Having bought a ‘renovator’s dream’ after selling their two-bedroom flat back in 2009, Jane and her husband Dave were well aware of the issues with their new three-bedroom house. ‘The main bathroom was small and cramped, with everything squashed in together so only one person could be in there at a time, and the layout downstairs needed a complete rethink,’ she explains. ‘But we’d pushed ourselves to make the move up from a flat, so we bided our time, painted everything white, and lived with it as it was for several years.’ Having watched the value of the house go steadily up, last year the couple found they could borrow against the value of the property to provide the money for a major remodelling of the whole house. ‘We decided to go for it all at once to give us a big kitchen/diner with a living area off it, as well as a shower room downstairs, and then a small extension upstairs, which would finally give us the space to re-plan the main bathroom, as there was really no point putting in a new bathroom if we couldn’t extend,’ says Jane.
COLOUR BLIND