Some of our main goals in restoring our home have always been reinstating the original character of our Victorian building, while doing so in as sustainably a way as possible - all while working with incredibly tight funds.  Salavaging as many materials from the original house as possible became an important part of achieving these goals. Aside from adding the original character back into the building, they were also free - and mitigated the need to by new materials - thereby lowering the carbon footprint of our build.  After Jameswood sustained about 30 years of water damage, this w ..read more

Before we begin this post, I wanted to let you all know that we are now We filmed a house tour back in 2018 when we first bought the house! Now we have posted it so that we can all look back on how far we've come! I'll be posting an updated house tour in the weeks to come (I promise, our camera work has come a lnog way!) But for now, you can check the video out and subscribe by clicking When we first got to Jameswood, the house was an absolute disaster. With so much seemingly wrong with the building, it was hard to know where to start. We quickly decided a structural engineer's survey of the h ..read more

​In our last progress report, Cal and I had managed to put on a roof all by ourselves! (Well… with a lot of help from our ragtag roofing team!) Our Rag-Tag Roofing Team! It’s been a long time since our last report, and a LOT has happened since then! Our silence has not occurred because the project has come to a halt, but rather because we’ve been so busy building, it’s been hard to take a moment for blog writing! In the winter of 2019, Cal and I had one of our most challenging tasks to carry out yet. Designing the rest of our restoration and applying for a building control warrant! We wanted t ..read more

​Winter of last year was tough. December was bitterly cold, and then it rained (…and rained and rained.) In fact, February was the wettest month on record in the UK! During this time, the only respite we had from the rain was our tiny touring caravan, and the house – so naturally, we got lots of work done. With all the foundations laid, our neighbour taught us to lay blockwork walls. In these winter months we managed to build Jameswood’s structural and separating walls. We were now looking forward to the weather warming up, drying out, and to moving on to the next exciting chapter of building ..read more

​When we first arrived at Jameswood and slowly started to peel back her crumbling, waterlogged plaster walls, we uncovered a devastating amount of wood rot inside our home.  A dangerously rotten floor engulfed a chair left in our derelict home. We were careful to save as much timber as we could, but the majority of the original structure was unsalvageable. The lengths that could be kept still needed to be cut at the ends, and with such a small number of full length timbers left to reuse, we decided not to put them back into Jameswood. Almost all the timbers in the house had been affected ..read more

With large upcoming renovation expenses, and the need to get our home wind and water-tight, I wanted to add an affordable special touch to our front door. Here's all the materials you'll need to create your own painted glass artwork. You’ll need: (Click the item for a link to where I bought them) I chose a 50m real 4.5mm wide “natural coloured” lead strip. If you know you’re only doing one small project, the strips come in 5, 10 and 20m lengths as well. Utility Knife (a sharp knife to cut lead strip) Paint Brush – a couple quid I've not linked this item because my  brush shed hairs, and I ..read more

I last posted on this blog over a year ago - and since then, I’ve had a number of concerned emails from readers, asking if we’re okay, and if the house is okay? The silence has been a sign of good things! The fact of the matter is… blog posts take a LONG time to write, and so does building a house! This blog has taken a seat on the backburner for the sake of progress on Jameswood. Now, I am taking a few weeks away from the house to visit family and friends in Canada, for the first time since the start of the pandemic. With a bit of extra time while I'm here, I thought I would sit down and upda ..read more

As things progressed at a tremendous pace in the summer months - with walls and floors transforming our home week by week, we confidently invited Cal’s family to come spend Christmas in Dunoon. Surely we would have a kitchen and heating system in by then?! What could go wrong? ​Well, as summer turned to Autumn, we accepted help on our bathrooms from some incredible companies - and with that, our project became stacked with an extra set of responsibilities. Delivering beautiful, Insta-worthy bathrooms by deadlines. And it turns out that installing four bathrooms doesn’t happen overnight. Soon ..read more