Since the property market is pretty much dictating that staying put is the new moving house, what are your best options if you’re ensconced in “a very typical, dull suburban home” with a need for more space? Rona and Neal Cameron have managed to crack this conundrum at their home in Kirkliston, West Lothian, by successfully achieving “as big an extension as we could get for as small amount of money as possible”, yet without scrimping on design quality.

“Ours is not a large, lavish extension on a beautiful, period house,” says Rona. “It’s an ordinary house with a contemporary extension achieved within a modest budget.

“We bought the house in 2005 when our son Charlie was born. It’s a very typical, dull suburban house — a late-1960s brick-build — so it’s not going to win any awards for architectural merit.

“But it’s situated on a large corner plot with a very large garden and that was a big attraction, as we felt we could do a lot with it. We had an extension in mind even when we bought the house.”

It was at this stage that the couple approached William Tunnell, an architect who had been a near neighbour of the couple at their previous home in South Queensferry. “We knew of Wil and then looked at his website. We really liked the contemporary extensions that he has designed and wanted something similar, so we got in touch.”

Essentially, the Camerons were keen to have a good-quality, contemporary extension with its own distinctive identity and which would include a new living space and lavatory on the ground level with a bedroom/office space above. Tunnell’s design solution was to wrap a wall around the back of the two-storey house, with the result that the spaces between the new wall and the original house comprise the additional accommodation.

“We nibbled away at the garden but we didn’t want to impact too much on it, so we created height,” explains Tunnell. “We took great pains to get single-timber planks — with no joins at all — that would go from top to bottom of the building to give this strong, vertical sense to the design. We were keen to achieve this simple, clean detailing.”

The timber-frame structure, with curtain cladding of larch, has created an extra 215 sq ft on the ground floor with the same above. The superinsulated extension also has a porch entrance and glazing designed to catch as much sunlight as possible. “The extension has a formal relationship with the garden, which is why we’ve angled it at 45 degrees and created the big picture window looking down the length of the garden. There’s also a good-sized window facing south to take advantage of maximum daylight,” explains Tunnell.

In common with many of the architect’s domestic extension designs, built-in furnishings have been incorporated into the interior of the Camerons’ house — in this case a bespoke seating area around the hearth of the wood-burning stove. “We take something of a Scandinavian approach to seating — fixed rather than floating,” says Tunnell. “That way you don’t have to fill up the space with lots of other furniture.” The wood-burning stove has also been a key feature. Rona says: “We use the stove all the time and find it makes the whole house warmer. ”

In order to control expenses, demolition was kept to a minimum. “One of the best ways to keep costs down is to have as little demolition work as possible,” explains Tunnell. “Making holes in things and breaking things is expensive and you don’t want to spend all your budget on that. So all but one of the existing openings between the extension and the house have been retained so we didn’t have to spend on propping or lintel work.

“Access to the extension was through the french doors of the original dining room. We’ve simply taken out the doors and re-plastered, so now it’s a clean way through and at very little expense.”

The lack of demolition also meant a relatively painless experience for the Camerons, who lived in the house during the four months of construction.

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