We were approached by an entrepreneur and former winner of The Apprentice to develop a high end home renovation and extension in Banbury, Oxfordshire, with a brief that had real ambition behind it.
Our client did not want a safe, beige improvement. He wanted a private headquarters. A home he could build from. Somewhere to train, think, host, recover, raise a family and grow businesses from one serious base. The problem was that the existing house did not look or feel like that at all.
It had size. It had land. It had potential. But architecturally, it felt tired, awkward and unresolved. The proportions lacked confidence, the exterior felt flat, and the internal layout had too many rooms that existed without enough purpose. Our job was to take that raw material and turn it into something with command: a modern country home with a sharper silhouette, stronger materials, better flow, more useful space and a sense of arrival that finally suited the scale of the site.
The existing house had size, but not stature. It looked like a large late-20th-century estate build: red brick, ordinary white-framed windows, attached garage, shallow suburban rooflines and conservatory-style additions at the rear.
It had aged in the way many of these houses age. The brick had darkened, the white frames looked tired, the conservatory felt dated, and the whole building carried that familiar “executive home” look from another era: expensive enough to be large, but too developer-led to feel special.
Our client did not need a tired redbrick house with a bolt-on conservatory. He needed a private base with presence. A place to build businesses, host people, recover, train, think and live at a higher level.
The client did not want the house to feel like a nicer version of what was already there. He wanted to change its entire status.
The brief was to create a private powerhouse: a home where he could work, train, recover, raise his family, host guests and build businesses from one serious base. The house needed a study that felt like a command room, a social kitchen that could carry family life and entertaining, a stronger connection to the garden, better bedrooms, proper ensuites and an exterior with far more presence.
This was not about adding a few tasteful upgrades.
It was about taking a tired redbrick house and giving it the confidence of a modern country residence.
The ground floor had too many separate rooms and no obvious centre. The kitchen, dining room, living room, garden room and conservatory all existed as different boxes, which made the house feel busy but not generous.
We reorganised the plan around a stronger daily rhythm. The new layout introduces a dedicated study, a larger kitchen and social dining area, a living room, utility and boots room, WC, garage and media wall. The kitchen and dining space become the heart of the house: a place for early starts, family meals, guests, business conversations and long evenings that spill out towards the garden.
The study gives work a proper place. The utility and boots room hide the mess of real life. The living room becomes calmer because it no longer has to do everything.
The house starts to work like a base, not a collection of rooms.
The old rear elevation wasted the garden. It had the familiar conservatory arrangement: glass tacked onto the back, trying to create light, but never quite becoming architecture.
We replaced that idea with a much stronger connection between house, terrace and lawn. Large dark-framed openings draw the living spaces out towards the garden, while the broad patio creates a proper outdoor room for coffee, lunches, guests, children, summer evenings and quiet moments between work.
This is where the house stops feeling like a redbrick estate build and starts feeling like a modern country home. The rear becomes lighter, wider and more social. The garden is no longer something beyond the house.
It becomes part of the life of the house.
If you are planning a high-end home renovation and extension in Banbury, Oxfordshire, Kennet Design can help you turn a dated property into a home with more space, more presence and more purpose.
We design homes around the way people actually want to live: how they work, host, recover, raise families and use their space every day.
A strong renovation should not just make a house look better.
It should make the house worthy of the life being built inside it.
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