SPACE TO BREATHE

Several ugly extensions marred this cottage in rural Aberdeenshire until a rethink gave its owners a simplified layout and much more eco-friendly home

- Caroline Ednie

DETAILS

What An extended and renovated cottage

Where Aberdeenshire

Architect Hyve

Main contractor Sunnyside Construction

Structural engineer Graeme Craig Consulting Engineers

Doing up old houses takes time and money, but know-how is arguably just as important, reckon Sue and Jim Savege. They are no strangers to turning around the fortunes of battered old buildings. “We always seem to find ageing properties that need a bit of TLC,” says Sue. “Our last house was a run-down 16th-century farmhouse in the Lake District which needed a complete makeover. We spent seven years renovating it and adapting it to the 21st century. Before that, we had a traditional cottage in Wales to which we added a large kitchen-diner extension, so we are definitely not building and renovating newbies. We have learnt a lot along the way.”

The couple’s latest endeavour is a cottage in rural Aberdeenshire on a large country estate. “We loved the cottage when we found it,” says Sue. “Its location and its connection to the surrounding woodlands really drew us to it, and we knew that with a bit of adaptation, it could be a fantastic home for us.”

“When we moved in eight years ago, it was your traditional but-and-ben, built of dressed granite with a slate roof, with two main rooms downstairs and a loft. It had been extended several times, with a fairly ugly flat-roof addition that provided two bedrooms upstairs, and two small wings at either end of the cottage, one of which contained a very small kitchen. It was all barely insulated and the kitchen in particular was very cold.”