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 Home improvement Coming along nicely - the homes of their dreams (Filed: 27/04/2002) Russell & Janette Harris RUSSELL HARRIS, 44, is a television presenter and producer. He is married to Janette, 32, and they have two children, James, 12, and Sophie, six. The Harrises are converting and extending a Grade-II listed, 1870 water tower in Lymm, Cheshire, into a modern, family home. The build is scheduled to finish early next year.
"Obviously, we can't start the build until all the telecoms people have removed their equipment from the tower, and it's hard sometimes to get them all to bat for the same team, especially since they are supposed to be in competition with each other. In fact, a lot of my day-to-day work involves coordinating all the people who have come together for the project. "We now have about 60 people on board, and many of them are working weekends and nights, and above the call of duty. We threw a party recently for all the architects and builders at a local restaurant to thank them for the effort they are making. "When we went for the planning permission, there were some local protestors, which hurt a bit. I get quite emotional about the whole thing, and I actually burst into tears when planning was granted. But we wanted to get the locals on our side. So we commissioned an independent survey to check the radiation levels from the mobile phone masts. The survey found that the levels were 25,000 times beneath the European safety levels. In fact, even up on the roof, it was 9,000 times under, so hopefully that will help appease everyone. Funnily enough, when we meet the villagers around town, they are always very pleasant, and never talk about the tower. "The most exciting part of the project recently has been picking out all the fittings for the tower. We thought about having a limestone floor, but instead went for a liquid resin one, which will be white, and seamless. The floor and walls will also be white. We are relying on the lighting scheme, designed by Kate Wilkins, who designed the lighting scheme of the Tate Modern, to bring an extra dimension. She recently gave a presentation to us, the architects and mechanical engineers, and at the end everyone just burst into applause. The architects did tell me afterwards that the lighting scheme will add about £10,000 to the cost of the build, but it's going to be worth it. "We have been down to London a lot to pick out fittings. For some reason, the sort of thing we are looking for is sadly not available up here. We went to see one set of people about a special limestone bath that cost £14,000 and which Robbie Williams has just had installed. We might get our own custom-built version, though, because since we are spending so much, we want to create something entirely different. "I have stopped thinking about the cost. In many ways, I'm sticking my head in the sand, and I do worry sometimes about running out of money and not being able to finish the job. But I think we will manage it. One piece of advice I would offer other self-builders is to double-check everything. We assumed that we would have to install a very expensive system to pump water to the top of the tower, but when I did some research, I found that the water pressure will be sufficient anyway, because the tower is so close to the main pipe line. So that's £6,000 saved." |
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| © 2001 - 2002 Russell Harris |
