I have never employed an architect before, so this is going to be a bit of a voyage of discovery. However, as with everything these days, a quick search on Google reveals some likely candidates.
Just looking at the architects websites, you are see that some architects specialise either in new build or major on commercial projects. Probably none of these are going to be appropriate to the renovation of a 18th century farmhouse! We might be wrong in doing our initial selection this way, but it does underline how important getting your website is if you are an architect!
We came across one architecture practice that we liked. We had also heard good things about them locally. They are also based not far away which also helps. ONE17DESIGN (http://www.one17design.com) are based in Armitage Bridge about 5 miles away from the new house.
We met with Mark Lee from ONE17DESIGN on a rather wet Friday morning and took him through our ideas. We were due to meet at the property, but the rain was torrential. From the ideas that we had pulled together – overlays on top of bitmaps from Google Earth – Mark seemed to understand what we were looking for. After chatting for an hour, the raining had subsided enough for us to venture out and walk around the property. This seemed to confirm Mark’s suspicions that what we want to do (including changing the position of the access road) was all very doable.
Mark suggested that we had a look at a couple of properties that he had just finished working on…..we arranged to view them the following day.