Our cottage renovation – an update

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This week marks three months since we got the keys to our new home, so I thought it was time to share an update on our renovation progress to date.

You can read more about our house-buying journey and why we decided to move here, but to cut a long story short we’ve relocated from Bristol to a 19th-century stone cottage in the small town of Bradford on Avon, just outside Bath on the edge of the Cotswolds. The building itself is structurally sound, and we won’t be extending or making any major changes to the layout, but it’s still a big project. It had lain empty for almost two years and been rented out to a succession of different tenants for decades before that, so it’s tatty, dated and in desperate need of some TLC.

Our aim is to breathe some life and soul back into the place, and reveal its period character. The decor will be neutral and pared-back, but in keeping with the setting it will be a little more rustic and textural than our previous house. For the colour and material palette we’re drawing inspiration from the Bath stone of the exterior walls, reflecting its honeyed tones in beiges and off-whites with a gentle underlying warmth. There will be lots of linen, oak and stone, and we’re planning to break up the paler hues with a few dark brown accents and patinated bronze fixtures and fittings. The clean-lined Scandinavian design and contemporary abstract art that I so love will be ever present, but there will be a sprinkling of salvaged pieces and antiques, too.

Above: my mood board for the house as a whole, which I’ll be using as a reference point to ensure a cohesive home as we move through the renovation.

Progress so far

We hadn’t felt like we’d made much progress since moving in, partly because of Christmas and partly because living in a property while renovating it always slows things down. But when I sat down to write this post, I realised we’ve actually managed to do quite a bit.

Our first job was repairing and repainting the front door. That sounds like a strange thing to do in the middle of winter, but it was peeling so badly that the timber was in danger of rotting. We hadn’t budgeted for replacing it, so stopping any further damage was a priority. We tested several different colours and eventually decided on ‘Light Gray’ from Farrow & Ball. It’s an elegant, timeless hue that hovers somewhere between beige, green and grey, and it sits beautifully with the cottage’s Bath-stone exterior. We’ve paired it with bronze door furniture from Suffolk Latch Company, and we’re delighted with the result.

Above: testing paint colours for the front door, plus the finished look with Farrow & Ball’s ‘Light Gray’ exterior eggshell and bronze door furniture from Suffolk Latch Company.

Most of the other changes so far have been upstairs, as we’ve been focusing on the home office and main bedroom. We decided to start with these rooms for two reasons. Firstly, they’re spaces that we knew we could do entirely by ourselves, so we could get going on them straight away without waiting for trades to slot us into their schedules. Secondly, we wanted to make sure we had calm places to work and relax away from the dust and chaos of the downstairs transformations, which begin next week (more on those below).

These rooms are the first spaces where we’ve been able to lay the beautiful pale oak Quick-Step ‘Cascada’ hardwood flooring that we’re using throughout the house. We’re installing it ourselves to keep costs down, but it’s very easy to do as the boards simply click together. The only real faff is removing and refitting the skirting, as we’re laying the flooring beneath it to hide the 15mm expansion gap that needs to be left around the edges. You can keep the skirting in place and cover the gap with scotia trim instead, but this is our forever home and we want to make it as neat as possible. Having seen the finished effect in two rooms, I’m so glad we’re making the extra effort, and I can’t wait to get the flooring installed in the rest of the house.

The main bedroom and office have also now been painted, curtains have been hung, and we’ve created some much-needed built-in storage. There are a few small additions still to come, but we’ll soon have two finished spaces that I’m looking forward to sharing.

Above: the office and main bedroom in progress, plus a couple of small peeks at the finished rooms with Quick-Step’s ‘Cascada’ hardwood flooring in Wintry Forest Oak Extra Matt. More will be revealed soon!

In addition to the above, we’ve had new aged bronze plug sockets and light switches installed throughout the house. That might sound like an odd thing to do so early in the renovation process, but we needed to get an electrician out to check the house’s wiring (luckily all fine, bar a few minor tweaks to bring the fuse box up to the latest standards), so it made sense to get those done at the same time.

Above: the bronze light switches and plug sockets that have been installed throughout the house.

We’ve also chosen and ordered new internal doors and radiators, both of which are due to be installed very soon. The house currently has flimsy hollow-core doors with a six-panel design and a fake wood-grain effect, and most of them are scuffed and dented. We’re replacing them with traditional four-panel solid-timber doors from Todd Doors, which are much more in keeping with what would have been here originally. Our chipped and noisy 80s-style radiators, meanwhile, will be swapped for ‘Milano Windsor’ radiators from BestHeating. We had them in our previous home and loved the contemporary take on the classic column design; they’ll also be a lot quieter and more efficient!

kitchen plans

By far the biggest transformation – and the biggest spend – will be the kitchen, which is about to undergo a top-to-bottom overhaul.

This is the first time we’ve been able to design our own kitchen from scratch (the most we had the funds to do in our previous home was replace the cupboard fronts and worktops), and we certainly don’t plan on redoing it again after this! So, we decided early on to allocate the majority of our limited renovation budget to it and get the kitchen we’ve always dreamed of, even though that means other projects will have to wait until we’ve saved up again.

It’s not a particularly big room (around 3.4 x 3.2m), but it is roughly square. That’s going to make a huge difference after years of squeezing around each other in a narrow galley kitchen, and we can’t wait to have a more sociable, liveable space – a true heart of the home, where we can enjoy spending time and where friends and family can gather when we’re entertaining.

Above: the kitchen as it currently is, with cracked paper-thin cupboard fronts, ripped and stained lino, a limescale-covered sink, damaged worktops, and an oven and extractor fan that don’t work. In fact we’ve been relying on an air fryer for cooking meals ever since we moved in!

We’ve ordered the new kitchen from Swedish company Nordiska Kök, whose designs I’ve admired for years. In keeping with the rustic-minimalist style that we’re incorporating throughout the cottage, we’ve opted for contemporary Shaker cabinets in a timeless beige. These will be paired with white-pigmented oak interiors, marble-look Quartz worktops and splashbacks, a Belfast sink, and bronze fixtures and fittings.

The overall layout is staying roughly as it is, as we can reduce costs by keeping appliances in the same positions, but we’re adding a tall cabinet to hide the boiler and replacing the upper wall-hung units with open shelves. The other side of the room will have a bank of full-height cabinets, one with pocket doors that slide back to reveal a pantry and additional worktop space. We don’t have enough room for an island unit, but we’re hoping to add a small bar table and a couple of stools (I’m thinking something in gnarled, dark-stained wood) so that we have somewhere to sit down with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee.

Above: Nordiska Kök designer Patricia’s visual renderings of the new kitchen, plus my own colour and material mood board for the room.

The Living room

The other room on our immediate to-do list is the living room, which is a bit of an odd space. It has two windows and gets lovely light, but it’s sandwiched between the dining room and the kitchen and currently feels more like a corridor than a cosy retreat. It also has a strange nook in one corner, which we think is the remnant of a bricked-up doorway.

The main thing the room needs is a focal point. Any original fireplace and chimney breast are long gone, and we don’t want the space to be centred entirely around the TV. So, we’ve commissioned a made-to-measure Bath-stone fireplace from Christopher Emery Stonemasonry, and we’re having a stud-and-plasterboard chimney breast built to accommodate it. We’ll then buy a bioethanol stove, as they’re totally clean-burning (no harmful wood-burner particles) and don’t require any kind of flue.

Once the fireplace is done, it will then be a case of laying the flooring, painting, adding curtains, and playing around with different furniture layouts to see what works best. We’re also going to make the most of the nook by installing shelving in it to accommodate books and ceramics.

Above: the living room on the day we moved in – a calm, light-filled space, but in need of cosiness and a focal point.

Other spaces

Once the living room and kitchen are done, we’ll be turning our attention to the guest bedroom and the dining room.

The guest bedroom has the only original fireplace that’s still in situ, so restoring that will be an important job. We had always assumed the surround was made of wood, but we recently discovered that it’s actually Bath stone that’s been covered with a thick layer of gloss paint. We’d love to strip the paint away to reveal what’s underneath, and we can also feel the hearth lurking below the carpet so we’ll uncover that when we do the floor.

Above: the original fireplace in our guest bedroom, the Bath-stone surround hidden behind yellowing gloss paint.

The dining room has a chimney breast, which we assume is also made of Bath stone. We’re planning to chip away the plaster to expose this, as it will add wonderful texture and character to the room. There’s also some kind of hollow void covered with MDF behind the plaster, so who knows? Maybe we’ll uncover another original fireplace hiding behind this in the process.

We also have the landing and stairs, our little courtyard garden and the bathroom to think about, but as I said earlier our budget is getting tight, so those might be projects for further down the line…

All photography by Abi Dare; kitchen renderings by Nordiska Kök