Top Tips for renovating your property

June 18, 2020

Taking on a renovation is a big and time consuming task that will take over your life, I know first hand how much hard work goes into one and what it takes from you both emotionally and financially. Below I have outlined my Top tips for renovating for those who are just about to embark on this journey and hope that they help you

Top Tips for renovating #1

Your roof is your number 1 priority

The roof is one of your biggest priorities when renovating, if you don’t have a structurally solid and waterproof roof then there is little point doing anything else until this is fixed. You can have the nicest interiors in the world but if that roof leaks its going to cost you and ruin all your hard work.

Top Tips for renovating #2

Have a budget and add at least 10%

Renovations always throw curveballs and there is always something that crops up that you hadn’t budgeted for. Adding a 10% contingency to your budget should be enough to cover these and I almost guarantee you will use it.

Top Tips for renovating #3

Don’t cover up all the original features

You bought a period house/house that needs renovating for a reason. This is usually because of the chance it may have some hidden period features. If so, don’t hide them again, highlight them and make them a feature of the room.

Top Tips for renovating #4

It will take you twice as long as a new build property

You spend so much time and money taking the building apart and stripping it right back to build it back up again, be prepared for the long haul

Top Tips for renovating #5

There will be a rollercoaster of emotions

Renovating isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s an absolute rollercoaster of emotions, those days when you uncover hidden period features that haven’t seen the light of day for years are some of the best days but the days when half the roof is off in the middle of the storm and the bedrooms have puddles of water in them and there is rain running down the stairs is definitely a low point. Be prepared.

Top Tips for renovating #6

Always have the end goal in site

Its good to have an idea of what you want to achieve in the property and have some vision boards/moodboards to help you keep your eye on the prize. Being able to visually show builders and plumbers what you want also helps take some of the guess work out of everything and helps minimise the chance of things getting lost in translation

Top Tips for renovating #7

Do your homework

You need to be prepared and know exactly what sort of boiler/heating system/where the kitchen is etc very early on in a renovation as the pipes may need to be moved or re routed. Having a plan and having an idea of what you want early on helps avoid any delays on site and means you don’t have the trades hanging around waiting for you to make a decision

Top Tips for renovating #8

You will spend most of your money on things you can’t see.

So much of your money will be spent on the elements of the house you don’t see but are the most critical places to spend money i.e The foundations, structure, insulation, drainage, waterproofing. Budgeting in these areas is a false economy and they are the fundamentals to a smooth running and water-tight house that will run well with no problems for years.

Top Tips for renovating #9

Make sure you get trades people onboard who are as excited about your vision for the property.

You will spend a lot of time with your builder/plumbers/electricians and a good working relationship is beneficial to all. Make sure you do your homework and pick people who are right for the job. Some builders enjoy the more challenging aspects of renovating properties where others like the ease of a new build. Choose one that you believe best fits your project and wants to implement what you want and your vision for the property.

Also remember that this is a work environment for them, and everyone wants to work somewhere nice so provide a suitable place for a break, a liberal supply of tea/cakes/biscuits and settle your invoices on time.

Top Tips for renovating #10

Where to save your money.

If you are finding that your budget is taking a bit of a hit, then there are many places you can save money. An inexpensive kitchen from somewhere such as Howdens or Ikea can be made to look more expensive by not scrimping on the worktop and using quality and hard- wearing materials such as quartz. This will instantly elevate the look of the kitchen.

Toilets and sanitary ware are another place you can save money, a toilet is a toilet at the end of the day, and you can upgrade the lid and use more expensive taps to help elevate the design and make it look more special.

As a general rule, anything you touch or moves should be invested in as you will be able to feel the quality of these items.

So these are my top tips for renovating that will help steer you in the right direction but if you have any more queries about your renovation project or self build project and would like some advice then get in touch below to see how I can help.

Help Me!

If you would like to see more photos of the project above then click this link and see why we were voted Reader’s Choice in the Homebuilding & Renovating Competition and highly commended for best renovation 2019

We Won the Readers Choice Category! Daily Telegraph House of the year competition

November 25, 2019

I am so unbelievably excited to finally be able to tell you all that we have won the Readers Choice Category in the Daily Telegraph Homebuilding & Renovation House of the Year competition and were highly commended in the Best Renovation Category. It has really made the hard work over the 5 or so years by everyone involved worth it. Now i’m not going to tell you that this renovation went smoothly as it didn’t and there were many challenges, tears and unexpected hiccups along the way but this is the nature of renovating a property of this sort of age that is built into the side of a hill! Nothing was easy. From diverting unwanted water away from the house, to the wood rot in the stairs and the issue of the properties only water being supplied by a gravity fed well whilst also resolving the damp in the walls we faced an uphill struggle from day one.

Below are a few images of the property before we started any of the work.

Interior designer North Wales

When we initially bought the house we naively thought we could do it room by room and live in the property, but once we started taking off the original lime plaster we realised this was pure idiocy on our part. There was a lot of work to do before we could get the builders in and this was hours of work taking off the wallpaper and tiles and then the lime plaster off the walls and ceilings so the walls could be given a chance to breath and help the damp, but it was in doing this we found all the hidden gems that were beneath years of wallpaper; the brick arch, the fireplaces, the well and all the beams. It was discovering these that kept us going.

Once we appointed the builders (which took longer than we anticipated as we wanted someone who was used to renovating properties and a few builders didn’t want the job as it was too complicated!)things moved a bit faster, there were holes in walls ready for new large windows and mini diggers in what is now our kitchen.

One of the most important parts of the builds is the relationship you have with your builder. We were lucky with our builders in that they were happy to spend time discussing details that others may have overlooked and wanted to help us create the home that we envisaged.

As you can see from the images below we completely ripped the property apart and took it back to its shell in order to build it back up. By doing this we were able to install good quality insulation and underfloor heating so even though its an old house (1840’s) it was rebuilt to modern standards and the combination of thick stone walls and lots of insulation means the property now exceeds most new build standards.

It was important to us to have such good insulation in this property as we wanted to install a ground source heat pump, an eco heat source that takes the ambient temperature from the ground and converts it to heat, as such the property couldn’t have any drafts as the whole premise of this heat pump is to have a lower constant temperature throughout the property rather than the higher outputs from oil or central heating. As you can see in the picture below the ground source heat pump requires quite a bit of space internally as well as externally (we had to dig 3 x 100 metre trenches 1/2 a metre down in our fields to run the pipes that would take the heat from the ground and transfer it to the house!)

Similarly we realised pretty soon into the build that the gravity fed well that was supplying the property was not fit to support a modern house and with no mains water we needed to have a bore hole drilled in order to supply all our water needs. This was a drama due to the lay of the land around our property and the difficulty we had getting the machinery where it needed to get to. Once there though it was quite something to watch. They drill down 60 metres into the ground far lower than the water table is to make sure there is a good head of water and we wouldn’t be left struggling with water pressure in the house. From this bore hole the water runs again 60 metres from source into our plant room at the side of the property where it goes through a full filtration system before we use it

We were lucky to be able to make use of the roof that was currently in situ and just add onto it as we did worry initially if the old roof would be suitable, but with a few well placed RSJs this was possible. Unluckily for our builders though we got onto the roof in the Winter and a season in which we had storm after storm and constant rain. We tried to keep the rain from getting into the house as best as we could but water goes where it wants to and one day I turned up and there was a pool of water in the back bedroom and a river of water running down the stairs!

This was probably one of the lowest points in the build

As you can see the roof is rather large and complicated due to the amount of valleys in it and took quite a long time to get it right but this is one of the most important parts of a build as whats the point in creating a great interior if your roof isn’t up to scratch and leaks.

The windows were a key decision in the house build as the amount of light in the original house was limited and we wanted to flood the house with light. We installed roof lights to help get light into the middle hallway and back bedrooms, ensuite bathrooms and dressing room and in the old part of the house we wanted to stay true to the age of the house and install windows that were in keeping with the period of the property. We did consider wooden sash but the upkeep of them put me off and we decided on UPVC sash instead in RAL 7015. I was also a little obsessed with having a pivot door somewhere in the property and figured the best place would be in the snug in the old house on the side of the property so we would have access straight onto the garden and patio. The main 3 metre height window that links the old cottage to the barn in the area that was the car port is one of my favourite parts of the house. The architect originally specced bifold doors but my partner and I wanted something a bit more show stopping and with less profile so you focus entirely on the view outside. We consulted a company called Maxlight who we saw at the Home Building and Renovation show and liked their attitude that anything was possible. I particularly like the way the window wraps around the corner.

I was keen to have a polished concrete floor and this meant we had to factor this in quite early into the renovation as we needed to lay it at the same time as the screed over the under floor heating and make sure all the pipes were in the correct place for plumbing as once it was in there was no changing. In order to stop the concrete floor cracking we had to use reinforcing mesh rather than use the flexible fibres that you normally use in concrete to help it expand and contract. We didn’t want the fibres because once we started polishing and taking off the top layer of the concrete they would be seen and this wasn’t the look I was going for.

We wanted to make use of the original floorboards that were beneath the beautiful original paisley carpet but this required a lot of effort sanding as some of the wooden floors were also covered in bitumen to help protect them. All the doors and bannisters also needed some TLC as they had years and years of paint on them and some of the finer details were lost, this, i won’t lie, was a little soul destroying as it took weeks to do and it was in the Summer time so the combination of dust and heat was not fun.

It was only once we started putting the plaster board up that we could see the house coming together and this is when I really started thinking about the finishes and colours I wanted in the house.

The 60sq metres of polished concrete had taken months to set and we didn’t want to uncover it until the last minute over fears of it being damaged in the build. We hired a floor polisher to clean the floor and then had different levels of scouring pads attached to the bottom to polish the floor in stages to achieve the desired look we were after. We started with the most coarse and worked our way up to the finest and polished until we got the desired look. We finished it off with a couple of layers of stone and floor colour enhancer and then a final seal to prevent staining. I love the marbled look of the floor and it may not be as perfect as if we had paid for someone to do it but I’m really pleased with how it looks and this is one of the reasons I don’t have any rugs in this room as I don’t want to hide the colourings of the concrete.

The 2nd fix stage seemed to take forever. By the time I could see the plaster going on I was so eager for it to dry and get everything painted. For someone as impatient as me it was torturous waiting for everything to be completed. It was a case of so near yet so far.

One of the features of the house we were keen to keep was the well. When we bought the house it was hidden beneath a solid cover in the previous owners car port. Its unusual in style to most wells that you see as it is carved by hand out of solid rock rather than built in brick. We wanted to add a light into the well to be able to highlight this detail so this meant the electrician had to get in to fix the light to the side. Health and Safety please look away now! The depth of the well is 8 metres and Its incredibly dramatic when its completely empty, the pictures here don’t do it justice at all.

So this is how it looks now, very different from the original house as you can see, but we wanted the older part of the house to be sympathetic to the age of the property and feel cosier whilst the newer extension into the car port and cow shed were designed to have more of a modern feel to it. The space was designed for us to live in and not with the resale value in mind and it works perfectly for the way we live. We love having people over and always hosting parties for family and having friends stay so wanted the space to be reflective of that.

This project was definitely a massive learning curve and spending every day on site working alongside the builders and trades was a lot of fun somedays due to the brilliant character of them all but also very hard going for someone as impatient as me who wants everything done yesterday.

A renovation project on this scale is not something to undertake lightly and it becomes incredibly all consuming, you can’t think or talk about anything else and 14/15 hour days, 7 days a week is not unusual but to live in a home that you know every square inch of is absolutely worth it (this is with massive hindsight in the comfort of said home) and a little bit addictive. Would i do it again? Maybe….just watch this space,

Grand Designs Magazine 2019

August 9, 2019

Did you know we were featured in the March issue of Grand Designs Magazine?

This was a very exciting moment for me as I have grown up watching Grand Designs and wanted to undertake a property renovation similar to those that you see in the magazines and TV shows so to be featured in the magazine was literally a dream come true.

For me Grand Designs is more than just about the interiors it’s about the whole house construction and interior design working together to create a home that works for you.

It was such an exciting day having the photographer here and getting to see our property, which we had painstakingly renovated with the help of builders, through other peoples eyes.

In the article we talk about what it was about the property that drew us to it, the little original gems we uncovered throughout the renovation and also the process we went through to get it finished.

Below are a few images of the magazine.

Kafenion, Birmingham

September 25, 2018

Back in August 2018 I was commissioned to help convert and design an old Post Office and Cafe into a new modern space that was a friendly, inclusive space at the heart of the community that appealed to all demographics. The Cafe is situated in the Bournville area of Birmingham, a model village built by the Cadbury family in an Arts and Crafts style and overlooks the village green.

The old Post Office and Cafe is split over 2 rooms with the old cafe being at the back and featuring an amazing parquet floor, the old post office is at the front of the property overlooking the green and also has great original features such as the old post box, safe and entrance that the clients were keen to keep within the new design.

Below are some images of the property before we made any changes.

The clients brief was to create a warm, welcoming, relaxed European style Cafe with a feeling that it had existed for years and had developed a patina over time. They also wanted to be mindful of the area it was situated and the history behind the property.

The 1st step was deciding how we wanted to use the space, we wanted to make sure the space was as user friendly for the customer as it was for the employee. Key to this is the bar layout, the original cafe had a very small counter area that I felt wasn't very practical and there wasn't much space behind it. We decided for cost reasons to keep the original fridge and the bar in roughly the same area as moving it would have incurred lots of extra costs. The clients wanted to make it bigger and have plenty of storage so we designed this 'L' shaped bar with lots of hidden shelves and added in a row of back counter cupboards and shelving to provide lots of valuable storage space and an area to showcase their product.

I didn't want to have just a plain wooden bar front so to create a bit of interest I designed a pattern that was a nod to the parquet flooring but wasn't too over the top that it detracted from the other pieces in the room.

In terms of lighting we had to make sure there was a good mix of task and accent lighting over the counter, these spindle pendants from Rothschild & Bickers over the counter top provide a focal point in the room whilst also being practical.

The colour we chose for the scheme was Farrow & Balls Inchyra Blue, this colour was chosen specifically for its soft blue colour that in some lights can also appear green. We decided to use this colour throughout on both the ceilings and the walls to help make the space feel larger.

The client was keen to have pops of colour throughout the scheme so we went with handmade tiles from specialist Mexican shop on London's Columbia Road, Milagros for the splash back. The fact that they are handmade meant that they weren't perfectly straight and although this caused a bit of bother initially for the builder I believe this handmade quality makes them even more charming.

As the client was keen for the space to feel as though it had been there for years and have a European feel I thought it would be nice to have a mix of vintage pieces within the scheme. These wall mirrors, sourced through one of our trusted suppliers Stowaway London, were found in France and have a nicely aged mirror plate to them.

For lighting in this area I didn't want to have too much stark overhead lighting so decided to go with these deco style lampshades from Lotus Lampshades, on top of standard lamps. The shape is very traditional and is a nice reference to the period in which this property was built

The chairs were sourced from a wedding furniture company, Papa Shop, and I decided to reupholster the seat with something a little more exciting to add some extra interest, both myself and the client loved this Meh Meh fabric from House of Hackney, it provided a subtle hit of colour within the scheme. We mixed this House Of Hackney fabric in with a leather in green/blue colour to provide a bit of variety on the chairs and provide more comfort to the customer.

In the front room, in what was the old Post Office, we again wanted to keep the relaxed feeling, we carried on the Inchyra blue from Farrow & Ball, the use of vintage mirrors, deco style lampshades and the House Of Hackney and leather upholstered chairs. I also added into the mix some leather armchairs that had a lovely worn quality to them and provide a softer seating area, some Ercol style chairs and also a raised bar section with leather topped stools.

At the start of the project I was particularly keen to see if there were any brick walls that could be exposed in the property as I think having this brings some character to the room, creates a focal point and juxtaposes nicely against the silk of the lampshades. After tentatively removing some of the plaster we were pleased to see that the brick behind was in good enough condition to expose whcih we were very pleased about.

The Vintage School House pendant lighting, from Fritz Fryer, add to the vintage look of the scheme and provide much needed light to this room.

By keeping the old Post Box and the Safe and integrating them into the scheme helps gives the interior a sense of place and is a reference to its history.

With thanks to my key suppliers on this project: Stowaway London, Rothschild & Bickers, Farrow & Ball, Fritz Fryer, Lotus Lampshades, Cult Furniture, Papa Shop, House of Hackney, North Wales Stone, Milagros and very special mention to Rhys Evans Joinery.