As refurbishment projects go, they don’t get much more extensive than the one we carried out in Combe, near Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
Chatterpie House was a rundown, 1,800 sq ft cottage in a beautiful setting and with the potential to be a really lovely family home. Shortly after we bought it on the open market, we applied for planning permission to extend the house. Working with an architect who was used to working in the Cotswolds and in particular with the local limestone, we won planning approval and transformed the house. We gave it a new roof, new floors, underpinned the foundations and doubled its size. Long before we finished we had a queue of people wanting to buy it.