Have you ever wondered what the pretty thatched cottages of the Cotswolds look like inside? Well now you can find out...
For Ian and Shirley Hall, buying their fairytale thatched cottage three years ago meant embracing the challenge of making a few small changes to make it their own.
It’s amazing how relatively simple changes can make all the difference to comfortable living.
“And they don’t have to be that expensive,” says Shirley Hall who, with husband Ian, has just finished transforming a three-bedroom thatched cottage in Gotherington, near Cheltenham. “For instance, we turned a kitchen window into a pair of French doors and now we can go straight out into the courtyard garden at the back. It’s perfect for lunch or afternoon tea on a sunny day.”
Another good idea the couple had was to replace their porch. When they first bought their cottage the porch was open-fronted - “which was fine to keep the rain off you while you looked for your keys,” says Shirley. “But we’ve replaced it with a more substantial one with both a front door and an inner door – and both glazed to let in the light. The main effect was to make the sitting room beyond much warmer and we also now have somewhere to put our coats, shoes and brollies.”
The Halls bought their fairytale cottage nearly three years ago after it and the thatched roof had passed the surveyor’s report. The previous owner had been living there on a temporary basis while building another house nearby – “so the cottage felt a bit bare and unloved,” says Shirley.
Dating from the 1890s, it had begun as two cottages which in the 1960s had been knocked together and a rear extension added, making it L-shaped.
They began by gutting the kitchen as the units were all dark wood, looking gloomy. “The only thing we kept was the stone floor,” says Shirley. “This is when we turned the end window into French doors to let in the light and give access to the garden. Then we bought all new cabinetry from Homebase in a pretty light blue. In fact, for the grand total of £13,000 just about everything in the kitchen came from Homebase – the light blue units, laminate worktops, granite-topped island, oven, hob, microwave, wine chiller, graphite sink and tap!”
The couple then tackled the gardens which both back and front were a mass of grass and weeds. A very tall fence blocking their view of the hills from the sitting room also had to go.
“It was really upsetting us,” says Ian. “So we replaced it with a lower one with an attractive wavy latticed top which has a much less forbidding look and means we can now see the hills too.”
The front garden is now such a beautiful spot with its lawns and mass of delphiniums and hollyhocks in summer that people are always stopping to take photographs.
The back garden however is very different as they wanted something maintenance-free.
“It’s quite Zen,” says Ian. “It was just a waste of scrub and I couldn’t see how to turn it into a lawn. So I decided to create something using different coloured gravels and flagstones. We wanted something that would look interesting from above and practical on the ground so now we have a centerpiece where the paths bisect. We envisioned a Mediterranean garden and now we have a statue called Pandora, and have planted eight date palms, three giant cordelinas which don’t require much water, and two hostas. The effect is very serene.”
The couple also enlarged the rather small en suite bathroom next to the main bedroom.
“The en suite was a bit basic as all it had was a shower, a basin and loo. There was no vanity unit and it was tiled in beige. And as the bedroom was huge it could afford to lose some space,” says Shirley.
So their carpenter demolished and rebuilt the stud walls so the en suite is bigger (and the huge bedroom smaller) and then the couple refurbished it properly – “this time with a big walk-in shower.”
“That shower was one of our bargains,” says Ian. “All the bathroom fittings came from Wickes and I told them I’d order from them as long as they guaranteed that everything – and I mean everything – arrived on the same day. We didn’t want the plumber being held up by a delay in delivery. Wickes signed their agreement to this but guess what! – everything DID arrive on the day except for the shower! So to compensate us Wickes let us choose whichever shower we wanted and we picked a top of the range one!”
The couple quickly received planning permission to replace the open-fronted thatched porch with the more substantial one.
“The funny thing was when the thatcher came to remove the old thatch from the porch roof he found his hammer which he’d lost in it 20 years before when doing some work here,” says Ian.
The couple also added sliding glass doors between the sitting room and conservatory then put a gas wood burner into the sitting room fireplace and an electric wood burner into the snug. Then they repainted throughout the interior themselves, mainly in Dulux Nutmeg White.
“But we used a professional painter for the exterior using Magnolia Sadolin,” says Shirley.
Were there any DY disasters? “Yes, when I put purple wallpaper from Homebase in the main bedroom to match some purple bedding we had,” says Shirley. “I hated it but it was there for a year before we replaced it with blue and white bedding, also from Homebase.
“There were some downlighters in there too which I also disliked so we replaced them with a chandelier from Bhs, a real bargain, reduced from £260 to £60.”
The couple are very keen on recycling and finding bargains. The roman blind fabric was £6.99 a meter from Dunelm and was sewn by Jane, a professional curtain maker, who is also a friend of their grown-up daughter Louise.
The kitchen chairs in blue and white Lloyd Loom were half price from the Burford Garden Centre and cost £500 for six.
The L-shaped sofa in the conservatory was ex-display from Marks & Spencer and cost half price at £900, while their glass dining table in the lounge was £40 from Sainsbury’s. All their wallpaper and paint are from Homebase at very reasonable prices.
But now the couple have decided to move on and say they envisage moving into somewhere that DOESN’T need anything doing to it.
“In fact, we’d like a fresh start,” says Shirley. “So we’re quite willing to sell not just the cottage but all the furniture in it too.”
ADDRESSES:
Carpet Emporium, 01242 228855, www.carpetemporium.co.uk
Homebase, 0345 077 8888, www.homebase.co.uk
Howdens, www.howdens.com
L & L Installations of Tewkesbury, 01684 295038, www.ll-installations.co.uk
Leon Piercy, 01242 705051, www.leonpiercylandscapes.co.uk
Old Mill Antiques, 01608 644563, www.stationmill.co.uk
S & T Sheds of Ashchurch, 01684 216684
Topps Tiles, 0800 783 6262, www.toppstiles.co.uk
Wickes, 0330 123 4123, www.wickes.co.uk
