LOW POINT


“Realising the extent of how much we had to smash out. There really was rubble everywhere.”


build the kitchen himself using his trusty CNC machine on which he designs and creates his interiors and furniture for campervans. However, work commitments didn’t allow it. He did manage to carve out time to make all the splashbacks, which were colour matched with the kitchen units from Wren. He also made a purpose-built storage and drying rack, storage cupboards and a wine rack for the utility room and a seating/dining area in the kitchen. The bench seating stores fold up chairs and the table folds down from the wall as and when required. “It was good taking the interior back to nothing because then you can create what you want where you want. When I bought the house, the sitting room was full of furniture and felt really cramped. When Emma and I discovered the original fireplace and hearth it was like wed struck gold. Not only did it make the room feel bigger it inspired how I wanted the rest of the cottage to look  rustic but modern. To tie in with this style, Hamish decided not to plaster over all the stone he’d uncovered but to create a two-tone effect taking a straight line of plaster across the wall. “It’s a clean and crisp effect but decisions like that took a long time. I didn’t envisage spending a week deciding how to plaster a wall. Where on the wall to start, and how high up?”


nov/dec 2022


The ‘feature wall’ is not the only talking point


in the room. The piece de resistance is Hamish’s birch ply staircase which accesses the mezzanine level. Practical but also a work of art, it incorporates a table and shelf as part of the foot treads. Cutouts have been made in the steps so there’s contact when your feet are passing through. “The dog bone jigsaw joints were a relatively new experiment as I’d never used them on a load bearing piece. Sometimes I’ll make sure the grain pattern in the jigsaw joint goes a different way, so it stands out rather than blends in. It becomes a feature and then you can carry that feature on.” Details are important to this couple, and another room that took extensive time to plan was the generously proportioned bathroom. “I think the bathroom was originally a second bedroom as when the house was built the toilet would likely have been outside. Again, I took everything back to the stone so it could be rewired and replumbed and again a lot of the wall fell off.” In the bathroom, Emma took charge and panelling was the way she wanted to go. “The idea for the panelling came from @mytinyestate who I follow on Instagram,” she recalls. “They posted about making wood panelling from MDF and I asked Hamish if he could do it on the


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