Country house renovation

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Fiona and Tim Ireland have transfromed an 18th-century farmhouse into an elegant yet comfortable family home. Their use of colour and stylish furnishings earned their home Best Country House in our Readers' Awards 2009.

With a limited budget, Fiona Ireland has had to prioritise the renovations of the new family farmhouse. ‘We needed a new roof,’ she explains. ‘But because the house is listed, we had to use a certain type of tile that is twice as expensive as some I’d already sourced beforehand. It meant that we could only tile half the roof as we needed to reserve some funds for the decorating.’

To save money on the decorating, she’s doing almost everything herself, reusing what was already there wherever viable, and only calling in the professionals for specialist projects, like the bathroom refit. ‘That room was our one indulgence,’ she says. ‘It used up most of the remaining budget, but we wanted a luxurious finish.

‘However, I do think that the heart of any house is the kitchen,’ she continues, ‘and we inherited a large room that we knew we’d spend many happy days in.’ Fiona replaced terracotta and green wall tiles for marble ones, and painted the kitchen units and built-in dresser in off-white to complement the floor; she also added dark wooden cupboard doorknobs as a contrast.

‘Thanks to many trips to southern France, I’m very fond of grey tones,’ says Fiona. ‘Chalky shades with a hint of green, lilac or pale blue work really well in this house, and although some looked quite dark when I started painting with them, they softened down considerably when the whole room was done.’

Fiona has also used wallpaper to highlight feature walls in some rooms. In the eldest daughter's bedroom, for example, a chinoiserie pattern forms a stylish backdrop for an upholstered bed giving her attic room a pretty yet elegant feel. In the TV room, meanwhile, a large floral print is an unusual way of creating even more of a focal point of an enormous inglenook fireplace.

‘It may have been a challenge at times getting here, and it might be years before we can fix the rest of the roof and finish all the rooms. But we can enjoy the fact that the main ones are done and we have a home that we love, which is all that really matters.’

FEATURE NAOMI JONES STYLING SIAN WILLIAMS PHOTOGRAPHS BRENT DARBY
Featured in the November 2009 issue of Period Living