Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

A room with a view in Glass

Post Thumbnail

For most people, the dream of building your own house is just that – a dream.

From start to finish the process is no easy task; it takes a certain kind of determination, drive and creativity to actually follow through with your fanciful architectural ambitions.

This is something the Sykes family know all too well.

Offshore medic Mark always dreamed of building a family home, but his wife Jenny tried to be a little more realistic and was sceptical they would ever find themselves in such a fortunate position.

It took years of fruitless house-hunting across the north-east before the pair, both 42, decided to take the plunge and do it themselves.

“It has always been an ambition of Mark’s to build a house,” said Jenny, who works as a physiotherapist, “whereas I often admired other people’s homes but never thought it was something we would be able to do.

“In the end we spent so long searching for a property that ticked all our boxes that we had this realisation we needed to build our own home for it to be right for us.

“When we were searching for a property we looked as far north as Tain, but our ideal location was in Glass, which is near Huntly, as it’s where we have lived for the last 11 years.

“When we decided to build our own it gave us much more choice in location, and we bought a lovely site in Glass.

“But although we were now on this journey to building our dream house, we found that we didn’t actually have a particular house design in mind.

“Our architect recommended four different options to us and it took lots of meetings and thinking time between Mark’s offshore trips. We eventually whittled it down to one.

“The house was designed to be south-facing and with big windows to make the most of the views.

“It is also on stilts to accommodate the sloping nature of the plot, as we wanted to work with the land rather than flatten everything.”

But the house isn’t entirely brand new, as Jenny and Mark were keen to give it some historic character.

“There had been a cottage on the plot previously and there were loads of old materials from it still lying around,” Jenny said.

“We incorporated stone from it into the gable end of our build.”

As well as giving the property some personality, the couple wanted to make sure it was relatively in keeping with the surroundings.

Having windows which fitted with the style of the building was a big part of this.

“After some deliberation in the end we chose Rationel Danish designed windows,” said Jenny.

“There was a showroom at Sauchen which was great as we wanted to see what we were buying in person.

“The option to have the alu-clad external finish on the natural timber frames really sold them to us.

“They’ve turned out lovely and look really good with the cladding and stone work.

“Oh and they let you appreciate the views, of course.

“We wanted to build a forever home in the countryside, and we’ve done just that.”

For more information about finding the right windows to suit your build visit www.rationel.co.uk/