Sharron and David Reetham overcame various challenges in the planning process to create a barn-style new rural home

WORDS JANE BOWLES

PHOTOS JEREMY PHILLIPS

Few people can claim to have caught the self-build bug at the age of 16, but that’s exactly what happened to Sharron Reetham. “My parents constructed their own house the year I did my GCSEs”, she says. “I went on all the site visits and watched the whole process, from foundations to the erection of the timber frame.” Sharron found the journey so fascinating that she decided there and then to create her own home one day.

Developing the design

Sharron and her husband David had already built two Potton houses, which they sold on a commercial basis back in 2008. So in 2014, when they decided to create their own home near Lincoln, the couple naturally looked at the firm’s offering again. “We sent the drawings out to several other companies but kept coming back to Potton, and eventually went with them”, says Sharron.

Angled skylight windows introduce extra light into the streamlined contemporary kitchen-diner

The pair already had a clear idea of how they wanted the house to look. They were keen to establish a barn-style abode that would fit with the farm building aesthetic prevalent in the local area. “We had previously hunted high and low but couldn’t find what we were looking for on the open market, especially as we wanted an ecofriendly property with energy-saving features”, says Sharron.

The next step for the Reethams was to create a detailed brief for John Roberts, their architect. “We wanted this to be our forever house, with spaces we could easily adapt to our changing lifestyle as our two young daughters grew up”, says Sharron. The couple also wanted space to work from home, and plenty of room for entertaining family and friends. Energy-efficiency was a high priority, too, so that the house would be cheap to run.