ou can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. On this project, there were more than a few. Hamish Forbes bought Rockwell cottage on the edge of the conservation village of Cardross in January 2021. As the founder of a company which specialises in designing and building campervan furniture as well as a newly established firm which designs and builds home furniture  amish had a busy schedule, and he kept his plans for the cottage simple.


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A ‘CHOCOLATE BOX’ VISION The one-bedroom property needed some modernisation, but amish wasnt planning anything too significant  a few small renovations and it would be habitable and comfortable. “I was going to live here and tinker with it; it was never intended to be a major project. I wanted to redecorate and create a nice little chocolate box cottage.” After living in Rockwell for a month, Hamish had other ideas. He comments: “It is an incredibly small property, indeed the footprint of my office at work is bigger than this place! However, I knew there were ways to make the space


nov/dec 2022


work much, much better.” amish uite literally started chipping away  and


that’s when he discovered the wiring issues, the plumbing problems and he realised he had only one option. “I kept taking things out until internally it looked like it was going to fall down, and I was going to have to put it back together again. I didn’t think there was any point in doing one room at a time because of the scale of the building, so I decided to spend the money, get some labour in and attack it.” At times the cottage was a hive of activity and then when Hamish was busy at work it would quieten down again. “There was a period of about three months when I wasn’t here at all, and it wasn’t lack of interest; I simply didn’t have time.”


As Hamish was pulling his house to bits, there was also the question of where to stay and fortunately the parents of his partner, Emma Jane, came to the rescue. “There is a summer house in the garden and the previous owner’s mum lived in it at one point. It’s properly habitable with a toilet etc; the invitation to stay with Emma’s parents was preferable


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