Dear Jonno,
My husband and I bought a farm in the Karoo, but it doesn’t have a house on it. There’s a lot of natural stone on the farm so we would like to build a stone house, either with a tin roof or fibre-cement tiles like the cottage in Farmer’s Weekly of 9 January 2009. A one-bedroom en-suite, open-plan kitchen, with a scullery area, lounge and dining room are planned so we can extend later. I would also like a stoep on three sides. The land is flat. At this stage we don’t have electricity or water, so we’ll be using gas for hot water and cooking, with a jojo tank for the water system. We would like to keep it as eco-friendly as possible and be self sufficient.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Christine
Dear Christine
Taking all your ideas and preferences into consideration, I’ve sketched out what one would imagine is a rather sizable one-bedroom cottage. However, if you intend to add onto the cottage at a later stage, a sizable living area is essential.
Additions usually take the form of enclosing parts of the verandahs, but I think that spoils the farm-house image. Instead, I’ve shown a possible bedroom wing addition (1 & 2 dotted). Access would be through the en-suite closet and would mean losing the en-suite aspect of the main bedroom, but there are many other options, depending on your preferences.
The finishes shown are a random application of stone-wall finishes, but with the columns and chimney in full-stone facings. For the roof, a fibre-cement tile or a profiled cement tile can be used, all excellent products available in a multitude of colours.
A shallow, pitched-iron roof over the stoeps would be almost indiscernible, standing in the flat Karoo, and excellent for mounting solar panels.
The cottage’s colour rendition shown is an earthy blend with the natural environment.
Jonno
