Let in the light

Sadie and Ross took a tired 1970s house and created an airy, bright, modern home

- Karen Wilson

After 10 years in a two-up-two-down cottage with a downstairs bathroom and steep staircase, Sadie and Ross Tutton craved a bigger place with a garden – somewhere they could start a family. Keen to stay in the North Wales village of Hope, it was not long before Sadie spotted a detached three-bedroom 1950s house less than a mile away that satisfied their desire for a challenging project.

“It was stuck in the 1970s and had a small, brown kitchen with an awful window looking into the garage, but it was structurally sound,” says Sadie, who grew up in the neighbouring village of Caergwrle, where her parents had renovated a barn.

The couple moved into their new home in 2013 and immediately set about creating the home they had dreamed of having.

“The first thing we did was instruct an architect on the changes we wanted to make to the rear of the house. We had originally considered a two-storey extension with a glass roof, but this proved to be too expensive, so we scaled it back and decided to just extend the ground floor, knocking through between the kitchen and dining room and adding a utility room and a shower room behind the garage.

“Rather than the glass roof that we had hoped for, we opted for huge bi-fold doors instead, which gives us all the light and sense of openness we wanted.”

Although the kitchen in their previous home had a more rustic look with wooden worktops, this time Sadie wanted modern dark grey matt units, with a Corian worktop and a hob on the central island for Ross, who does most of the cooking.