The ‘If only…’ Club

My other half as accused me of being a little too preachy with some of the sermons, sorry articles, I have written over the last number of weeks and to be honest, she has a point. It seems that the older I get the more opinionated I get, and I am constantly trying to find an outlet to blow off some steam. She has stopped listening to me or just nods absent mindedly at me, my young son ignores me and my one-year-old daughter is more intent on pulling the cat’s eyebrows off than paying me the slightest bit of attention when I’m off on a rant. That just leaves this column, so my-my, aren’t you all so very lucky.
And so, this week I’m going to give you my two cents, or possibly five, on the first steps of garden design and planning, which start with the house itself.
When planning their house, most people spend time and money getting every detail right on the inside. From the position of internal doors to the layout of the kitchen, and from where to put the fireplace to what type of fixture to use in the bathroom, it’s all perfectly thought out to the last detail. Unfortunately many people don’t even consider the garden until the last cushion is placed on the couch and everything inside is finished. It’s around this time that people look out their windows or doors and start using ‘If only’ at the beginning of each sentence.
‘If only we had a window in that wall we could see the river from here!’
‘If only we had planted that hedge a year ago it would be growing by now!’
‘If only we had put the patio door in the other wall our deck would be in the sun!’
‘If only we had faced the house that direction we would have a mountain view from the living room!’
Hindsight is probably the most useless and unhelpful of attributes, and we all know plenty of people who use it to full advantage to say ‘I knew that would happen!’ after the event, so don’t give them ammunition. From the position and size of each and every window to the orientation of the house, planning is crucial if you want to stay out of the ‘If only…’ club.
A few years ago, when we went about choosing the house we wanted from the development we now live on, we studied the site plan long and hard. We had a choice of about 20 houses, all of which were the same shape and size, but their positions weren’t. The end houses were gone, not to mention out of our price range, so we looked at the others carefully until one stood out above the other. Firstly, the rear garden was going to face south. Secondly, it would be situated on a slight bend that meant that the plot on which the house would stand was wider at the back than at the front giving a much bigger back garden. And thirdly, it would have a downward sloping driveway, which meant that as long as I kept my handbrake in good working order we had the advantage of looking out from the front window onto a bank of plants (no lawn), even when we were sitting down.
So even when you are buying a house off plan where they all look identical, not all houses are really the same. I know this all seems like common sense but when you are wrapped up in the act of purchasing the house you can easily forget details like this.
Building your own house gives you more flexibility in a lot of ways and it certainly gives you a lot more choice with regard to the actual position and orientation of the house. It amazes me why people always seem to position a house parallel to the road instead of positioning it to make the best use of the sun, the view or any other logical reason. Maybe it’s to do with planning regulations where there is a row of houses but I think it’s more to do with what is perceived to be the ‘norm’ in building a home.
Also, of course, you can dictate where the windows go (Within reason. Mrs Mulcahy mightn’t want you looking in on her doing Pilates in the back room of her house next door.), so you need to look at framing the view from each important windows as if you were taking a photo. That mountain should be at least in frame when you’re sitting on your couch watching the sun go down with a glass of vino.
The back of the house or wherever you plan to put your patio should be south, or better still, south-west facing to catch the last rays of the evening sun. A shaded patio might work well in a country with more sunshine than Ireland but here it will become an unusable, moss-covered, snail exploited waste of space.
So, keep all this in mind when you start talking with your architect. Dictate where you want those windows and where that patio door should go. Any architect who knows his stuff will already be aware of all this anyway. Visit the site and position yourself where you will be sitting and visualise where every aperture will go, turn the house if planning allows so that you have the best aspect for the use of natural light, both inside and out. Think it all through before you even consider what shade of cream to paint the guest bathroom.
Please don’t be one of the ‘If only…’ club. It has enough members already and the cost of joining is too high.
Here endeth the lesson. I’ll try to leave the sermons to those who are better at them from next week on.
Maybe.