Imagine arriving home to your stylish and characterful home that oozes Victorian period charm. Your roof a crowning example of good taste and fine design that will last long into the future. Imagine your dry and warm home, beautiful and comfortable, inside and out.

The problem is you have no idea how to get there. You don't even know what decisions you need to make. Or, you have an idea, but it's so overwhelming that you don't know what to choose.

This much you do know. You know you need to replace your roof. Slates have slipped, the battens have snapped, there's no roofing felt left if there ever was any, and it's leaking in several places. You know you need some more insulation. It's freezing in winter and too hot in summer.

Victorian roofs come in many different forms. Around Manchester and Liverpool and throughout most of the North-West of England, most Victorian homes are in the Gothic style, or for older homes the Regency style. This means that, generally in the North West, parapet roofs are not so common and it's more likely that you'll have an overhanging eaves. Gothic styles tend to have a usable or inhabited loft space with steep roof pitch, pitched dormers, tall decorative chimneys, and fancy detailing for every element. Older Victorian homes in the Regency style tend to have bigger overhanging eaves, with simpler detailing overall, a lower pitch and less usable loft space. Consider the overall style of your home when deciding the details. If it's a simpler regency style, don't choose overly complicated details. If it's a gothic style then let yourself get fancy and choose more decorative details.

Take the opportunity to repair and refurbish these while the scaffolding is up so you don't need to deal with these again for a good few years. You don't want your beautiful new roof damaged by other trades dealing with your chimney in a few years time. The buddleia and other plants that have made their home on your chimney need to be dug out. Think about repointing the brickwork, replacing the flaunching, and replacing broken or missing Chimney pots. Decide how to deal with your chimney pots and the flue depending on how you choose to use the fireplace inside: open fire if it's not a smokeless zone, wood burning stove, gas fire, decorative only with no fire, or chimney breast removed inside or blocked up.

If you're in a conservation area or your home is a listed building then you are likely to be restricted in the materials you can use. Most Victorian roofs in the North-West are slate from North Wales, but stone can be found, along with clay tiles. There are many types of slate available. Slate comes in different colours and strengths, which depends on where it comes from. If there are no planning restrictions then you can look at alternatives to slate that give a similar look. Manmade slate-look materials will be cheaper, but most will not have the same longevity/durability as natural slate and rarely look as good. Consider colour, texture, size and laying pattern. If you want to add more decorative detail you can use a combination of different slate colours or even add in different shapes.

The gutter is usually highly visible and choosing a suitable profile, considering the material and colour can make a huge difference. Most people choose black o white UPVC for the gutter but not only do they look terrible on a period home, they will also need replacing sooner than more traditional materials. Victorian gutters were usually cast iron and half round or ogee profile. Cast iron needs more maintenance and once it has rusted will need to be replaced but it can still last for many decades and longer than plastic with the right maintenance. Aluminium gutters can be made in heritage profiles and come ready finished with a paint coating. You can even get specially finished versions that have the same texture as cast iron. Aluminium is relatively low maintenance and long lasting. Copper is also an option and although it the most expensive choice it is likely to last the longest and has a very unique look as it weathers naturally to a green finish, needing little to no maintenance.

The gable and the eaves are where the roof meets the wall. Some have a parapet, some have an overhang, some have highly decorative gothic bargeboards, others have classical brick details, some have decorative brackets, and others have a flush fascia. In short Victorian roofs, and how they finish at the wall, can be very different. Take a good look at yours. Chances are you haven't really noticed it much, soffits and such details are often overlooked. These simple details are an opportunity to add quality and distinctiveness to your home. Modern roofs now often use verge tiles to finish a gable in a simple way. These were not commonly used by Victorians, especially not on a slate roof. Modern soffits and eaves are often covered by plastic strips that only have low maintenance in their favour. Consider your options and think about the shapes, materials, colours and textures that you could introduce here to give your home that refined Regency look or the decorative Gothic look, whichever suits your home and your tastes.

You're wondering if iarchitect is the best architecture practice for your project?
Stick around and you'll find out why it is!

At iarchitect we can be a bit too modest about shouting about our achievements and as the architect director I realise that this needs to change. Now the tax returns are in and 2018 is in full swing I am going to give you an update on our successes from the past year and hope you'll join me in some virtual toasting and celebrating.

At the beginning of last year I transformed iarchitect from a sole trading entity to a limited company and am now celebrating nearing the end of a first successful year as a limited company. After setting up the practice 9 years ago as a sole trader in the depths of recession, through perseverance and optimism it has thrived. Now it feels like iarchitect is growing up! Cheers to transformations and developing!

Over the course of the last 12 months iarchitect has received a number of awards and completed many successful projects for our customers.

Our latest award is from the online residential design platform Houzz. They have awarded us “Best of Houzz for Service” for which we must thank our kind customers, their glowing reviews and 5 star ratings.

Houzz also awarded iarchitect with “Best of Houzz for Design” in 2017 as our project photographs were among those most shared on the platform.

Houzz has also marked iarchitect out as an “Influencer” as we regularly help out members of the Houzz community through the dilemma forums.

We use Houzz with many of our customers to create ideasbooks which are great for communicating ideas and visualizing options. Cheers to communicating beautiful ideas and delivering good customer service!

Also in 2017 construction industry magazine Build awarded iarchitect with 2 awards:
Best Full-Service Architect Firm, Manchester and Excellence Award for Conservation Services, North West.

Since joining the RIBA conservation register as an accredited registrant, iarchitect has worked on a number of conservation projects. Our highest profile conservation project being the landscape refurbishment and access improvements for Northenden War Memorial. Cheers to protecting and enhancing architectural heritage!

We've had many every day successes too including planning approvals, building control approvals, tender returns within budget and completed built projects. This is what we do. Cheers to successful projects!

We specialise in helping homeowners with period property and recommend starting with our Big Picture Plan. If you have a cold house with an outdated layout that doesn't work for you then we can help you create a home that suits your lifestyle and sense of style, while maintaining period character and being kind to the environment.

The easiest thing to do is to select the obvious materials for their standard uses, such as glass for windows, but to get a design that really stands out and delivers a unique solution we need to consider materials in different ways.

While travelling this summer I was reminded of the beautifully subtle but relatively rare use of marble for windows. Examples of marble panes for windows can be found in historic ecclesiastical architecture (churches, monasteries, etc), particularly in Mediterranean countries. Although I had heard about this use whilst at university and proposed it in one of my student projects for a museum, I had never seen any real life examples before this summer.

Jaca, in the Spanish Pyrenees and the heart of the Aragonese kingdom, has several examples of buildings with marble windows. Two of these examples really stood out to me, one modern and one historic. I then did some research into marble windows and found a few more examples to share. As the images in this blog piece show, marble windows, create a gentle light source and striking patterned visual effect which can be breathtakingly beautiful.

The cathedral of San Pedro in Jaca is an historic building with most of its apertures paned with marble. The official website for this church doesn't mention the windows and the use of marble, perhaps as it isn't seen as anything particularly unusual in churches of its era and in this region. The marble used is white with a fine grey vein, similar to carrera marble. The internal light this creates is dimmed, soft and warm. It doesn't let through as much light as the stained glass usually seen in churches but it has a calming effect and is peacefully beautiful. As you can see from the photograph the light levels are very low so when the camera light levels are set to show the interior it's not possible to see much of the detail of the marble. Conversely when the light levels are set to show the marble, the interior is too dark to see anything in photo. At least this was true with my very basic photographic equipment - my mobile phone.

The modern example of a marble window screen was in the refurbished museum at the monastery of San Juan de la Pena. The original baroque facade of the monastery includes a circular marble oriel window. This historical feature was perhaps the inspiration for the large gallery of marble screens within the original cloister. This space is now used as an art gallery and the cream marble with striking highly contrasting chocolate brown and caramel toned veins create a bright and subtly decorated space, with the controlled light levels perfect for viewing and protecting art work.

Historically marble was used instead of glass as a single sheet built into the window aperture or set in a frame, but this doesn't work very well thermally so for modern uses thinly cut sheets of marble tend to be used as internal window screens or incorporated within a system using double glazing. In the monastery refurbishment the screens are set about a meter from the external fully glazed envelope. The glazing system provides the thermal skin of the building while the marble sheets create a decorative and sunlight controlling screen.

The external aspect during the daytime of an historic marble window is like looking at an area of marble wall. They look the same as a much thicker piece of marble until you can see light falling through it. At night the effect seen internally during the daytime in sunlight is reversed as electric lighting will create a glow seen outside.

Away from the med in northern europe the light levels are not as strong, so using thin-cut marble is most effective orientated so that sunlight can fall on it. In spaces where a lot of light is not needed, such as those for prayer or meditation, or is undesirable such as for storing and displaying light sensitive objects such as books and art works, marble can be used to both control the daylight while creating a striking decorative interior.

There are some particularly striking mid-century examples of marble windows and two that I'd love to visit are the Yale University's rare book library and the Pius Church in Meggan, Switzerland.

Yale University's Beinecke rare book library has no windows at all as its walls are made from translucent marble. This lets in light while keeping the books protected from the sun. The marble is set within a light grey granite framework which gives a sense of solidity to the walls and sets up a strong rhythmic pattern of repeating squares which is echoed in the book storage. Built between 1960 and 1963, this library was designed by the architect Gordon Bunshaft, who worked in the large architectural practice of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

The marble used is white, grey-veined, Vermont marble cut to a thickness of approximately 3cm.

A modern ecclesiastic example is the Pius Church in Meggen, Lake Lucerne, Switzerland. Here the marble is set into a slim steel frame to form the external walls. There are no other windows and the light created is so unusual and desirable that this church is a popular local tourist attraction, and a place where many people choose to get married. Built between 1964 and 1966, this church was designed by the relatively little known architect Franz Fueg.

The marble used is Penthelian Dionysos marble cut to 2.8cm thick and in panels of 1.5x1.02m. To create an effect of columns of marble, the panels were carefully selected and cut from the same block for consistent veining. This marble appears as white with grey veins until seen with light shining through, when more depth and colour is revealed.

Marble is a premium material because it is long lasting, durable, beautifully decorative and each piece is unique. The process of selecting and cutting marble thin enough to be used in this way is also specialised and costly, but this almost magical effect is well worth its cost in the right place.

Did you see any beautiful architecture during your summer trips? Have you used marble or seen it used in any interesting ways? Would you like to use marble as a light source in your project? Let us know in the comments below.

Thank you to all clients, colleagues, collaborators, co-designers, friends and family for helping make 2016 the most successful year that iarchitect has had yet.

It has been filled with many achievements including:

• a successful application to the War Memorial Trust, funding works to Northenden War Memorial
  
• several successful planning and building control applications for homeowners and businesses
• opening of the first Sultan Ahmet restaurant - an exciting new UK franchise
• helping worthwhile causes with Landaid though their pro-bono programme

This year has also had many memorable moments such as:

• meeting the latest in voice controlled technology with Steve and Siobhan
• many Home Design Consultations during which I have loved getting to know homeowners and their homes
• chasing around after a toddler whilst discussing bandstands with Joy and the ups and downs of projects with Julie
• behind the scenes in photoshoots for completed projects
• catching up with past colleagues starting new adventures like Sally

It's been a fantastic year and I hope it has been for all of you too. Lets hope that 2017 brings more of the same.

Best Christmas wishes to everyone.
Jane x

On the drawing board at the moment is Northenden War Memorial. We are looking at conservation works to the landscape along with improved access.

Here we share with you some images of the memorial - past, present and future.

This is an artists impression of the war memorial taken from The Stockport Advertiser, April 28th 1922.

This photograph is of Durham Light Infantryman, Brereton, blowing the last post during a Remembrance Sunday service, exact date unknown.

A recent photograph of the memorial following Remembrance Sunday 2015, showing the memorial site in need of a little TLC.

An iarchitect sketch of the proposed new level access route, new safe steps and wild flower poppy planting areas. Also proposed are refurbishment works to the crazy paving to level the surface and drain away the puddles.

If you have any old photographs of the Northenden War Memorial we would love to see them. Please email them to us at [email protected]

To give you more help with your early decision making I have created the Design Your Home Vision Checklist.

This helps you address key decisions from the start so that you can take your project forward with confidence. You can get that like-new home you've dreamed of!

Click on the button below to get your copy of the checklist.