The Berkshire Twins: snappy double act of symmetrical neighbouring terrace extensions add value — and 20 per cent more space

Some new ideas are so good you wonder why everyone doesn’t do it. In classic commuter belt Twyford, Berkshire, just 40 minutes from Paddington, architect Fred Guttfield has built a steeply angled extension on the back of his Victorian three-bedroom terrace house. Fred and his wife Laura, who works in HR, live in a conservation area.

The terrace is in traditional wire-cut red brick. When the neighbouring couple, who were away during the build, came home to see the smart pitched extension with its huge sliding windows to the garden, and big airy kitchen-living room replacing a poky, cramped kitchen dogleg, they promptly asked Fred, 32, to design them a mirror-image extension on their own home.

The resulting symmetrical pair are now nicknamed the Berkshire Twins. Instead of being the usual hodgepodge of extensions we’re all used to seeing, this snappy double act raises the value of the individual properties more than any mismatched extensions ever could.

Each extension adds 20 per cent more space as well as creating a fourth bedroom and a second bathroom out of pre-existing space.

The two homes were extended and fully refurbished two years apart, all on tight budgets.

The Guttfields made constant tough decisions on prices and Laura, 36, did the sourcing. Their own extension came in at £90,000, with no fees and Fred doubling as a builder and the contractor, and the work for neighbours Nasima and Gareth Dunne was £145,000.

The Guttfields made the now-classic decision of marrying Ikea kitchen carcasses with expensive worktops. Fred designed the smart open storage racks in their kitchen and the very covetable modern dining table. Their white goods came from a budget supplier.

SUPER-FAST BUILD

With Fred running the project and mucking in with the builders, their extension was done in a super-fast four months. He enjoyed it, while learning new skills, and how to organise things efficiently — all invaluable to an architect and to their clients. “I get a real buzz out of seeing how good design changes people’s lives,” he says.

The couple met online in 2010 while both renting. Engaged in 2011, they soon realised that they were priced out of anything except a small flat. So they went house-hunting further afield. Because their two families are out west, and because Fred likes fishing, each weekend they took a Great Western train along the river to a different station, got off, and looked around.

They’d almost decided on Maidenhead, because of Crossrail, but it was already too expensive. Then Laura spotted the Twyford house online. It was above their budget at first but the price eventually dropped, so they went to look. They say, simultaneously: “It was all pine!” It had two rooms downstairs, with the narrow dogleg kitchen and an uncomfortably cold loo at the end — all pine.

There was no scope for an attic conversion, but Fred knew he could rearrange the top floor to create a bathroom out of a wasteful landing, and a fourth bedroom where the old bathroom was. Those changes were relatively simple. The big change would be scrapping the old kitchen and loo and extending outwards and across.

WINNING WAYS

They bought the house in 2013, and Fred got down to drawing. He worked hard to get the conservation officer on board with the more modern of his ideas. Although initially the officer wanted reclaimed brick used throughout, Fred argued for new red brick — “just as the Victorians did in their day”. They found middle ground: Fred agreed to repoint the existing house walls in traditional lime and use reclaimed bricks on the party wall, now a seamlessly intregrated part of the kitchen.

At the back, he excavated down, so that the extension’s side wall wouldn’t spoil his other neighbour’s light, and did lots of light-modelling to allay fears. But in fact, the neighbour loved the privacy that the new wall would bring — rather than being overlooked — so much that they actively supported the planning application.

Fred and Laura got to know the people in their street so well that one nearby householder offered to put them up during the build. Because of that, Fred could be on site early every day. By contracting all the trades himself, he kept up the speed and kept a lid on costs. “The budget was an integral part of our design process,” he says.

When Fred designed his extension he rather hoped his neighbours would want one, too. That they did go for it proves how good the house looked, inside and out - now being wider, lighter, brighter and bigger.

As soon as it was finished, the Guttfields threw a party and their next-door neighbours were able to see the inside of the conversion for the first time. It was that first impression that made them ask for the same thing.

Laura and Fred are rightly proud that people round about like their urban style inside a traditional exterior. Finished off with a low-maintenance garden, including wood-effect decking in hardwearing composite, the house is perfect for a busy couple who enjoy their village community. “There are so many people here just like us,” says Laura. And the next-door neighbours are more like them than most.