Family build dream six-bedroom home in under FOUR DAYS… after having it delivered from Germany in a FLAT PACK
A FAMILY have revealed how they were able to build their six-bedroom home in less than FOUR DAYS after buying it in a flat pack.
Channel 4 show Flat Pack Mansions met the Cooper family, from Bridport, Dorset who purchased a 52 acre plot near Lyme Regis 18-months ago.
The family told the show that they planned on building their own prefabricated home on the land after they “outgrew” their previous home.
The Coopers, dad Richard, mum Nikki and children Teddie, 12, and Stanley, 10, previously lived in London and had a holiday home in the area before deciding that they wanted to stay in Dorset “for life”.
Richard and Nikki, who used to work in the music industry, now own a chain of pizza and cider restaurants after opening their first restaurant in Bridport.
Nikki said: “We’d been looking to buy a bigger house because our house we’ve slightly outgrown it and we’ve been looking all around and didn’t really feel that a sort of old fashioned Victorian or Georgian house is our thing.
“We like open-plan modern living, so we then embarked on a plot of land to build on.”
They now have the land ready to build on – and it comes complete with seven acres of garden and 45 acres of forest.
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The home will also feature a swimming pool in the grounds.
Richard added: “The house will sit here perfectly in these woods and I think it will be a pretty unique property.
“The great thing about building your own home is that you sit down with a piece of paper and you put down what you want, obviously within budget, that’s why it’s so brilliant.
The pair thought that going for a prefabricated would not only be an eco-friendly way of doing things, but also keep everything a “fixed price and fixed time”.
A timber-frame, flat packed house can cost 10 to 25 per cent less to build than a conventional home and the couple’s six-bedroom pre-fab house was made in factory Bavaria, Germany.
Richard added: “They make individual houses that we could get involved with the design with.”
The style of pre-fab the Coopers have gone for is a closed panel system – this is when as much of the build as possible is done in a factory.
The windows the doors, every light switch and fitting will all have been chosen beforehand – even the exterior walls and exterior will have been clad before leaving the factory.
Offsite construction can save around 15 per cent in building costs and it has environmental benefits too – with less waste, more recycling and material transportation reduced by as much as 40 per cent.
After just five days of factory time, Richard and Nikki’s flat packed structure is wrapped, loaded and en route to Dorset.
The first floor was successfully installed on day one, the second on day two and by day three the roof and the entire structure was finished - well within an originally proposed schedule of four days.
Richard said: “It’s stunning, it’s breath-taking, it’s really something else – and all in four days.”
The family originally had a budget of around £700,000 to build the home, although this crept up to around 1.4million euros (£1.2million).
Richard added: “[building prefab is] not necessarily the cheapest way, but it is certainly an interesting way.
“But I think, like any build, the house cost much more than anticipated.”
Flat Pack Mansions is on Channel 4, Sunday May 21, 7pm.
Earlier this year, we revealed the bright pink Essex mansion that can be yours for £1,800 a night and has a hot tub, indoor and outdoor cinema screens and its own photo studio and the £1m mansion on exclusive millionaires’ that COLLAPSED during super-basement renovations.