Oak balcony — Gilwern

Duffryn Mawr is a country house near Gilwern. It takes weddings, large parties and family hire. The first thing Kim asked us for was an oak balcony.

It was also the first time we put the oak branch bracing in front of a client. Instead of a standard curved brace, the detail is drawn from an oak growing near the workshop. Kim liked it, and we built it.

An oak frame balcony on two posts, each standing on its own brick plinth, with the deck carried on joists running back to the house wall.

The bracing is in the balustrade. It is an oak frame with glass set into it, and the braces inside that frame are drawn as branches rather than as the usual curve. This was the first time that detail had been built anywhere. The returns at each end carry plainer curved braces, so the branch face is the one you see from the courtyard.

The decking is grooved composite board. The balcony looks out over the fields to the wooded hillside beyond.

The detail has gone on every structure we have made at Duffryn Mawr since, at Kim's request, and on the chapel at St Teilo's, where it fills the whole gable.

The door the balcony serves is set high — considerably higher than usual — and it caught us out. We had planned the raise around a Genie superlift and took the largest one we could get. Standing on site looking up at the opening, it was plain there was no chance.

So we stopped, stood the day down, and arranged a telehandler for the following morning. With the right machine under it the frame went up without trouble.

It is a plain lesson and worth writing down: measure the lift, not only the frame.

Kim came back twice more — a smoking shelter, then a wedding gazebo — and asked for the oak branch bracing on both. A fourth structure, the marquee, followed after that.