The day we fell in love with Ridge House…
And our first month of accidentally pulling it apart!
It was summer 2017, Jonny had asked me to marry him a week before, and we were on the hunt for a project and our forever home. We went to see Ridge House and immediately knew this was it: nestled into the hillside with two acres of land, including its own woodland, ravine and beck. A tiny Victorian schoolhouse which had been converted to a house in the 50s, with two little bedrooms squeezed into the eaves, and a draughty 1970s flat-roofed extension out the back.
We already knew the Howgill fells and the local ‘book town’ of Sedbergh, mainly from fell-running which was what we spent our free time doing before renovations and children took over.
Jonny had spent much of his youth trekking over from Leeds to kayak the River Rawthey, so the temptation of a fantastic kayaking river just a stone’s throw from the house, and the possibility of some epic ice climbing at Cautley Spout were added to the long list of ‘pros’.
We weren’t put off by the rotten windows that were falling out of their frames, lack of central heating, damp walls and dead sheep in the garden… in fact these were all things that drew us to Ridge House. It needed some serious TLC and an enormous amount of youthful energy (which, writing this 8 years later, we have definitely given it!)
Three tumble-down sheds scattered across the land provided Jonny with the opportunity to get cracking straight away to create:
a) a carpentry workshop where he could make his timber frames, and
b) a little cabin in the garden.
Little did we know that we would end up living in both of these glorified sheds years later at various points along our renovation journey!
Behind the peeling wallpaper, damp render and leaky roof, was a beautiful old Victorian school house, full of history, just waiting to be brought back into use as a family home.
Over the next six months while the conveyancing took place, we spent our weekends exploring the surrounding Howgills and having picnics in the garden, pretending it was already ours, and sketching out extension and re-jigged layout plans.
It was early December by the time we completed on Ridge House and moved in. We had every intention of just living in it and not starting on anything til we had a bit of a plan (and some more cash!) Christmas was, after all, just round the corner, and we were planning to host our wedding in the garden the following summer, so we didn’t want to make too much of a mess. However, the house had other plans for us…
On discovering that the museum-worthy oven was in fact melting the dishwasher next to it we decided we might need to re-think our ‘just live in it’ plan.
When we pulled the oven out we discovered asbestos behind it, one thing led to another, and soon the entire kitchen was in a pile in the garden.
Happily the slightly melted dishwasher still worked perfectly and a couple of years later when we had it serviced we discovered it was 18 years old!
And yes, it’s the same dishwasher that’s in the house today - now 26 years old and hands down the best dishwasher we’ve ever had. Lesson learnt: if you have old appliances, hang onto them, they don’t make them like this anymore!!
There’s nothing quite like starting to build a temporary kitchen on the 6th of December when both sides of the family are descending for Christmas in a few weeks time!
But having a deadline to work to is a surprisingly effective incentive we’ve learned (two babies, an extension and completed renovation later!)
But the trouble with renovating is that you tend to get carried away when you make exciting discoveries. Once we’d begun taking the kitchen apart, we lifted a carpet tile to find some lino, and of course couldn’t resist seeing what was underneath that… !
We assumed the original Victorian floorboards had long gone, but there they were, in fantastic condition, made out of the kind of pine that just doesn’t exist these days (if you know the smell you know what I mean!)
One week into living at Ridge House and we were already down a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom… (I’ll save the latter for another blog post!)
We inherited three shed-fulls of useful items collected over the years, including a cake tin full of pennies and three Belfast sinks.
With the cost of the vast extension stacking up (and our wedding to pay for) we jumped at the opportunity to re-use what we found lying around.
Thankfully, by the end of that first month, Jonny had managed to finish our temporary plywood kitchen, and we were able to host our first Christmas in Ridge House.
Still intent on saving money for the real kitchen 3 years down the line, Jonny put his plumbing skills to good use and fashioned a tap out of copper pipe (a skill he has recently expanded on to include copper loo-roll holders).
(It’s debatable whether the copper taps were actually any cheaper than conventional ones, but that’s besides the point!)
It turns out that filling a small house with people helps with the lack of central heating! We were immensely grateful to come across a vast store of coal in one of the sheds (which gave us a clue that there must be an open fire-place behind the built in electric heater) so we just about managed to stay warm enough (Still went to bed with wooly hats on and had to scrape ice off the insides of the windows each morning!)
Our cats, Isambard and Leo, made the most of the one functioning storage heater in the house, in lieu of the Aga we’d promised them once the kitchen extension was built.
Meanwhile we all endured the compulsory Christmas Day fell run with extended family.
Much like this blog post, our work at Ridge House suffered from a bit of mission creep, so I will leave you with a couple of before and afters from that first month at Ridge House, to what it looks like today - eight years later.
Some before and afters…
The master bedroom in 2017 (complete with both wet and dry rot!)
Water was coming in from all directions - window, walls and roof!
How it looks now, after we re-roofed, stripped the cement render from the walls outside and let it dry out for a few years. We then insulated internally with sheep’s wool and wood fibre board, and finished the walls in tongue and groove boarding painted in Farrow and Ball’s Setting Plaster.
Sadly the blue bathroom suite didn’t make it out in one piece!
We picked Farrow and Ball’s Arsenic after finding it on all the old doors once we stripped them back.
And of course after a year of living in our (finally) beautifully finished house, we wanted nothing more than to swap it for this! (Hoping this won’t take us quite as long!)
So yes, despite the highs and lows of renovating Ridge House, we are totally addicted to the process. But on the plus side that means we get to share Ridge House with all our lovely guests, who have so much appreciation for it. (This is also slightly addictive! Yes, I do a little dance every time one of you leaves us a 5 star review!)
So thank you for sharing our love of Ridge House, and thank you for choosing it for your special occasion, celebration or holiday. And we hope to see you again soon!
