‘We demolished our home and then rebuilt it – it was cheaper than renovating’

There was a long shopping list of things that were wrong with Lisa and Jeremy Connick’s house. From its erratic water pressure and ageing wiring, to the outdated layout and low attic ceilings which meant Jeremy was constantly battered and bruised.

Rather than live with the property’s shortcomings they decided to act. After considering and rejecting the idea of selling up and moving on, or embarking on a full scale renovation, they decided that tearing down the dated little house and replacing it with a £2m flatpack eco home was their best course of action.

“If you think about it in purely terms of money and investment it was probably quite a brave decision,” says Jeremy. “But we now intend to live here for the next 20 years and you can’t monetise that.”

Over two and a half years the couple had their house in Wimbledon, south-west London, razed to the ground and replaced with a contemporary brick house, which is a little larger and a lot better designed for the requirements of modern life.

And, thanks to VAT rules, they also think their rebuild, although expensive, has been better value than a renovation might have been.

Jeremy, 60, had bought the circa 2,700sq ft 1930s house with his late wife back in 2003. He and Lisa got together nine years ago, and have been married for three. They have, between them, five children – all in their 20s.

“To be fair it was a fabulous family house with a great garden,” says Jeremy. “The problem was that it was a bungalow with a second floor built up into the eaves, which meant that I kept smacking my head on the roof.”

For Lisa, 57, the issue was how compartmentalised the ground floor was, with separate kitchen, dining room, living room, and TV room. To make matters worse the kitchen, where she and Jeremy spent most of their time, was at the front of the property and looked out at a garage.

Before the pandemic the couple decided that they wanted a fresh start in a new home in Notting Hill, west London. They got as far as putting their house on the market, lining up a buyer, and starting to house hunt.

But during the series of Covid lockdowns they not only lost their buyers but also their desire to move, realising how lucky they were to have a large garden and being within a short walk of Wimbledon Common. Wimbledon also had a good selection of lovely local shops, cafes and restaurants.

They took the house off the market and initially considered having it remodelled. But they quickly realised it would be incredibly expensive to totally reconfigure it and raise the roof to give better ceiling heights.

“And if you are worried about the environment, which I am, there is no point mucking around with an old house,” says Jeremy, a lawyer who is now involved in a series of eco start-up companies.

“The environmental improvements we have made are massive. There is a heat pump, triple glazing, masses of insulation. The house doesn’t have a gas supply, and the electricity bills are tiny compared to what they used to be.”

Another factor was VAT. Renovators pay the full 20pc, but new builders can claim back the tax, making their budgets work harder for them.

On the recommendation of a friend, the couple hired Erbar Mattes Architects to design them a new open-plan house with four en suite bedrooms.

The firm created a new pale-brick house which sits roughly on the same footprint as its predecessor. Its angled roofline mirrors the shape of nearby houses, and the kitchen is now at the back of the house overlooking the garden. It was built out on to the old house’s wraparound porch, which means the new house is slightly bigger than the old one, at around 3,300sq ft.

Its heart is the pared-back double-height kitchen, with a huge skylight and picture windows overlooking the garden on three sides, which leads through to a dining area and seating area. The walled garden has been similarly zoned, with an outdoor kitchen, a lawn, a seating area which catches the evening sun, and a vegetable garden.

Back indoors plenty of storage has been built in, and there is also space for a small study/TV room, a gym, and a utility room and pantry.

Upstairs the new house has been built up to match the height of its neighbours, so the upstairs bedrooms now have plenty of headroom, nestled into the pitch of the roof.

However, this modern home in the midst of period houses didn’t please everyone. “There were probably 20 people who wrote [to the council] and said it was a disgrace,” says Jeremy. 

“I understand that it is very different from everything else, but it was designed so that the planners would like it, and getting planning permission was no problem.”

Planning consent was granted in April 2021 and demolition work began within weeks. To keep out of the way Lisa and Jeremy booked themselves on a walking holiday from Puglia, Italy, to Canterbury, Kent, which would take up the best part of six months. By the time they returned to the UK, moving into a rental in Notting Hill, the old house had vanished and the new house was taking shape.

Its timber frame was built off-site and then erected on site like a giant jigsaw puzzle. The technique was chosen because it is a more energy efficient building technique than traditional bricks and mortar.

By July 2023, the house was finished enough to move in. “We had no kitchen, no garden, no wardrobes, and one functioning bathroom,” says Lisa. She had quit her job as an accountant before the trek and thinks that being on hand while final decisions were being made was helpful. By September 2023, the work was complete.

In total the house has cost the couple almost £2m to build. Had Lisa and Jeremy simply sold up as originally planned, the house would have fetched around £3.7m. The new house has since been valued at around £5.5m, which in cash terms means all their efforts have not been rewarded with capital growth. 

However, Jeremy points out that their original plan of moving would have meant paying around £500,000 in stamp duty for their next home, and almost the same again on estate agents’ fees for selling up.

“And we would not have ended up with a house that makes us feel like this one does,” he says. “It is hard to explain what it does to your mood, but when you get up in the morning, open the blinds, and the first thing you see is the garden, it is so joyous.”