First Blog Post for The Knock

After first seeing The Knock some months ago, we are finally owners of our very own pile of rubble…. and all the opportunity that brings.

We initially started looking at houses in Speyside at the end of 2022 and, like we imagine most people planning on a big move do, wrote a long list of requirements. We wanted to be on our own but in a community; we wanted enough space for our parents to stay, while not having them on top of us while they were staying. We dreamed of a historic building that was also environmentally friendly and didn’t have radiators in the wrong place in every room. The list
continued and was, of course, impossible to meet in one building.

This led us to the idea of building our own and, when searching Rightmove for nth time, we came across The Knock. It already had planning permission in place (though not in the exact format that would meet our requirements) and when completed it could potentially meet all the requirements we had set for a
‘forever’ home.

The immediate future for the Knock is to get plans re-drawn, work commenced and have more conversations with the planners about the changes we would like to make. Our hope is that we can be a in a place to really move forward with building work by the summer of 2024. In the meantime, we will spend our time at The Knock, getting to know it and its history, meeting our neighbours (who likely and mostly rightly will think we are mad) and introducing our children to a new way of life. There will also likely be a lot of conversations on floor material, paint colours and heating technology. We will try our best to post information we learn on here as we go so, we have something to look back on.

We have no experience of rebuilding a house and we have both watched enough episodes of Grand Designs to be aware of how many issues we could face and how difficult/stressful this could be…. but… we are a tightknit household with a wonderful support structure made up of fantastic friends and a loving family. We know this is the life we want, and we can’t see another road to get there – so this is the road we are taking, and we will do our best to enjoy every turn and bump as we go.

Wish us luck!