How Flexible is Your Home?

Sofa here, TV there. No! TV here, sofa there. Have you ever changed your mind about the way you want a room laid out? Everybody has. When drawing up the plans for a new home, self builders will often have a clear idea of how they want their interior to look, and will plan the house with this in mind.

However many self builders only realise that the living room is too small or the bathroom will not fit that new sauna/shower they bought on impulse last week once the house foundations are being laid out.

The Traditional Housing Bureau (THB) advises that by building in masonry you can change your plans right up until the last minute without causing long delays in the build time. It won't always make you popular with your builder, but at least alterations can be picked up early and dealt with simply. Kit homes do not afford the same flexibility where any changes to the original plan can take you right back to the drawing board.

If you don't want to be restricted in your lay out by walls, masonry homes with precast floors offer open plan living for the 21st Century. Precast floors allow upstairs and downstairs layouts to be independent of one another - in addition they offer excellent sound insulation between floors.

So once your house is built, next comes to the fun part of turning it into a home, and again here masonry has its benefits. You can hang pictures where ever looks best, and those solid oak kitchen units you have chosen can be fitted easily to masonry walls, as you don't have to find the timber wall support to attach them to.

Hopefully, after the months of planning, building and decorating we get our dream home exactly as we want it, but what do we do when our family's needs grow beyond anything we initially planned for? THB answers "a masonry home can be easily adapted to meet the needs of a family as it grows. An extra bathroom or bedroom is one of the key motivators for moving home, but those who own a masonry home are not forced to move - they can simply extend, and at a cost that is much cheaper than moving - both financially and emotionally".

The current timber framed kit homes can be invasive and costly to extend.

Timber frame kit homes often appear to be the simple option to those of us who want the flexibility of designing our own home but don't want to have to deal with an architect, a builder, a project manager and all the other individuals we may have to get involved to get the project completed. But THB says "there are a growing number of masonry companies who can provide the complete service, helping you design your dream home and taking all the project headaches away".

For more information on the design flexibility of masonry homes visit the Traditional Housing Bureau at www.housebuilding.org.uk