By

Craig Ennew

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Three: Bland Designs

This week: Craig outlines the couple’s plans for their new home…

I feel something of a fraud.

I find myself writing a third post for All Going South – despite the fact that we’ve still neither sold or bought a property! We’ve accepted the offer on Kings Road; our offer on The Shack has also been accepted. A flurry of forms and phone calls – even talk of potential exchange dates – has followed.

People keep asking me how it’s all going. Have we got a date yet? I tell them it’s gone very quiet: it’s that point in the family holiday where you get all excited during the planning and packing, only to discover in ‘Departures’ that there’s a six-hour flight delay. Only we haven’t actually paid for the holiday yet.

All we can do is sit on our suitcases and dream. In our dream, my wife and I ignore the bit when we can’t give away unwanted furniture. We also ignore the part where we scrabble around for somewhere to rent as the builders turn our new purchase into a mock-up of 1970s Beirut. Instead, we’ve pressed fast-forward to the part where we’re skipping away from work on Friday afternoon, slipping on our Crocs and ambling down to Lulworth Cove with a backpack containing two glasses and a bottle of Prosecco. There, we discuss bracing swims across the morning tide and cozying down before the wood burner to watch Winter storms roll in from the sea over Bindon Hill.

The cove

In our heads, The Shack has already become what we want it to be. Let’s face it: imagining this is easier than piecing together its former life. From the estate agent’s floor-plans, you can see that it comprises of a square space slightly overlapping another square space. Then there’s another narrow area attached to the rear. Once in the property, you can see that the first of the squares contains the chimney breast and is currently the living room. What must have been the old front door leads from it – it’s now locked and painted over in thick, gloopy coats of river-bed grey, with a sofa stuck in front of it as if to say, “This is definitely not a door”. I’m guessing this area defined the original footprint of the bungalow. It must have been tiny – three rooms at most. The second space leads from that one and has two more bedrooms and a shower room. A third area, tagged on the back like a bolt-on, flat-roofed mobile corridor, has become the bathroom with a utility room beside it. It has a dismal feel: low ceilings and a tiny windows peering from below a roofline that sits at the same height as the lane beyond. This lane- intriguingly named The Launches – is set back from the main village and is unadopted. I say “lane” – it’s more a gravel track, with an assortment of dwellings in various states of repair on either side. The further down the lane you go, the more curious the buildings. We’re talking duelling banjos. To the side of the property, a convenient public path takes you down to the heart by of the village. Ten minutes walk to the right: Lulworth Cove. Two minutes to the left: the pub. Toss a coin.

“So what are you planning to do with it?” I hear you ask. Allow me to morph into Kevin McCloud before your very eyes.

Grand designs: plans for The Shack

(Cue plinky-plonky music) The couple’s vision is to knock through the somewhat pokey rooms at the front of this bijou coastal retreat, to create a smart, modern space for twenty-first-century living. Robust, anthracite grey bi-folds will span this espace de vie which will reach out to a stunning glass-fronted veranda beyond.

To the rear, a functional bathroom-cum-utility room will nestle between three modest yet simple bedrooms. Here, our intrepid family will hunker down after bracing walks along the joyous stretch of the South West Coast Path. From the third bedroom, reserved for guests, French windows will open out to a bespoke secluded private courtyard.

Internal fixtures and fittings will be sturdy and practical: a high-end kitchen will combine grace with functionality, an inky blue matt finish, capped with a shimmering quartz worktop. True to their super-eco credentials, the couple will install underfloor heating, powered by an air heat pump; creating a zero-carbon eco-haus purposed for future-proofing.

Finally, a playful dialogue between interior and exterior is delivered in the form of a steep, landscaped garden that will drink in the frankly draw-dropping views: lowly thatches of quaint village houses lining the main street of this idyllic Dorset village ; kissed by the stunning backdrop of the bucolic Purbeck hills then – behold! – the Jurassic coast!

Craig and his family plan – somewhat optimistically – to complete all of this within just fourteen weeks. In the meantime they will be living in an old shoebox at the bottom of the garden with their twelve-year old boy, the remains of a piano, and a psychotic tortoise named Reggie. (Cut to picture of a flooded building site bereft of activity save a tortoise crawling over random breeze blocks in the foreground).

Thank you, Kevin. And, at the risk of disappointing you, the property is currently watertight, we have no hope of getting it done by Christmas, and neither of us are likely to get pregnant during the process.

In the meantime, we’ll continue to dream…

©Craig Ennew 2024

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