From Verandah to Art Space - A Saga

The trouble with trying to improve your house is that it begins as a calm, sensible conversation about outdoor living and ends with you apparently commissioning a small leisure complex on the back elevation.

We started, innocently enough, with the idea of a verandah. Nothing too ridiculous. Just a pleasant raised deck off the back of the house, somewhere to sit with a cup of tea, look across the garden, and pretend one lives in a lifestyle supplement rather than in a country where most outdoor furniture spends nine months of the year looking damp and faintly ashamed under a cover.

The AI was brought in to help, which is always the first mistake. AI design tools are marvellous in the same way that an enthusiastic Labrador is marvellous. Full of energy, occasionally impressive, but fundamentally unable to understand the phrase "do not touch that". You ask it to add a modest verandah and it decides the existing house would be much improved if it were replaced with a boutique corporate retreat. You say, "Keep the roofline exactly as it is," and it hears, "Please invent three new gables, move the windows, and make it look like a wellness centre outside Cirencester."

After much mucking about, two days, repeated corrections, and what I can only describe as digital shouting, it eventually produced three plausible options. Not because it had suddenly developed humility, obviously, but because it had been wrestled into submission like a spaniel with a stolen sausage. Even then, you get the strong impression it would still quite like to put a curtain wall on the west side and turn the kitchen into a reception area.

The first design was elegant, open, and made of wood. And, if I am honest, it is the one most naturally suited to the house itself. The place is not some glass-and-zinc modernist statement perched above a vineyard in southern France. It is a timber-clad house, and a timber verandah feels as though it belongs there rather than having arrived with a marketing brochure and an attitude. It has warmth. It has sympathy with the building. It looks as though the house might have quietly grown it for itself. 

Then there is the steel one. Cleaner, sharper, more modern. Slightly less cuddly, perhaps, but very appealing in its own way. I have a weakness for mix and match styling, and that version scratches the itch rather nicely. There is something satisfying about combining the traditional and the contemporary, provided one stops short of making the place look like a gastro-pub with underfloor finance. The steel design has that crisp, engineered look which suggests somebody measured things properly and owns a pencil that never breaks.

The trouble is that steel has its own little personality disorder. It has to be measured to the millimetre, fabricated off-site, delivered, lifted, offered up and then, in theory, fit. This is all very impressive when it works. When it does not work, it can become a financial reconstruction of the Battle of Passchendaele, but with more swearing and fewer horses.

There is also the problem of third-party contractors. With steel, you are very quickly in the world of drawings, fabrication slots, delivery dates, crane access, bolt holes and people telling you that the beam is exactly right even though it is clearly sitting six inches away from where the actual house is. One tiny error, one hidden irregularity, one wall that turns out not to be quite where the drawing thought it was, and the whole thing stops being a verandah and becomes a meeting.

A wooden structure is more forgiving. Wood comes with a certain amount of mercy built in. If something is slightly out, it can usually be accommodated on site by Colin and his chop saw, there and then, without a conference call, a revised CAD drawing and a man in a branded fleece explaining that the tolerances were within specification. There is something deeply reassuring about a building material that can still be persuaded by a competent bloke standing next to a pile of sawdust.

Then, inevitably, practicality stuck its head round the door wearing muddy boots.

Because the problem with a verandah is that the space underneath it is just sitting there, doing nothing. And once you have noticed that, you cannot unnotice it. It becomes like the awkward gap behind a sofa or the bit of garage wall that could, in theory, take another shelf. It starts whispering. "You could enclose me. You could insulate me. You could put windows in me. You could turn me into an actual room."

And that is how a pleasant outdoor platform slowly becomes an extension.

The fully enclosed version is, without much doubt, the most practical of the early options. It makes proper use of the footprint. It turns space into room rather than shadow. It gives you something usable in all seasons, which in Britain is a serious point in its favour.

Unfortunately, it also looks a bit clunky and expensive. It has that faint air of a project which begins as "a bit of extra space" and ends with structural drawings, building control, mysterious invoices and somebody saying the word "foundations" in a tone that makes your wallet sit down. A beautiful open structure may be less useful, but at least it does not look as though it has been quietly attending evening classes in mission creep.

And then, just to make matters worse, I had another idea. Not a full room in the heavy, obvious sense, and not a completely open verandah either. Something in between. A steel frame, perhaps, with a very open, glass-enclosed lower section. Still light. Still transparent. Still allowing the verandah to look like a verandah, rather than the roof of a small municipal visitor centre. But with the lower part turned into a usable room by glass rather than by masonry and regret.

The irritating thing is that this might actually be the cleverest compromise. It keeps some of the elegance, keeps the sense of openness, and still makes use of the space underneath. It could be done in steel, which would satisfy the crisp modern itch. It could also be done in wood, which would suit the house better, suit Colin better, and reduce the risk of the whole thing becoming an exercise in millimetre-perfect off-site fabrication followed by on-site disappointment.

There is also the awkward little fact that we have a structural problem. Naturally. There is always one, because houses are not built to assist future bright ideas. They are built to remain standing, keep the weather out, and then sit there quietly waiting to make your next improvement more difficult.

In this case, the top lintel of the French doors downstairs is not aligned with the upper storey floor. So the dreamy idea of stepping gracefully from the bedroom onto the verandah immediately runs into the less dreamy reality of needing a step down. And not a charming little threshold, either, but the sort of thing that turns a romantic architectural gesture into a trip hazard with views.

It gets better. The upstairs bedroom also has a minstrel gallery at either end, because of course it does. That means any internal access would require some sort of sloping bridge over one end of the living room, which sounds wonderfully theatrical until you imagine actually building it. At that point it starts to look less like a clever design solution and more like the Bridge of Sighs in a medieval visitor attraction with heating problems.

So the only sensible answer is an external staircase. Not because one set out wanting one, but because the house has quietly folded its arms and said, "No, you may not simply walk through the wall there." That is the joy of working with an existing building. It has opinions. It does not express them early. It waits until you have fallen in love with a drawing.

There is also the awkward matter of who is going to build the thing. I do not mean this in the abstract sense favoured by architectural programmes, where some immaculate couple in spectacles speak vaguely of "the contractor". In our case, the obvious choice is Colin, the same bloke who built the house in the first place, who also happens to be a neighbour and a friend.

That immediately introduces a different sort of logic. One starts thinking not just about aesthetics and cost, but about what would suit his skills, what would sit comfortably with the house as built, and what would not involve months of trying to explain to somebody else why that beam is there, why that floor is not where a drawing thinks it ought to be, and why the roofline is not to be molested under any circumstances.

There is another advantage to Colin, which is that he does jobs for us at mates' rates. This is not quite the same as saying he appears in a flash of light, builds an oak-framed wonder in a fortnight, and then vanishes to polite applause. There is a trade-off. Colin appears for a few days, does useful and competent things, and then disappears for a month on a contract that actually makes him a profit.

This is, broadly speaking, why the house took five years to build. Not that this was a particular problem for us. We were not sitting in a caravan in February, eating beans with a teaspoon and sobbing into a roll of insulation. The arrangement worked because we understood the deal. We accommodate Colin's fleeting appearances in exchange for a reasonable cost, which seems a fair exchange in a world where builders' quotes can now sound like ransom demands with VAT.

So now we have the real problem. Not whether a verandah would be nice. Not whether the house can carry it. Not even whether the garden can survive several weeks of men in boots walking over it while looking thoughtful. The real problem is that each design makes a different kind of sense, but not an equal amount of sense.

The full room version is plainly the most practical. It gives you proper usable space, turns dead ground into something valuable, and makes the strongest grown-up argument. But it also looks a bit heavy, a bit costly, and a bit too much like the start of a project that will acquire extras in the night.

The steel version looks very nice and scratches the mix-and-match itch, but it still carries all the millimetre-perfect fabrication risk already mentioned. Beautiful, yes. Forgiving, no.

The wooden version, by contrast, suits the house, Colin's skills and our wallets. It is the option most likely to be adjusted in real time rather than escalated into a formal incident.

Which means the open wooden verandah is probably still the sensible answer, unless the glass-enclosed version can be made to behave itself visually and financially. That is the catch, although we could leave the enclosure for a year or more. Build the verandah first, live with it, and only then decide whether the space underneath deserves glass, lighting and delusions of cultural importance. It must still look like a verandah with a light room beneath it, not a conservatory that has started going to the gym.

And then, some time later, just when the whole matter has almost become sensible, a genuinely brilliant idea arrives.

If there is going to be any enclosed space at all, why not make use of it properly?

Not as a utility room. Not as one of those vague "garden rooms", which is estate-agent language for a place where wicker furniture goes to die. No. The extra room could be used as a display cabinet for a Triumph Rocket 3.

At which point the entire project suddenly acquires moral clarity.

A Triumph Rocket 3 is not merely a motorcycle. It is a 2.3 litre piece of mechanical theatre. It is what happens when somebody looks at a motorbike and thinks, "Very nice, but could it have the engine capacity of a harbour tug?" It does not belong tucked away behind paint tins, old extension leads and a half-bag of compost. It deserves lighting. It deserves glass. It deserves, if we are honest, a slightly reverential pause when entering the room.

And when I eventually tire of the Rocket 3, which is always possible because novelty is a treacherous little beast, I could replace it with the Triumph GT6. That is assuming, of course, that I ever get round to completing it, which already gives the project a generous archaeological timescale.

The GT6 would make an excellent conversation piece, but not merely as a stationary exhibit. I would still intend to drive it, obviously. The problem is that by the time it is finished, my knees may have issued a formal notice of retirement from low-slung sports cars. I am intending to fit a Webasto sunroof, so there is at least a theoretical solution. Attach a hoist to the roof of the extension room, lower me through the open roof into the cockpit, and off I go, heroically, until my bladder screeches and I have to return to the glass case and be winched out again.

That may sound absurd, but only because it is absurd. Still, it has a certain elegance. The car gets displayed. I get to drive it. Visitors get a talking point. And nobody has to watch me trying to fold a retired human frame into a Triumph GT6 using only hope, momentum and mild profanity.

So the glass-enclosed version, previously just the latest dangerous thought, suddenly becomes visionary. Yes, it may give away a little of the airy elegance of a purely open verandah. But it gives you a room, and a room gives you options. In fact, call it an Art Space and the whole thing immediately sounds less like a domestic extension and more like a cultural intervention, complete with red rope cordon, artistic lighting, and visitors being invited to contemplate the emotional relationship between horsepower and poor impulse control.

First an illuminated Triumph Rocket 3 display space visible from the patio and the house, then perhaps a GT6 in its dignified afterlife as sculpture between outings. I could probably charge admission, although I suspect the gift shop would mainly consist of old gaskets, used sanding discs and whatever GT6 part I bought twice by mistake. That is no longer mere practicality. That is culture, with a faint smell of petrol.

This is how domestic improvement gets out of hand. You begin by wanting somewhere nice to sit in the evening. You end up weighing timber against steel, friendship against budget, elegance against usable floor area, and whether your future motoring life requires a roof-mounted hoist next to a red rope cordon.

I should probably start by asking Colin what timber costs this week. Or investigate a turntable....