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.
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,
