Follow this Harrogate house’s three year journey from building site to stunning modern home

Above image and design: Karen Knox - Making Spaces

The Stray Ferret speaks to Vanessa and Andy who have renovated properties over the years about their latest project that was a real labour of love. Read on below to see how they transformed it to the beautiful home it is today...

When did you buy your home and how long has it taken you to transform it?

We originally offered on the house in Harrogate back in August 2020 when it first came onto the market. We knew there was a slim chance of getting it due to there being more than 100 people interested. We finally went to sealed bids, though ours was not the highest. As fate would have it six months later, we got a call from the estate agent informing us that the highest bidder was pulling out and offering us the opportunity to buy it.

We jumped at the chance and six weeks later the property was ours, three days before the birth of our second child.

It took our building team eight months to make the house habitable, as when we took ownership of it, it was configured into two flats and it clearly hadn’t been lived in for a good number of years.

After moving in, it has taken us two and a half years to painstakingly renovate and bring the property back to its former glory but with 21st century mod-cons.

Did you have an overall inspiration?

Luckily when the house was converted into flats in the 1970s, many of the original features were retained but hidden under false ceilings and walls, which is unusual as many properties that were renovated during this period had the original features stripped out.

These original features – coving, ceiling mouldings, fireplaces, picture rails, architraves – inspired us to create a ‘modern Victorian’ interior, using bold colours and interesting prints.

Tell us about your process; how did you plan out your project from beginning to end?

We have renovated several properties in the past, and we always start with the floorplan then design the space around how we live and work.

We try not to extend properties where possible but instead get creative with the existing spaces, as extending is expensive (circa £3,000 per square metre). We taught ourselves how to use design software to create scale drawings and then applied for planning permission to convert the property back into a single family dwelling.

We work with the talented interior designer, Karen Knox from Making Spaces (@makingspacesnet), who creates schemes for each room and then we work to make them a reality.

We also have an experienced building team headed up by Lomax Contractors who made sure all the original features were restored and did an amazing job of bringing the house back to life.

Tell us more about working with your interior designer.

Karen is worth her weight in gold, and we always engage her from day one as she has been known to rip up architects’ plans and persuade clients to go back through the planning process. She is thoughtful about how a home will be used, especially families with children and how all the spaces connect – for example, light, smells and sounds.

We have used Karen for all our renovation projects, and we feel that what we create together is truly unique – our previous house on Leeds Road was featured in Real Homes magazine and our current house was recently featured in The Sunday Times Style magazine.

How did you get involved in overhauling the property yourselves?

For some people, renovating a house is all about the destination and the finished article. But for us, it’s more about the journey as it’s hugely rewarding being able to see the progress day by day.

We love getting stuck in and learning new skills, so over the years we’ve taken on more and more work ourselves such as fitting bathrooms, building non-structural walls and stripping back original floorboards – basically most things that won’t cause the house to fall down – and we are not afraid of jobs that simply require hard graft such as landscaping.

Alongside this, we also have built up a black book of trusted trades over the years who will tackle the jobs that we either legally can’t carry out or don’t have the experience to produce the finish we require.

Tell us some fun facts about your home.

There are over 3km of electric cable in the house, over 500m of water pipes and the original stained glass window was hand-painted, portraying Tintern Abbey on the River Wye.

The property took our painter decorator 10 months to strip, sand and repaint all the original woodwork and walls in the house.

We were the first house to be built on Tewit Well Road in 1897 on land which we believe was originally owned by St Mark’s Church.

What’s your favourite space?

We re-instated the original veranda at the front of the house and it’s lovely to be able to sit out there on a morning with a coffee, watching the world go by.

Apparently, the master of the house used to take his morning coffee out there too and wait for his carriage to arrive.

Which local Harrogate shops did you use and would recommend to others?

In terms of local independents, we highly recommend Dickson Timber for quality outdoor landscaping materials. We also used Tutto Framing for all our artwork and Wharfe Valley Stoves for the two wood burners.

Riverside Quarry was brilliant for turf, and we couldn’t fault the service from Addyman’s for skips and aggregates. Harrogate Tool and Plant Hire also deserves a special mention as the staff went out of their way to help us when our concrete mixer broke down.

Mytile off Skipton Road is a lovely family business, and the team is so knowledgeable. We also used a lot of Mandarin Stone tiles in the house and it’s great to now have a local showroom in Harrogate.

A huge thank you and shout out also goes to Thug Sandwich Co., The Secret Bakery Harrogate and Coronation Fisheries for keeping our troop of hungry workers well fed over the past three years.

Finally, do you have anything else that you’d like to add?

You can follow our journey on Instagram @renovating_harrogate.

We are currently on the lookout for our next project, so if you have a property which needs a little or a lot of TLC, drop us a line!

At The Stray Ferret we love shining a spotlight on Harrogate and the district and the people who have made it their home.

A place is only as good as its people, and Harrogate and the district is lucky to have so many residents with great stories to tell.

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