Oak garden room — Swansea

Martin and Liz had an oak framed room on their farmhouse that had reached the end of its life. They wanted it replaced rather than changed — the same room, the same feel, in oak again.

What they wanted to understand before committing was the glazing. They had lived with the old one long enough to know how much rests on how glass meets timber, and they wanted to know exactly what we would do differently.

So we talked them through our face glazing detail and why it is drawn the way it is. Then we put a couple of options together, and they came to see us.

They sat at the desk in the design office and we went through the whole thing on screen until they were happy with it. That is usually worth more than three rounds of drawings by email.

One thing we pushed back on. The room has a modest footprint with six small rooflights in it, and Martin and Liz wanted to keep all six, wanted the oak rafters on show, and wanted the ceiling plastered and painted. All three together is a difficult ceiling — plastering neatly between every rafter, around six openings, in a small room, is slow work that rarely ends up looking as good as the drawing.

We suggested going over the top of the rafters with an engineered oak board instead. It gives a clean finish with no plastering at all, and it solves something else: green oak shrinks as it dries, and plaster does not move with it. Board the ceiling and the joint stays closed. Plaster it and in two years there is a line above every rafter.

We showed them the detail on jobs we had done before, and mocked it up on their own drawings. They took it. It changed the roof build-up slightly, and the pitch meant a specialist membrane under the slate: Permavent Extreme.

Full design and build, quoted at three months from the first visit, and finished inside it.

Martin and Liz had been to the workshop before they invited us to quote. That is worth saying plainly, because it is how a good number of our jobs start — someone comes and looks at what is on the floor, and decides from that rather than from a brochure.