This cosy little holiday home has been in Graeme’s family for over 30 years. It sits in a small town in Perthshire called Crieff. Graeme and his siblings would spend summer holidays there as kids, so it holds a lot of memories for him. The house fell into disrepair over the years and wasn’t being used anymore. When Graeme’s nephew was born, we decided to renovate it so that his nephew and niece could create their own memories there. We spent all of our spare time there and did as much of the work ourselves as possible. It took almost two years to complete fully. It was the biggest project we had ever undertaken. The family have been spending lots of time there again so it was worth it!

Externally, we rebuilt everything; new windows, doors, dormers, roof etc. In an ideal world we would strip the paint off the masonry and expose the original stone but we decided it was too much work and repainted it instead. We chose a dark colour simply because the road generates a lot of dirt and the old mint facade and white windows always looked filthy (as you can see). The cottage is at least 200 years old so it needed a lot of TLC. I found a plan of the town from 1822 on which you can pinpoint the cottage on the map. I framed that, along with other historic articles about Crieff, and displayed them inside. I wanted the décor to relate to the surroundings and the history of the town. Back in the day, Crieff was famous for its cattle market. It was once a weaver’s town that produced linen, cotton and wool textiles. It is also (arguably) home to Scotland’s oldest whisky distillery. I incorporated an ornament of a cow, a cow bell, balls of wool, cotton stems, spools, a whisky shelf and a barley bunch as a nod to the history of the town.

I wanted to create a cosy Scottish hideaway that reflects the lifestyle idea ‘coorie’. Coorie is a Scots word meaning to snuggle or nestle. It is similar to the Scandinavian concept of hygge. We put a small log burner into the lounge, which keeps the whole room warm. The green and lavender colour scheme mirrors the colours of the Scottish hills at the end of Spring. We don’t have a TV or Wi-Fi in the cottage; only board games and books.  We exposed all of the beams to open it up and add warmth with wood. I wanted to create an extension to the corner sofa to allow for a sofa bed. The tartan footstool slides into the gap to create a rectangle instead of an ‘L’ shape. It can be used as a footstool, coffee table or extra seating. There is storage inside it and I also got this huge tray for when you want to set your mugs or glasses onto it. The cottage can now sleep eight people. There’s probably only enough seating for six people in the lounge but with this footstool being modular, it can be rotated to face the corner sofa to create a more social space. Find out how I made it here.

We added under-floor heating in the kitchen diner, as well as these new gel filled radiators. They heat the place up very quickly. The flooring is vinyl, which retains heat so much better than tile. The vinyl comes in individual squares which you can lay any way you like and I was determined to have them on the diagonal. This was probably the biggest debate of the project but I’m so happy with the decision (obviously, haha!). There’s no gas in the house, which, in all honesty, isn’t even necessary as a holiday home. I upcycled the existing table, the bench was made bespoke and the chairs were a Gumtree find for £30 each. They’re church chairs, with a wee shelf in the back to store a bible. The light above the dining table was made with a pulley which I bought from a vintage shop in Crieff.

In the kitchen, we removed the wall units down the right hand side to open up the space and make it feel less like a corridor. We put up open shelving instead. The shelves and worktops are made out of reclaimed scaffolding boards (of course). We didn’t replace the kitchen, I just painted it and changed the hardware. The splashback is made out of an end panel that was originally in our kitchen in Glasgow. The butler sink was a Gumtree find for £20.

There is one bathroom downstairs, which is quite small. The layout before was cramped and didn’t flow very well. We switched up the layout and took out the bath and put in a shower instead. The basin sits on top of a Victorian washstand which was a Gumtree find for £40. I did plan to paint it but once it was in place, I decided I really liked the original wood. We even exposed the beams in the bathroom and added LED strips in behind the wood. Unfortunately, there’s a random step in the bathroom and the toilet sits on top of it but since the pipes run underneath it, we couldn’t remove it, unless we opted for pipe boxes, which are just unsightly.

The cottage became a bit of a dumping ground for hand-me-down furniture. The rooms are so small and the ceilings are so low that bulky furniture just swallows up the space. The only storage we incorporated was under-bed storage and a built-in shelf in the living room. We also boxed in the new boiler and created a panelled door for it to make it look like it had always been there. There is a large cupboard in the eaves of the twin bedroom so all in all, plenty of storage for a holiday home.

There is a small WC upstairs. We had to rebuild the entire space because the wood was wet and rotten. I decided to add wood panelling around the bottom half of the walls and wallpaper above. It’s handy to have an extra toilet in the cottage, as well as a place to brush your teeth before bed.

There is one bedroom downstairs with a king size bed in it. We had a lot of furniture made bespoke for the cottage, mainly because it was such an awkward space to work with. As you can imagine, the joiner was overjoyed with all the wonky lines and the lean of the place. The bed downstairs was made from wood offcuts and MDF. There is a full length drawer that pulls out from underneath, so plenty of storage. The only other piece of furniture is an armchair in the window. We decided to expose the stone wall on this side of the cottage because the wall was literally sweating before. The stone had plaster all over it and wasn’t able to breathe so Graeme chipped away at it for days to reveal this beautiful stonework.

The furniture in the master bedroom consists of a bed and a couple of bedside tables. I picked up the bed from a friend, accidentally. Well, I say accidentally, what happened was, I went to her house for coffee one morning and she asked me how much I thought she would be able to sell her bed for on Gumtree, so I told her I had £80 in cash and could take it away with me. It’s not out of character for me to leave the house with an empty van and come home with something. In this case, I’m putting it down to fate; that bed was made for this cottage!

The twin room upstairs is so narrow that you can only fit two beds back to back along one wall. The original beds were just separated bunk beds. So we decided to go for a similar concept but with built-ins instead. The joiner constructed the shell from MDF which was then veneered with reclaimed flooring. We stained it all one colour and added drawers underneath and a couple of reading lights above. The wires for the lights are hidden inside the frame and the light switch is within reaching distance. We decided to go for carpet in the bedrooms, just to keep costs down and also make it cosier. This was definitely one of those projects where I feel like the decisions and the compromises we made turned out to be the right ones.

This project was challenging for me and nostalgic for Graeme. Because we had invested so much of our time and effort into it, the result felt like such a big win. There is pride in creating a magical place for the family to use for generations to come.