I have just been to see a 1930’s semi-detached house that has been occupied by the same family for the last thirty or so years. The vendor who is selling as the house is now too large for her told me that her husband was a ‘Master Builder’, and that he had made the various alterations and had extended the house to its present size. Well, I didn’t meet him, he is on another building site somewhere in the sky and I’ll bet he’s doing another good job there! When he extended the house here, he re-used the hip rafters and the original hip beams and they all married up with the original, so he knew what he was doing and he was re-cycling all at the same time! You could not see the ‘join’ between the original and new walls; you could not see any scarring from where the chimney breasts had been removed and you could not feel even the slightest ‘bump’ between the old and new floors. He had built a double garage and had landscaped the garden, and it was all well maintained and in good simple decorative order. My Clients have found a very pleasant house, and these Clients of mine are good at that…   more »