuff that goes with it (moving out, raising a ridiculous amount of cash) all feels nice and vague. Heck, even the husband has said that he thinks it’ll be ‘pretty good’ when it’s done. Believe me, that’s high excitement levels for him!

I’m hoping to blog the journey – when it’s all done and dusted, it’ll be something for our family to look back on (Ha! wasn’t it FUN when the builder broke a sewer/5 of us lived in a studio flat for 6 months/the cat got nailed under the floorboards). Also, if I can rant at you lot when the going gets tough instead of ranting at the long suffering husband, that might give us a fighting chance of getting through this without succumbing to the big D.

Also, I’d like my witterings to be useful to other folk who might be planning to turn their lives upside down in pursuit of creating a living space that works for them, so to start with here’s my tips for choosing an architect.

  • Spend some time thinking about what you want to get out of your project – what are the ‘essentials’ and ‘desirables’? For us, the essentials are: an extra bedroom; an extra shower room & loo; a more open plan living space. Desirables are: a study, more light in the kitchen and another loo. Being completely clear about our needs meant that we could have meaningful conversations with  prospective architects about how they would approach our project.
  • Also have an idea about how creative and avant garde you want to be with your project, and be clear about this when you’re talking to prospective architects. When you finally sign on the dotted line to hire your architect, you want to be reasonably sure that they are not going to come up with plans that, beautiful and sunday-supplement-worthy as they may be, are completely impractical for you and your family. Completely redoing plans, because of a misunderstood brief, will add extra time, and possibly extra costs to your project
  • Talk to family and friends that have recently undertaken building work. Find out what they liked and didn’t like about their architect, and what they might do differently in choosing second time around. They may recommend their architect – and if you have a bona fide recommendation from someone you trust, it’s a pretty good start. But it’s not a done deal – all projects are different and play to different strengths; also personalities are going to come into the equation. So I’d say – add the recommendation into the mix, but don’t skip meeting other architects.
  • Make use of websites that take basic details about your project and put you in touch with appropriate architects. We used Local Surveyors Direct but there are others; you can also find chartered architects in your area on the directory on the RIBA website.
  • Now you have a list of possibles, take some time to find out more about each one. Look at their websites to see what kind of projects they undertake, whether they have recommendations/testimonials, whether they look like people you can get on with – and then arrange to meet the ones that look the most promising.
  • From here on it’s probably a question of chemistry as much as anything else. We met four or five different architects, and probably all of them could have done the job. The one we chose – Nadim from Guildsman was the one who seemed to listen most carefully to what we wanted, and who seemed completely unfazed by talking through the project whilst small children ran amok around him – even to the point of explaining to the eldest why, sadly, it wouldn’t be possible to install a robotic arm with burglar punching capabilities in his bedroom. That sealed the deal for me – if Nad has the patience to deal with robotic arm queries from a seven year old, I figured he’d have enough patience to deal with the queries that he will be getting, on probably an hourly basis, from a slightly neurotic 41 year old. Ha! He has NO idea what he’s let himself in for!

So. I hope that’s a useful starter for 10 if you’re thinking of undertaking a mad fool crazy  dream project. I’d love to hear your experiences and suggestions too, both on choosing an architect and on any aspect of a building experience. But for now, we have our architect – and in a few weeks we’ll have some plans! To be continued!

On hitting back

Family, LearnerMother, , ,

For no particular reason, yesterday was a crap day. Whiny tired kids, whiny tired me, the husband at work all weekend – you know the kind of thing. So pretty much as soon as I could decently put them to bed, I did, and then followed them with a beer and the laptop for a cheering-up dose of Outnumbered, the BBC comedy about a 2-parent, 3-kid family, which never fails to make me feel a bit better about life.

Here’s a clip from the episode I watched last night…

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It’s not one of the funniest bits by any means, but I wanted to share it because it reminds me of one of the ongoing dilemmas we face as parents – what do you tell your children about hitting other kids? It used to be really clear in my mind –  DON’T. And while they are small, that’s fairly easy to maintain. Don’t push other kids around, and if someone does it to you, don’t hit back, just tell a grownup.

It’s not so clear cut for me now. I’m still parroting the ‘don’t hit anyone, ever’, line but particularly with the eldest, should I be encouraging him to stand up for himself more? He’s nearly eight and though I don’t want him to be aggressive to other kids, I do want him to be able to look after himself – and of course as they get older, grassing people up becomes less a route to solving a problem and more to becoming seen as a weakling. It’s not a problem at school, thankfully – where there have been issues between some of the boys the staff seem to be very good at nipping them in the bud. But holiday playscheme is another matter – he is often picked on by one of the older boys there, and there has also been some shoving around. The staff are pretty good but it is never going to be the same controlled environment that it is in school.

Summer holidays are nearly 3 months away but he’s getting anxious about 4 weeks at playscheme already, and I’m getting anxious for him, and about what I should be telling him to do if the picking on gets more physical? He knows not to hit first, but should I be relaxing the line about not hitting back? And what if he does, and it escalates and someone gets really hurt? What are the rest of you telling your kids? I would love to hear about it!