This showstopper of a Kent home has been 13 years in the making! When Joe and Camilla first moved in over a decade ago, the house couldn't have looked more different, which Joe describes as having a Hansel & Gretel vibe (see the befores to see how true this is). The house fits perfectly within its context, tucked away in the Kent countryside surrounded by endless woodland and rolling fields.

The story of the original house is that the previous owner had lived there since the 1950s, having had the house passed down to them. So, it's pretty old, it had never had any renovation work done before and there was a lot to do. Joe is a mechanical & electrical engineer by trade, so he was delighted to have a big project on his hands. He always envisioned making the house larger, lighter and greener, with extra space being especially important with three fast growing kids. He started with the easier-to-tackle bits such as the rewiring and plumbing, adding a porch, dormers and eventually a bathroom. Then, in 2022, they started the main bulk of the project with Resi, which was a large two-storey side extension almost doubling the footprint of the house. It's safe to say the property is unrecognisable following the work. Joe and Camilla are delighted with their new home, having created the dream family space for their three children, Emma, William and Alexander.

Joe:
It's been a long time planning. We moved here when two of the kids were very young, with the third yet to come. So we wanted to get a family home. We saw this piece of land and saw the little house on it, and thought it would be quite nice. It only had three little bedrooms upstairs, and downstairs there was a kitchen, a hallway, dining room and then a lounge, Oh, and it had a conservatory.

I had done some drawings of the house and what I envisioned it might look like years and years ago, when we looked at doing the whole house. We sort of thought, well, we need to make it bigger, but we didn't actually do anything about it until recently when the kids were getting older, and our daughter wanted her own bathroom. So I went online and had a look, I found Resi and thought, yeah, okay, I'll ring them and see what they can do. I liked the fact that it was all on a portal and the design calls were online. A surveyor came along and did all the scans, and then we got the drawings together and the planning application, which was great. A planner had to come and visit, as we have a couple of neighbours close by, one of which thought the build might be a bit of an eyesore. But there was no issue in the end as the trees are so high around the house that we're essentially screened off from being too visible.

The heating is done by biomass, we have a biomass boiler, which burns wood pellets to heat up the hot water. And then we have solar heating tubes on the garage, and they heat up the hot water as well. So when the sun's out, everything is done by the sun. And obviously the power of the house is done by the solar panels. It's fantastic. So other than the fact we haven't got a water well, it's more or less self contained.

”It’s really great to have the work finished. There's still the balcony to go on the master bedroom, which will be nice when it’s done because it's sort of west facing, so we'll get the sun in the evening. And in the morning, we’ll be able to open the doors up. The view from the bed is just the forest, it's really quite pleasant, and you can hear the birds singing, and there's sheep in the field over there so you can hear bleating during lambing season, and we've got chickens too. It feels great for the house to be done, but I’m already preparing for my next project! There's a cesspit in the garden, it doesn't sound very attractive but the brickwork is immaculate. My plan is to build a spiral staircase going down it to use as a wine store. I don't actually have any wine to put in it, but I thought it would be quite nice!"

I'm from Dorset myself, and grew up around New Forest. My wife is from Scandinavia, and a lot of the interior design choices and the colour palette came from her. We travel a lot as a family, and you can see that in the house. There's influences from Africa, Guatemala, Albania, Montenegro, and of course Denmark.

Photography by Peter Furlong.