HIDDEN TREASURE

This pretty cottage was run-down and needed a full renovation; Shelly Mantovani took it on and gave it a fresh new look worthy of its colourful history, all on a shoestring budget

This cosy living room was riddled with damp when Shelly bought the cottage. One of the first tasks was to remove the wooden panelling and strip the walls back to the stone to treat the rising damp. The room was then replastered and the panelling reinstated. Shelly installed a Valor wood-burner for extra comfort. During the renovation, she discovered that the chandeliers, which were fitted by a previous owner, weren’t earthed. ‘My ceilings are low and the lamps are copper, so that could have been a bit of a shock for someone!’ The yellow chair and side table, which doubles as Shelly’s desk, are both from Ikea. The sunburst mirror is from Laura Ashley and the blinds are from Blinds Direct

After a change in her personal circumstances, Shelly was looking for a new house for herself, her daughter Schyler, and Spike the dog. ‘I was after a period home

and definitely not a new build,’ begins Shelly. ‘The trouble was, period houses can be money pits and I was on a tight budget. I knew that any renovations would have to be done on a shoestring.’

Shelly briefly looked online at a four-bedroom, 500-year-old property in a South Yorkshire conservation village. It was a house with a quirky history. ‘Jeremy Clarkson’s mum, Shirley, once lived nearby and used to make Paddington Bear merchandise at her kitchen table,’ says Shelly. ‘When her Paddington business got bigger she bought this house and used it as offices and a factory.’ After yet more success, Shirley moved out to bigger premises in the mid-1970s, and the property – which once also served as the village post office – was sold to new owners who remembered it being full of Paddington Bear-sized clothing when they moved in. Over the past 25 years, however, it had remained largely empty.

Shelly had been intrigued by the Clarkson/ Paddington connection, but quickly decided against buying the house because it had rising damp, peeling plaster and needed total renovation.

‘My house hunt wasn’t going anywhere, so a friend of mine said: “Show me your shortlist”,’ remembers Shelly. ‘He picked out this property immediately. He thought it was perfect, but I was put off by the fact that it didn’t have a garden and needed lots of work. Still, I made an appointment to view it and, even though mould was climbing up the walls and plaster was hanging off, I could see his point. The place had character and charm.’

Shelly asked local builder Darren Holmes for an estimate and, after settling on a refurbishment budget of £25,000, decided to take the plunge, buying the house in the summer of 2015. Work started on site in August while Shelly and Schyler stayed with a friend.

To treat the rising damp, the timber panelling was taken off and the plaster chipped back to the original stonework in both the living room and dining room. A new damp-proof course was added, the walls were replastered and, finally, the panelling was replaced in the living room. A self-levelling screed, topped with engineered oak flooring, replaced the uneven concrete floor in the living room and dining room. An old fireplace was also removed and the chimney widened to create a new opening for the log-burner, while a stone lintel, uncovered during this part of the renovation, was left exposed.

The renovation work threw up some surprises. ‘It was about this time that we uncovered a hidden external door to the rear of the property,’ says Shelly. ‘It was strange: when I bought the house there was a window in the living room – but when I saw it from the outside I could see that it wasn’t a window at all. It was a door with a handle and lock, although I wasn’t able to open it. Internally, the bottom half of the door had been boxed in with a false wall, so Darren ripped it out and made it into a functioning door again.’ This now leads to a small outdoor space, which Shelly has landscaped, adding a garden table.

In the master bedroom and second bedroom, the ceilings were so low that Shelly was worried about constantly banging her head, so Darren ripped out both in order to expose the original beams and to create vaulted ceilings.

The kitchen was originally small and an odd shape, due to the position of the door into the dining room. ‘There was room for a sink and a washing machine and that was about it,’ says Shelly. ‘Darren looked at the layout and said the only way to make it into a feasible working space with proper units was to move the doorway. Afterwards, I had room for new handmade cabinets, a very small butler sink and a dishwasher. We also added a utility room and a cloakroom off the kitchen using space from the back of my garage, which was behind the original wall.’

Darren incorporated these spaces into the main house by building stud walls and new doorways. In the kitchen, old quarry tiles were ripped up, underfloor heating was installed and new ceramic tiles were laid throughout, leading into the utility room and new cloakroom. Shelly had an energyefficient boiler installed and fitted a new front door.

Finally, in January 2018, Shelly was able to spend more than her original budget and turn the smallest bedroom into a new generously proportioned house bathroom. The fourth bedroom has not yet been renovated but Shelly is biding her time to complete the project in the right way. ‘My initial £25,000 budget rapidly expanded to double the size, mainly because I bought expensive things, like the handmade kitchen and the engineered oak flooring,’ she says. ‘Then again, I saved money by sanding down and painting everything myself. I’m really pleased with how it has all turned out, especially because I had no experience of renovating on this scale before.

It’s been an education.’