Self-build masterclass: how one architect carved a three-storey house from a former garage on a plot 'so tiny most people would have laughed'

Turning a double garage into a three-storey, two-bedroom, two-bathroom, dual-aspect house with solar water-heating, lots of glass and a suntrap roof terrace is as close as you’ll get to the architectural alchemy of making gold from bricks.

Stephen Hall, managing director of a shellac-making company has done just that. His story shows that even run-down, industrial Hackney Wick can surprise and delight with its pockets of opportunity for those who have vision and nerve.

Not as glamorous as Hackney proper, this area, once famous for making sweets, was long bogged down with old or defunct industry and not enough cash for development.

That is, until a double boost from the Overground and the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) after the 2012 Olympics.

The LLDC promotes regeneration — and Hackney Wick is making up for lost time building smart new homes

Clapham-born Hall, 60, began his career working in the City at Lloyds but “got bored dealing in paper”.

He wanted to work with substances, so he joined his uncle’s commodities firm, specialising in shellac, gums and waxes.

It may not sound romantic, but for the first half of the 20th century, shellac was a key ingredient of printing ink and so the life-blood of newspapers, which bought huge amounts.

His uncle retired, and in 1995 Hall merged his shellac interests with a fourth-generation Swiss family company, who since 1926 had owned a factory in a mews in Hackney Wick.

As inks moved towards using synthetic ingredients, the factory languished. Then in 2000 a developer bought the site and created 18 warehouse flats.

Hall owned, and kept, a two-bedroom Victorian worker’s cottage at the front with a small yard. He converted the yard to a garage and lived in the cottage.

But, like any entrepreneur, he wondered whether it was possible to build a house on the garage, not necessarily to live in but to make the plot more valuable. He envisaged a two-storey brick cottage.

When he met architect Adam Howard, whose office was in the mews, he asked him to draw up plans to sell with the plot.

At 242sq ft, the footprint was so tiny that most people would have laughed. Which would have been a mistake, because the ability to pull a rabbit out of a hat is the point of using an architect. And what Howard drew impressed Hall so much that he decided to build the house for himself.

Instead of a cottage the size of a small one-bedroom flat, Howard’s drawings showed an ultra-modern, sunny, energy-efficient house comprising about 1,000 sq ft (including the private outside space on top).

Clad in weather-resistant timber-effect materials with lots of glass, two lower floors each have a neat double bedroom, an elegant grey-tiled bathroom and plenty of storage.

The third floor comprises the living area, with a striking picture window and a grey bespoke kitchen magically enhanced by a glass window instead of a splashback.

To connect the house, Howard designed a narrow oak staircase, beautifully detailed and finished with shadow gaps instead of skirtings, with bespoke, hand-forged balustrades that end in a bar of LED lights on each floor.

Engineered oak flooring throughout, except in the ceramic-floored bathrooms, creates unity.

From the living area, stairs rise to a clever hydraulic glass top opening to a large roof terrace, with a solar panel neatly mounted on a garden cupboard.

In a house of such petite dimensions, attention to detail is essential, and Howard did not waste a cubic millimetre; tucking a utility room under the stairs, making an office niche here and a bookcase on the stairs there.

It works brilliantly and what finally unifies it is the dazzling light that strikes east to west.

The house is perfect for Hall, and his 11-year-old daughter Grace, who lives with her mother out of London, loves to visit.

Hall says that when he meets someone like Howard he leaves them to it so as not to cramp their creative genius, but he did suggest a few things, including smart blackout-cloth panels that pull across the picture window.

One is coloured orange to perk up the restrained, mostly grey palette. More versatile and softer looking than a roller blind, they take up no more space.

After having the drawings approved by the LLDC in 2015, with only a tweak to the cladding, the build took a year and a half, finishing in March last year.

Hall has nothing but praise for his architect, stressing that he is a perfectionist, and that if he didn’t like the way something was done, he had it redone until it was right “with no bodging or compromise”.

The pair met every fortnight to look at samples and discuss. They found they had similar tastes, which helped.

When the scaffolding finally came off, Hall says simply that he was “blown away” by his sunlight-drenched new house with its meticulous detail.