Katy Wilson's inside her Derbyshire home after the renovation.Katy Wilson's inside her Derbyshire home after the renovation.
Katy Wilson's inside her Derbyshire home after the renovation.

Couple buy drab 1930s home for £300k - then shell out almost the same amount again to turn into their dream, five-bedroom modern masterpiece

An interior design enthusiast bought a drab, 1930s Derbyshire home for £300k - and then spent an extra £250k to transform it into her dream, five-bedroom, modern masterpiece home.

Katy Wilson, 36, purchased her tired-looking, detached home, in January 2015 which featured two bedrooms and a smaller box room.

Software sales assistant Katy had been struggling to find a home within her budget that fit her vision of her dream home.

But shortly after she moved in, Katy decided she could just create her dream home for herself - and proceeded to shell out £250k to completely overhaul the 80-year-old home.

With a huge, four-room extension out the back of the house, and taking off the existing roof to create another, attic bedroom, Katy doubled the number of bedrooms - and the overall square footage of the floor plan.

Mum-of-one Katy, who says she has always had a keen interest in interior design, added two extra bedrooms with en-suites, an office, a roof terrace, and a cosy 'snug'.

She also added a playroom for her daughter, Lila Smith, four.

The whole project took Katy over three years, from applying for planning permission in mid 2016, to building work being completed in November 2019, a year after first breaking ground.

And Katy, who lives in the home in Derby with partner Paul Smith, 39, and their daughter Lila, is so pleased with how her home turned out, that it inspired her to start her own e-design website.

From next month, Katy will start offering her services to other people looking to undertake similar home makeover projects, helping them to source materials and find good tradespeople.

Katy said: "This has been a really good segue for me into pursuing interior design, which has something I've always been really into.

"If I could go back in time, I think I would have done some proper qualifications to do with that.

"The main thing is just to go into it with your eyes open - and make sure to over-budget, as there are always going to be costs you can't forecast.

"Our builders told us we'd only need five skips when we started - but we ended up using 22 skips, at about £300 a skip. It feels a bit like robbing Peter to pay Paul.

"But I would also encourage people not to be afraid of going down the route of having bespoke joinery or furniture made, as sometimes that can actually save you money.

"It's all about finding good tradespeople. We ended up with a really good little pool of people - but we were let down by a few tradespeople along the way."

And Katy added that she hopes her bold home redesign will inspire others to follow in her footsteps.

She said: "We had an idea of what we wanted our home to look like, but all the houses that fit the bill were way above our budget.

"But we've had our house valued since the building work finished, and it's now been valued at over £800k - so we've easily made our money back.

"It's not entirely in keeping with the rest of the street that we live on, which is all 1930s houses.

"But we have heard that since we got planning permission on ours, a couple of other young families on the street have also put in for planning permission.

"That's one of the main things that I'm taking away from this - that it has encouraged other young families in the area to also try and modernise.

"I think that the street will evolve now, in time."

Katy even started up her own Instagram account to showcase the transformation of her home - which has over 47,000 followers.

The Instagram account can be found at @placefortyeight.

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