Way back in 2013 I wrote a post on the earlier generation of this blog after visiting the Grand Designs exhibition in Birmingham in October of that year.

Lean, green and keen at Grand Designs Live

I was working closely with a high performance window manufacturer at the time and this was the first show they had exhibited at.

The seeds for my own ‘Grand Design’ were planted at that event, as the last section of that old post illustrates.

Back then I was imagining a high quality garden building that incorporated features such as spa facilities, skylights, bi-fold doors and green roofing.

The bottom line is I have always wanted to design and build something from scratch that incorporated the majority of key building techniques and requirements. However, I’ve never really wanted to take on a whole house project.

So when the family suggested that it was time to replace the old log cabin that I had kept adding to over the years I decided the time was right to bring my ‘Grand Design’ to fruition.

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