Our New Project - fondly known as Padstow 2

Welcome to our new 'shipwreck' acquisition!  

This is our new project and one which is keeping me very busy.  We've actually had it since April and we're making good progress so I have a lot of catching up to do on the blog. These photos show how the house looked when we first viewed it and I thought I'd take you on a guided tour so you can follow it's transformation.

As you can see from the front it looks fairly respectable and unlike our first renovation it does have four good walls and a roof which doesn't leak however....

From the back it's not so good and the vegetation has started to take over inside and out as it hasn't been lived in properly for about 3 years.

The front room had a lot of old furniture still in it including this beautiful old dresser and the oak table you can see below.  The cottage formed part of an estate and the trustees sold me all the contents they didn't want which are currently holed up in storage.

The lounge and dining room look as though they are in good order but the whole place is extremely damp and in need of some major TLC.  The house was originally two cottages which wasn't apparent until we started to strip everything out but you can see the identical cupboards at each end of the room and the original doorway through to the back is masquerading as a bookcase. 

This is the kitchen!! most of this stuff went in the skip but I kept the 1960's cabinet and anything else I could salvage.  It was quite difficult to go through what had obviously been somebody's belongings and I wanted to keep what was worth salvaging. 

 Here are the two staircases which were positioned opposite each other and went to their respective bedrooms, again a relic of the two cottages.  I can also tell you that the third step up on the above staircase was lethal and totally rotten which made navigating them a little tricky.

 And finally downstairs the appalling bathroom, complete with Ivy coming through the window.  It was in a filthy condition and obviously hadn't been touched since the last resident left (excuse the scary image in the mirror : )

Upstairs somebody had started to do some work and had put in a couple of small velux's and built a block wall between the bedrooms.  As you can see the fireplaces have been breeze blocked up too.  The roof is totally vaulted in one bedroom but in the other has been shaped like a 'Dutch Barn' to accommodate a water tank, which will be going but I think the 'Dutch Barn' effect will stay.

Outside the back garden is a bit of a mess but at least we have one and ultimately it will make a lovely place to sit and have a glass of wine or G&T after returning from the beach.

And that's it for now.  I'll show you what we did next soon as I have a lot to share, until then have a great Bank Holiday Weekend!

Before & After Photos Part 2

As promised here are the remaining before and after photos and a sneak preview of our new project, which is actually starting to move at pace so I have some catching up to do.  However, if you're interested there are some photos on my instagram account @debs_padstow_cottages so feel free to pop over and follow the progress on there too.

I thought I'd start with the stairs this time.  As you will recall if you've been following the previous posts we took the original stairs out, turned them around and completely re-configured the upstairs by moving the landing.  This allowed us to take the space that had been allocated for a large landing into the front bedroom and make a small en-suite.

 This is what they looked like before, rickety, dark and a little unpleasant.

  And now they look like this:

 We decided that it was more important to have an en-suite in each bedroom to give people privacy rather than maintain the family bathroom which was already there.

The back bedroom was full of pine wardrobes and was fairly okay as it had been added in the 1980's so was structurally sound, and the family bathroom was next door with it's lovely Pampus green suite!

It was extremely uninspiring so we gave it a bright white airy feel as the pictures show below (they're not the best but give you an idea), although after a year of using it I'm about to have the headboard wall, papered in a pale blue Sanderson Seagull print which should add a bit of warmth. 

Here are the ensuites, very similar but one has a window in it and the other a large mirror to reflect the light and they have different floor tiles.

The front bedroom also had a lovely set of pine wardrobes (there was a lot of orange pine in this house when we bought it : )). 

The aim was to make both rooms have their own character so we exposed the beams in this room and added a feature wall with the final addition being the shutters which were fitted a few months ago.

And here is the space we took from the original landing looking down towards the window (en-suite is on the left) with paper blinds and then with the shutters fitted.

So that's the final post on Padstow, as it's now affectionately called, but it's not the end of our story as we have now embarked on Padstow 2 and this is what it looks like from the front. 

I'll be writing another blog over the next few days showing you the interior before we started knocking it around : ).

This time we will be letting it, hopefully for the 2019 season, so if you follow the renovation and then would like to go and see it for yourself you'll definitely have the opportunity to do so and we'd love to welcome you to Padstow which as you know is very close to our hearts.

Thanks for taking an interest in our journey so far and I hope you'll enjoy the continuing saga of our renovation projects.  Have a lovely sunny day!

PS.  I really tried to get these photos to sit in pairs which they did in draft but as soon as I published it they reverted to single images.  If anybody can tell me how to change the margins I'd be eternally grateful.