16 homestylemag.co.uk
My story...
We had been searching for a house for eight months
after selling our previous one and in the meantime
had moved in with Gerald’s parents as we couldn’t
find anything in the area we wanted. We had missed
out on two great properties, and then nothing
seemed to come up for sale, but we finally found
this one. To be honest, it needed more work than we
had originally wanted to take on so I wasn’t that
keen, apart from it being the right location. Before
Gerald had a chance to view it the agent called and
said that the second people through the door had
loved it and had made an offer of the full asking
price on the spot. Luckily for us they pulled out
suddenly a day later and we then made an offer,
which was accepted. We moved in as soon as we
got the keys and made a building plan of the work
we wanted to do, which would take six months from
start to finish. In hindsight, with two small children
under four this may have been overly ambitious as
we went through a few weeks in the midwinter of
living in one room with the whole back off the
house! We had to dig away a lot of the garden as it is
on an incline so several grab lorries came to remove
the earth. We were then able to extend out the back
to add the kitchen-diner to the ground floor, as well
as the master bedroom and en suite upstairs. This
way we could reconfigure the internal layout to
create the extra bedroom and the family bathroom. I
am so happy with it now – particularly our bright
and sunny new kitchen space – but that’s not
to say it wasn’t an absolute mission!‘The best buy in the kitchen is our instant hot tap
which we bought on Amazon. Hot coffee on tap,
what’s not to love!’ The floors are in Soft Oak Grey
laminate by Quick-Step at Kent Blaxill and the bar
stools are from B&Q. ‘I painted them to match
the kitchen table legs’Hanna loves this view of the
kitchen-diner. The black
industrial-style shelving unit
is from Cox & Cox