West Cottage Renovation
Go back to April 2020, we are at home, the pandemic is with us and we are in lockdown. The family are round the table chatting after supper and I bring up a subject I have had at the back of my mind for the last 10 years. It seems like the right time to say that I would like to convert the small farm cottage (West Cottage), currently empty, into a holiday let. A reason that due to lockdown we have the time to decorate and furnish and plan!
So in that beautiful Summer weather, we build the dyke, empty the cottage, buy huge amounts of paint online hoping it will arrive and will be the right colour and set about transforming a cottage, which had been a farm worker’s cottage, and then onto transforming the cottage into a holiday home. I had willing hands with my son Andrew and his girlfriend Emily who did loads of decorating and were superb at building furniture. I did the fun stuff, the only way was online, endlessly looking at Instagram, Pinterest, furniture and décor sites. I just hoped that my measurements, colours and pictures I had in my head would all fit with the end product. You have no idea how excited I was when DIY stores opened up…
Lockdown eased and I could call in the professionals to landscape, check wiring and install a water plant to filter the spring water which supplies the cottage. We signed up to an agency and low and behold we had our first booking when the cottage had only been up for a day on the website. All our guests have been so positive and kind, we love welcoming them here and they have put up with our learning curve.
So of course when the second lockdown at Christmas 2020 our tenants had just moved out of the second farm cottage, so you remember that conversation over the supper table, it happened again and as usual my husband Sandy was totally with my plan – major relief!
Things had changed, the youngsters were working from their own flats and this was a much bigger project. We got in touch with our wonderful local builder, John Penny and asked if it was possible for a single man to start working on the East Cottage, so with strict covid protocols he started to pull down walls, replace windows, and reroof. Everyone who worked on the cottage, all of them are local and work on their own, did a fantastic job and in May we had a holiday cottage we were proud of.
There were tricky moments when I wondered if we would ever be able to order any curtain fabric that would be in stock (we worked through plans A to H!) or a piece of furniture that could be delivered within 6 weeks. We have got there, our first guests have stayed and left a wonderful review saying they are coming back for their honeymoon at the end of the year we shall be delighted to welcome them, I am planning already.
Barbara
