The windows were too small, the ceilings were too low and the bathroom had been tacked on and was in the wrong place.” The idea behind the build was to replicate the real thing but to take a contemporary approach to the arrangement of space, and to use modern infill panels instead of wattle and daub. Based on the Grans-burys’ own sketches, the skeleton of the house was tailor-made by Border Oak, a timber-frame package specialist (which has made a small fortune building mock-Tudor villages in Japan) and delivered in kit form. The first they saw of their future home was 26 tons of oak stacked on the back of a lorry. According to Marie, the framework went up like Meccano in a couple of weeks. “We intend to stay here for the rest of our lives.”Chris and Marie Gransbury have also done their own thing for love, not money, but their project is the antithesis of the Kayes’. Standing on a third of an acre in a semi-rural conservation area in Hertfordshire, their home is a reproduction of a 17th-century, timber-pegged, post-and- beam cottage.

And although the Kayes won’t divulge the project’s total cost, they are reasonably confident that the house – finished last year – is worth more than their investment “We didn’t build to make a profit,” says Karen. He managed the site and a workforce of 35 himself, which helped reduced overheads. But planning headaches are a thorn in the side of most self-builders, and the Kayes have at least succeeded where others have failed by building 4,000 feet of glass geometry on a sensitive site between two older houses.Described by Geoff “as a feat of structural engineering”, the house took eight months to build. A laminated timber frame was extended on the first floor to create a roofed balcony with nautical railings.

A stainless steel spiral staircase rises from the ground floor to an internal gallery beneath a domed roof light.”From the outside, it looks like the bow of a ship,” says Karen. And looking out from inside the upper deck creates the illusion that the craft is about to launch into the port’s main shipping channel and sail out to sea.Poole’s planners made no objections to the basic concept, but by the time a second application had been accepted the Kayes were forced to dispense with the garage-office block and scale down the proportions of the house “Nothing’s ever perfect,” sighs Karen. The favoured solution was the work of Gordon Robbins, whose glass and concrete split-level house not only suited the site but also met the couple’s specificiations: an indoor swimming pool and a detached garage block with a flat and office above. His design, inspired by a passing Channel ferry, capitalised on the harbour views with floor-to-ceiling picture windows. “If we’d spent pounds 100,000 on that house, it still wouldn’t have been right,” says Karen.

“But we thought if we demolished the building we could start again.”Beatles fans thought otherwise. John Lennon had built the house for his Aunt Mimi, and dealing with a barrage of pleading Beatlemaniacs was one of the many irritant factors that frittered away two years without a brick being laid.In that time, the Kayes purchased the land at auction without first agreeing planning permission (thereby breaking of the first rules of self-build), they sold their Lee-on-Solent house and were left homeless, they forked out the cost of evicting squatters from Aunt Mimi’s bungalow, met open hostility from neighbours and had their first planning application thrown out.The Kayes had instructed three architects to come up with ideas. It was, says Karen, “a modern bunaglow with excellent coastal views”, and when they decided to move to Dorset, they wanted something even better. “Ideally, we wanted a superbly modern house with lots of glass, natural light and airy open spaces. We looked at a lot of waterfront properties, but nothing came up to scratch.” Geoff, a former cathedral sculptor, is a commercial property developer, but neither of them wanted to embark on another build-your-own scheme.A change of heart was prompted by the sale of an unremarkable bungalow on a narrow sliver of land by Poole harbour The location was perfect; the bungalow wasn’t. Last year, around 18,000 Brits built their own homes; at least 10,000 of them rolled up their sleeves and took hands-on control of an aspect of construction.Geoff and Karen Kaye, were among them, and although their strikingly contemporary, money-no-object seaside house in Poole, Dorset, stands out among a crowd of period repros, the forces that led to its construction are fairly typical among self-builders.Ten years earlier, the Kayes had built their own home in Lee-on-Solent. Self-builders, I suggest to Renshawe, proliferated in the Thirties and again in the Sixties.