Happy ever after
After years away from her native Sweden, Lin Dunwin wanted a new base to relax and keep in touch with her Scandinavian roots. This pretty forest house, straight out of the pages of a fairy tale, proved the perfect place
This Swedish gem is packed with ideas for using reclaimed pieces to create a characterful home
This pretty country home, a former smallholding in the woods, was long-awaited as far as Lin Dunwin was concerned. She had been househunting for three years since selling her previous property. ‘I have lived abroad for most of my life,’ she says, ‘but it was important to maintain some ties with my native Sweden. I love the outdoors and especially the forest. But most of all I appreciate the silence here. It is a total contrast to my life in London, where I used to work in a bank.’ Lin spotted the cottage on the internet in autumn 2011; it was not far from the Swedish city of Örebo. ‘I didn’t have time to view it so I sent my best friend instead,’ recalls Lin. ‘She and a friend photographed everything and sent me the pictures. I bought it without even seeing it, so when at last I put the key in the door, it felt amazing.’
Unfortunately, though, as with so many old houses, a lot of the property’s period details hadn’t survived its previous updates. ‘But you just have to roll up your sleeves and make the best of it,’ says Lin. And that’s exactly what she did, as she transformed the neglected little house into a cosy, relaxing retreat. Most of the skirting boards had been stripped away and the hallways upstairs and downstairs had been divided off with thin wooden boards. ‘There was nothing behind them, no insulation at all, and just a few old planks to keep the boards up,’ says Lin. ‘So I added insulation and used rough boards to wainscot the walls.’
Lin chose laminate flooring for the kitchen and set to work on the floors in the rest of the house, which were heavily varnished and made the house look like a mountain cabin. ‘I sanded and scrubbed them with soap until I got a lovely silvery finish.’
New skirting and door frames were fitted to match the few original skirting boards and Lin sourced genuine Bakelite light switches and vintage-style flexes to bring back a more period look. Much to Lin’s delight, she discovered tongue-and-groove panelling under the ceiling boards in every room in the house, apart from the living room. ‘I’ve papered the living room walls with old magazine and newspaper pages from the 1940s onwards, which I found when I knocked down an old garage,’ explains Lin. ‘I also used some English and Swedish magazines from 2011, as a lasting reminder of the year I began renovating the house.’
At every turn there are ingenious touches and inspiring money-saving solutions that Lin has come up with as she worked her way through the house. She toned down the high-gloss kitchen cabinets with a pastel eggshell and added a floral curtain under the sink. ‘I couldn’t afford a new fridge so I painted that, too,’ adds Lin. ‘Just key it with sandpaper, paint with metal primer, then a topcoat and finish with a matt varnish or hard wax oil. I think the finished look is better than a bought one!’
The work in the kitchen didn’t stop there. Lin knocked down a wall to open up the space and bring the house closer to how it was when it was first built. ‘Then I painted the wood that I salvaged from the demolished garage and added Ikea brackets to create simple, inexpensive shelving.
‘There is so much you can do if you just let your imagination run wild,’ says Lin. ‘I renovated the cottage almost all alone, in 20 degrees below zero with only one tiny heater. It took time, hurt occasionally and I shed many tears in my solitude. But now when I’m sitting in an armchair in front of the fire, I think “I made all this!”.’ A very happy ending indeed.