A month of bathrooms

by In Ethel's House, Renovations, Tiny Cottage Tagged 1 Comment

I seem to have spent about a whole month thinking about bathrooms. We don’t have much space in the current project, but I’d been sent into William Wilson by my plumber to choose some wet wall for the bathroom in Ethel’s and saw this layout while I was in there, which I really liked – so I borrowed a tape measure off them and sent this picture plus measurements to our architect to see if we could do something similar.

Grey and white bathroom layout, William Wilson, Thurso

As it turned out we didn’t have quite enough widthways because of the stairs, but using that as inspiration he came back with three different layout options, two with a bath, one without, but warning me that if I had a bath in there, it was going to be pretty tight to get a large enough electric water heater in under the stairs. We ended up marking out the bathroom dimensions on a site visit and what looks like quite a large space on graph paper actually isn’t when you’re standing in it.

So I mused on it and while I was musing I had a weekend away in Inverness with Mr J in a hotel room with the biggest bathroom I’ve ever had the pleasure of using. As in you went down a staircase inside the bedroom to get to it.

Bathroom in Room 1, Rocpool Reserve hotel, Inverness

And yes, that bath was gorgeous and I soaked in it up to my chin in hot water, but it took about half an hour to fill and I did get a bit fed up waiting for it. (There was also a TV on the wall to the left and the loo was hidden round the corner behind the basins). We did love the shower, however, so as soon as we got home I called my business partner and suggested we went for the big walk-in shower option – it would save about £1,000 on not needing the hot water cylinder as well. He was up for that, so back it went to the architect to find out just how big we could make our shower tray.

We’ve ended up nicking a bit off the living room alcove, but we’re going for a 1500 x 800 shower tray with wetroom-style shower screens and a top of the range electric dual-headed shower. I think it’s going to look fabulous and as we’re pitching this as a romantic hideaway (hence the idea of having a double-ended bath in there in the first place) it’s big enough to get two people into it.

And that wet wall I was choosing that started all this off? That’s been installed, along with a new shower (all of it: tray, enclosure and mixer), new loo, new basin and the floor under the loo that had started to rot thanks to condensation running down the underside of the bowl has had the rotten bits removed and replaced with spare bits of flooring we had left over – I still have a whole unopened box of the stuff, so we’re okay for repairs for a while. It looks absolutely great and the first guests to use it haven’t reported any issues (they’ve been here 10 days now and there are four of them, so it’s had a good workout!)

Bathroom, Ethel’s House, Armadale

We have drawings!

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The drawings for the tiny fisherman’s cottage are back from the architect and we’re impressed. He has really, really listened to us, taken into account my layout drawings, and given us lots of notes explaining his reasoning for where he’s done something differently to our thoughts.

We have a site meeting with him next Wednesday to go through some decisions he needs us to make and then hopefully it’s time to send an application off to the planning department and cross our fingers very hard.

I’ve been thinking about how to furnish this place and while I know I’m going to have to get new sofas and a new bed because of the laws about flame-retardant upholstery, I’m seriously considering going round the local auction houses for some of the rest. Modern furniture isn’t going to look right in this building, it needs a few genuine antiques or good reproductions mixed in to give it the right feel. I’ve been watching the antique furniture and collectibles sale online from a near-ish auction house today (near-ish as in I can get there with my van in about three hours) and although the Georgian mahogany serpentine chest of drawers I had on my watchlist went for £1,650, the Georgian console table went for £85 and a really beautiful carved oak sideboard for just £2! (I’m sure there must have been something seriously wrong with it, but it looked okay from the photos). Next time they have one of these, which is roughly quarterly, I’ll nip down and have a good rummage round on the viewing day.

Also interesting this week was the online conference the holiday cottage agency I’m with (Awaze) did for all its owners, culminating in an hour’s chat and Q&A with Sarah Beeny. Lots and lots of good ideas and I’m particularly intrigued by the possibility of using Tesla Powerwalls to build a modern house that’s completely off grid. One to think about for a future project…

Project 3 is moving forward

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I can’t believe it’s now over a year since the idea of going into partnership with Pete was first brought up, but we are finally there and setting off on building our business together. We have a limited company and a business bank account and our solicitor is now getting going on transferring the fisherman’s cottage into the company while I transfer the cash across into the account.

We also have an architect on board, which is a relief, because they’re all incredibly busy up here at the moment. Architect number 1 came to have a look over the summer when we took advantage of an offer he was running for a two-hour site visit and some advice, but was too busy to take us on. He recommended Architect number 2, who said he was delighted to be recommended but felt that because it’s a Grade A-listed building we needed someone with conservation accreditation and he didn’t have it, so he recommended Architect number 3, who came out, had a look and happily bonded with Pete over a love of motorcycles, so has agreed to do it.

(I’m well aware that a love of motorcycles is not one of the key criteria you look for in an architect, but in this case it turned out to be helpful!)

He came back last week and spent five hours on site taking measurements and notes, he’s tied up this week and next, but with a bit of luck and a following wind we should have some initial drawings by the end of the month. He does have a very blank canvas to work with, the house was stripped out decades ago, long before it was listed, and has been used for storage. And when I say stripped out…

It doesn’t even have staircases at the moment, there are entrances at ground floor and first floor level because it’s tucked into a bank, but we’re on ladders between the first and second floor and the ground and first and I HATE ladders. I’m getting better at going up them, but I still hate climbing onto the top of one to go back down. Fine if I’m on the middle floor, I can wimp out and go outside and walk round, but it’s a little bit more of a problem if I’m right up top.

This is what it currently looks like from the outside. It’s a row of three terraced cottages, ours is the one on the right with the cream block-built porch in front of it, which is where the front door is. Lots and lots of work to do here, but it will be beautiful when we’re done.

Project 3 – the tiny cottage

by In Tiny Cottage 3 Comments

This is going to be an interesting one.  First joint venture, first listed building, first one that’s been offered to me as a project rather than me trawling through property listings.

Those of you who have read this blog back when I was doing Ethel’s and the start of Tor Aluinn will have seen me mention Pete the Roofer.  As we came to the end of doing Tor Aluinn, he was over giving Mick a hand with re-laying the slabs at the back (translation: showing him how to do it properly!) and casually mentioned that if I was interested, he’d be interested in working on a project with me as a joint venture.  He owns a Grade A listed (Scottish equivalent to Grade 1) tiny terraced cottage, which is just a bare shell inside, and wondered if I fancied helping turn it into a holiday let.

So I pottered over one afternoon to have a look at it.  It’s gorgeous.  A tiny fisherman’s cottage on the edge of a tiny harbour, very private (five buildings down there, only two of which are currently lived in) and a totally blank canvas inside, which means hopefully the listed buildings officer will be relatively generous in what we’re allowed to do with it, as long as we remain sympathetic to its origins.  Yes, there are a couple of areas where I think we’re going to struggle with the layout and I suspect we’re going to have to spend a bit of money on getting an architect experienced with working with listed buildings to help us get approval, but it should end up being a little gem of a romantic hideaway for two.

Pete had the building valued and the surveyor came up with £60,000, which I think is fair.  The idea is that we create a limited company, he will put the building into it and I need to come up with £60,000 in cash to put in to pay for the renovation work.  This may be slightly problematic, as it’s not the easiest time to go to lenders and say, ‘Hi, I renovate old buildings into lovely holiday cottages, please give me a lot of money unsecured against anything.’  Ethel’s is due for remortgage in May next year and I’ll be able to take about half of it out of that, but I’d rather get cracking before then.

Anyway, there aren’t going to be too many photos of this just yet, because there’s still a small chance it may not happen, but just to whet your appetite, this is what you see when you stand outside the front door.