Tom and Emma are a husband-and-wife team from Edinburgh who have spent over three years restoring and transforming an 18th-century weaver’s cottage into their first home. Here, they share a step-by-step guide to achieving Japanese
shou sugi ban, or charred wood cladding. To see more of their self-build journey, find them on Instagram @h_cottage.
Tom and Emma: Although we are professional designers, an architect and town planner respectively, we are amateur self-builders who have learned everything on the job. As part of our project to build a contemporary kitchen extension within the walled garden of the cottage, we decided to use the ancient Japanese method of charring wood to create external cladding, including a door to a hidden workshop.