Original subtitles

Here in the UK we do love a period property.

I never dreamt I would own a castle.

For me, it looks like a typical doll's house.

From countryside houses...

It was everything you could dream of.

It was a palace.

..to timeless terraces.

I turned up and I thought, whoa, this is pretty cute.

But beneath the grand facades...

Hopefully the house won't fall down.

We'll see, won't we?

..these historical homes are falling to bits.

Everyone told us to tear this building down.

All over the country, an army of renovators

are snapping them up at knock-down prices...

I think we should leave it like this.

It looks old-timely.

..then facing challenges of epic proportions.

I said all along to get a new build.

This series, we meet the brave new renovators...

Well, we're looking for a bungalow with a shed.

..and return to our familiar band of determined dreamers.

Who else has got a chapel in their house?

All risking everything...

I thought I had a good idea of what was needed.

I was quite wrong.

People think renovation is lovely, don't they? HE CHUCKLES

Oh, God. I'm trembling.

..to create the forever home of their dreams.

Oh, my God, it's so nice!

Brick by brick...

Whoa! This is amazing.

..room by room.

I'm still having my 'pinch me' moment.

We're nowhere near finished, but it feels like a house now.

We are a renovation nation.

Today we're back with Drew in Cornwall as he's going for gold

in his hallway renovation.

This will be quite a dark space, so we're going to try and brighten

it a little bit with some gold leaf.

It's very time-consuming so be prepared

to have a good weekend in.

We meet Steve and Sally at their coastal reno

where it's sun, sea and lots of sanding.

It's not supposed to be a brand-new door again,

it's a period door that's been sanded within an inch of its life.

It's a lot thinner.

And we rejoin Andrew and Mandy as their green fingers attempt

to uncover a Victorian sunken garden.

Oh, there's an edging stone here.

Glad I wasn't under that when that fell down.

In Cornwall, close to the heart of the city of Truro,

stands Castle Lodge.

This impressive Grade II listed, 12-roomed Georgian villa

was bought for £450,000

by interior designer Drew and his partner Stu, a gardener.

Earlier this week, we saw Drew and Stu reinstate elegance

and extravagance to their Georgian sitting room and dining room.

So once you've finished your little dinner party or socialising here,

you can swing through and relax in the sitting room,

which would be a nice change, wouldn't it, Stu?

The 200-year-old building is steeped in history

and was originally a show home for the four adjacent villas.

Potential buyers would be shown the decorative plasterwork

in this house and choose their preferred designs.

The building's most recent purpose was as a bar and restaurant,

but today Drew and Stu have a very different kind of menu.

They want to renovate the ground floor,

transforming the grand entrance and hallway

into a lighter, brighter space,

bringing bling to the ceiling and texture to the walls.

And Drew's going to overhaul the dark downstairs cloakroom

just off the hallway.

He will be bringing a touch of decadence to the smallest room

in the house, which is currently being used as the trade's toilet.

This is the main hallway.

Um, so you would come into the restaurant

here through the hallway.

We've done a little bit of work already.

We've embellished slightly with ceiling roses.

Drew has already sanded down the walls and removed the lino flooring,

which he plans to replace with Italian marble tiles,

and his next embellishment shows he has a real Midas touch.

I wanted to make a statement.

I thought it might be quite nice to try metallic leafing the ceiling.

This will be quite a dark space, so we're going to try and brighten

it a little bit with some gold leaf.

A pack of this?

£10.

And we can probably do a square metre.

It's very labour-intensive, but if you're doing it yourself

then, you know, it can work out to be a really great effect

for a very small budget.

Drew uses a regular wallpaper paste to glue the gold leafing

to the ceiling.

A time-consuming job for Drew,

but it's bringing back childhood memories.

It's always been a bit of a passion.

My parents disappeared on holiday and when they returned,

the house was completely transformed, redone.

I started at the main door and then worked my way

through the house.

It's very time-consuming, so be prepared

to have a good weekend in,

with a couple of bottles of wine, perhaps.

And um, just go for it until you're done.

Not everything Drew is doing will be quite as labour-intensive.

The walls throughout the hallway and stairs are being left

with that just plastered finish,

so he won't be using any wallpaper or paint.

I love the idea of using a raw plaster

and just literally sealing it

with a clear matte decorator varnish.

Of course, we do have to crisp the edges up a little bit

to make them crisp.

So for this, I've got a tin of household emulsion

in a sort of plaster colour

and a little artist brush,

and I'm just going to brush this colour

to crisp up the edges against the woodwork.

I'm just softening the edges with my hand

so that it doesn't look like a painted stripe

against the existing plaster.

Yeah.

Good.

Clamouring for Drew's attention is the downstairs cloakroom,

which he has yet to tackle.

Drew plans to hide the on display boiler and electrics

behind panelling with a twist.

Believe it or not, this, um, hole of a space

will be the downstairs cloakroom,

where the feature will be sheets of tortoiseshell

that I found in Italy and we'll be backlighting

those on the ceiling and the walls to create

this sort of jewel box effect.

Hiding all the gubbins here will be ceiling-hung sliders.

Um, very difficult to imagine right now.

With plumbing, painting and panelling still to do,

I'd say impossible to imagine right now,

but if anyone can, Drew can.

From the cathedral city of Truro,

over 300 miles away to the coastal town of New Brighton

in the North West.

Overlooking the mighty River Mersey stands Clifton,

a grand Victorian villa built in 1901,

boasting 18 rooms, eight of which are bedrooms.

Decaying and desperately in need of TLC,

the tide turned for this waterfront property

when it was bought in November 2018

by Steve, a builder, and his wife Sally, a primary school teacher.

We paid 250,000 for the house.

You just can't quite believe it, that that's how much it was.

The house was in the most dreadful condition.

Most of the floors at the back were rotten.

All the timber lintels were ready to fall out.

It needed to be a home again.

Steve and Sally have worked tirelessly over the last four years,

renovating the kitchen,

sitting room and bedrooms.

With Sally teaching at a local primary school,

they are managing all this on one wage.

Clifton is my full-time job.

If you have plenty of money, these things would be easier.

But this is our story, and our story is we'll do it,

but we have to do it carefully.

And so far it's worked.

With so much still to do, this year Steve and Sally are concentrating

on the remaining rooms on the ground floor, including the guest bathroom

and a room which would have regularly been used

by the live-in servants when the house was first built.

This is the butler's pantry.

We think that it was used for the silverware.

It's got all the original locks on still.

We intend to strip all the paintwork off the doors.

Lots of work to do on the window,

getting that to function properly again.

You could just strip it all out,

but obviously we want to try and keep everything

and find what the room looked like a long time ago,

and I think that's what we want to keep.

In order to restore the butler's pantry to its former glory,

Steve and Sally must remove over 120 years' worth of paint and varnish

from the original cupboards and doors,

repair the original sash window and damaged ceiling,

and give the whole space a new lease of life

with a fresh coat of paint.

So that's the door off.

OK, where are we putting the... Do you want those?

Yeah, we look after those. Right.

And out we go.

Sally likes to work outside because

this is the most fabulous spot.

Out here, this is where you want to be.

Leave me to it.

Leave you to it. All right.

Good luck. Thanks.

With Steve already burning off the bulk of the paint

from the door with a heat gun...

Ooh, hello.

..Sally needs to scrape out excess paint left on the edges

of its panelling.

Back indoors, Steve is repairing the cracks in the ceiling of the pantry.

With them both so hands-on, vitally, it keeps costs down.

Financially, if I could afford to have electricians, plasterers,

I could just rip down ceilings.

It would be a joy, of course.

I could only do that for about two or three months

and then we'd be flat broke.

And it's nice for me to know that

when Steve's doing other things,

I've been able to help him move the job along.

Because if I don't do these small jobs, he's got to do all of those.

It's just impossible when you're a one-man band, I think.

Scraping done,

it's now onto the sanding to reveal the original timber.

Off we go.

How's it going?

I'm exhausted!

All that sanding.

You know, it's not supposed to be a brand-new door again.

Yeah, but I quite like the fact that it's...

It's a period door that's been sanded within an inch of its life.

It's a lot thinner.

It's a lot thinner than it was. Yes!

There you are. You've got a finished product.

Good. Are you happy with that?

Yeah, I am. Yeah. So what are we doing now?

We're taking the door in, get it back on

and pretty much that's it for today.

Good girl. Come on, we're going to put the door on.

And...

..shut it to.

Ta-da! And move back, and there it is.

One door done, but with the original silverware cupboards to restore

and a period window to be repaired,

Steve and Sally can't enjoy the fruits of their labour just yet.

Coming up,

a historic map leads Andrew and Mandy

down the garden path at their Warwickshire renovation.

Walk in this direction and you then come straight

into that sunken garden.

And in Cornwall, Drew throws some light on proceedings

in his cloakroom renovation.

Are we ready? Yeah.

I think the effect is brilliant.

Good. Thanks, guys!

In the rolling Warwickshire countryside stands Dunsmore Hall.

Part of the landscape for more than 250 years,

this 27-roomed, sprawling Georgian hall with extensive outbuildings

started life as a humble farmhouse,

but was extended over time as the wealth of its owners grew.

Renovating it piece by piece, a chemical engineer, Andrew,

and former property lawyer and special needs teacher Mandy.

Buying it for just £676,000,

they're now entering their third year of renovations

and are still as excited as ever.

I pinch myself regularly.

I still can't believe that we're living in a place like this.

But it's when you go outside and you look back at it

and you think that that's...

..that can't be all ours. That can't be our house.

Earlier in the week,

we saw Andrew and Mandy repair the crumbling stable block,

creating a smart studio for Andrew's photography hobby...

It's nice to see people milling around.

Amazing experience.

..and restoring the original weathervane and Victorian cupola.

That's the one.

That was terrifying! SHE LAUGHS

It's January at Dunsmore Hall, and Andrew and Mandy's next mission

is to restore some of the original gardens.

The house stands in three acres of grounds,

more than 60 times the size of the average garden in the UK.

In one overgrown section of the garden,

they found a circular path and it's really piqued their interest.

I've pulled out all our history books and plans

and sales particulars.

Digging deeper, they've been doing some research

with horticulturalist friend Vicky

and found a map dating from the 1800s with evidence

of a sunken garden.

These were all the rage in Victorian high society,

often used to showcase a collection of ferns or imported specimens.

So, ornamental plantation containing a fine collection of firs.

Winding and well-kept paths with ivy margins lead to a specimen fernery.

So when it talks about walking to the...

..through to the fern collection, it would be walking this direction

and you then come straight into that sunken garden.

Yes.

As well as the old map, Mandy has a book about Victorian trends.

In this Victorian... Victorian craze book,

it just reminds me of the shape that I think is in our garden.

Sort of, you've got that one entranceway

and the path all the way round in a perfect circle.

Other sunken gardens that are known to have been built at this era

have a feature in the centre. Right.

So Kensington Palace has a sunken garden, and that's got a lawn

and a pond in the middle.

Yeah, I don't think we're quite on a par with Kensington Garden!

No, but that's the idea.

They probably wanted a focal point then,

so what we should be thinking about is

what are we going to have in the centre there?

But just like everything else at Dunsmore Hall,

there's some stripping back to do before Andrew and Mandy

can start to piece things back together.

Oh, there's an edging stone here.

Oh, I think the path went back further.

Oh, yeah.

So it would have been a large path then?

Quite a wide path.

If we clear this area here,

cut this laurel back... To find the edges of everything.

Find the edge of the path and actually define where it is,

and then work from there.

But we do need to do a lot of clearing.

While you do that, I'm going to pull stuff up!

Glad I wasn't under that when that fell down.

I've got tangled up.

Just half an hour of cutting back and pulling out,

more of the previously hidden path is starting to reveal itself.

There's some of the edging strip.

So you can imagine

that going all the way round in a complete circle.

Quite a feature.

It's a promising start, but there's still just the small matter

of decades of overgrowth to cut back

before the rest of this hidden garden's secrets can be uncovered.

265 miles away, back in Truro,

Drew and Stu's renovation of their Regency villa's grand entrance hall

and ground floor cloakroom continues.

I think that works pretty well together.

The gold leafing on the rear ceiling of the hall has been completed,

and the cloakroom has had its first fix electrics,

and the walls and ceilings panelled in Drew's unique style.

It's a really small, very dark space, so why not play with that?

And it's always quite nice to have a bit of fun in a cloakroom.

I've gone with a sort of chinoiserie vibe in here.

Tortoiseshell acrylic sheets, um, from Italy,

so you'll be sort of stepping into this tortoise jewel box.

The panels will be backlit with strips of LED lights to make

this jewel box really shimmer and shine.

Tortoiseshell has been used in design since Roman times,

although they tended to use it to veneer furniture

rather than decorate their lavatories.

How's it going, Alex?

Oh, good, Drew. Thanks, man.

We're, uh, we're all good behind here now.

Got all the taps set up.

We'll bring that unit in in a minute.

Sit the basin on top. Hurray!

Line it all up and put your panel back on.

We should be all done today.

That's champion. Thank you, Alex.

With the waterproof backboard in place, Drew now has the perfect

base to fit the rest of his acrylic panels.

Great thing about a clear silicone, it holds it in situ,

and yet you won't see a thing.

Hurray. That's one.

Stand back. Maestro, at work.

Good. This is a real squeeze to get this in, which is a good thing.

It's going to hold it tight.

There we go. Snugs as bugs.

Last two pieces.

Brass goes there.

Right. We will let that go off, as they say.

With the panels in place, Alex attaches the taps.

And Drew is happy with the progress.

Good? Yeah.

The install is always, you know, supposed to go relatively smoothly.

If you got the right team, it'll always work. Right, Alex?

Oh, yes.

I think we've had...

..we've had closer calls than this, haven't we? Definitely.

As the cloakroom begins to take shape, Drew turns his attention

to an antique chinoiserie cabinet that he intends to repurpose

as a showstopping stand for a marble basin.

Because it's an antique piece, I estimate sort of 1900s.

The great thing is, for a small room,

it's got that practicality factor

of having a really large cabinet.

And, um, Alex will cut out and install the basin,

so it's just like a bowl floating on the top.

Before Alex attaches the basin to the cabinet,

Drew wants to make sure it's sitting just right.

The marble,

there's a particular grain which I want at the front.

You see this spot here? That.

Let's spin that around to the front.

No problem. Thank you, Alex.

With the marble basin lined up...

Right. Ready to drill?

..Alex can connect the waste pipe to the basin, which will be cleverly

hidden in the cabinet space below.

OK. Nice position, Alex. Thanks, man.

Happy? Yeah. Super happy.

Lovely. Right.

Go on. Does it?

Nice. And you've altered the flow as well so it's less...

Yes, I've slowed it down a bit so it doesn't spray out.

It's not Niagara Falls.

Thanks, man. No worries.

Thank you. Any time!

Glad to help. Lovely.

As the remaining acrylic panels are attached to the wall...

Shall I get sparks? Yeah. OK.

..Drew is keen to see his design ideas illuminated.

I think the effect is brilliant.

Good. Thanks, guys.

Callum's done his job brilliantly for the LEDs.

George has fitted all the tortoise fantastically.

We've had Alex doing all the plumbing.

A great team effort, but with the wallpaper left to hang,

plasterwork to fix and painting to be done on the entrance

and hallway, there's still plenty of work to keep everyone busy.

Coming up,

there is a window of opportunity for things to go wrong

for Steve at his New Brighton reno.

One wrong move here and it will just break.

Opportunity knocks for Drew at his Cornish renovation.

I actually found it in the back streets of Rome.

I bought this before buying the house.

I guess you could say that I had to buy the house

to work with the knocker.

And can Andrew and Mandy's secret garden measure up?

I think you want to go to your left a little bit.

Well, I am, but the tree's staying there!

In the North West coastal town of New Brighton...

This is the one that had all the problems.

..the renovation of Steve and Sally's Victorian butler's pantry continues.

Right. I'm going up.

The original cupboard doors have been sanded and rehung,

and while Sally continues scraping away decades of paint

on the inside of the cupboard,

Steve's focus is to get the original 120-year-old sash mechanism working,

but first he needs to restore

one of the original glazed panels.

This glass has been out to do these repairs,

so this was only in temporarily.

So you see we've got some little pins there.

I mean one wrong move here and it will go.

It will just break.

That's uber tight there.

It seems a bit tighter than I need it to be.

And it seems a bit reluctant to move.

This breaks, I will cry.

Steve has already restored 12 of their 27 original sash windows,

so he knows slow and steady wins the race.

GLASS CLUNKS

Did you hear that?

That was the sound of freedom.

Better than the sound of breaking glass, eh, Steve?

Here it comes.

Here it comes.

Steady, steady.

That was a bit scary.

Time to putty.

So now we've got our rebate here.

So now we've got to, what they call, back putty.

So when you're reglazing, you need a back putty,

which is a nice bed for the glass to sit in.

You just use the thumb and you just put a little bit of putty...

We just chase that around.

Shouldn't have to touch it again for many, many years.

With the back putty done, the glass can be laid back in place.

The most dangerous thing is yet to come, of course,

which is our lovely little panel pins.

So here we go.

We want to be just above the glass.

Give it a little start.

Right. So now we're going to do our puttying in,

which will now seal the glass in.

While Steve seals the glazing in place with a top layer of putty,

Sally's endless scraping odyssey continues.

But the thing is, I have to remind myself it's inside of a cupboard.

But you just, got to just know when to stop.

Keep scraping, girl. Come on. SHE CHUCKLES

Steve is now ready to rehang the window with new rope cords

attached to the window's counterweights.

We are just poking it in the hole here.

Maybe just double knot that a bit.

That's it. That's good.

Now we pull on this now

and this will take our weight inside.

As the window comes down,

of course, the weight goes up.

Right. That can't go anywhere.

Now we're in business.

We've got to hoick it up in the air.

Like so.

Somehow trap it over there.

Get your hammer,

give it a little bit of a start.

Like that.

Right. So that's all it takes.

With the rope pinned in place on both sides,

Steve releases the retaining pins

Like that.

Now...

..we've got to tease that back in there.

You can see the weights are still swinging around.

Now, for Steve to see if his patient and dedicated approach

to the restoration of his sash window has paid off.

This is what we wanted it to do.

So that's the first time that's operated in a long time.

Keeping the original features are always massively labour-intensive.

So yeah, it's painful, but it's starting to shape up now.

It certainly is.

But with a sink unit still to build

and original flooring to restore,

for Steve and Sally, renovating the smallest room in the house

is giving them some of the biggest jobs to complete.

From the North West coast to Truro, more than 350 miles away,

where Drew has been working wonders on his Georgian villa.

With the ground floor cloakroom almost complete

and dust sheets down to protect the newly laid Italian marble flooring,

today Drew is turning his attention back to the ceiling.

I'm just going to size the raw plaster.

With the rear ceiling covered in gold leaf,

Drew is now applying a thin coat of glue to the front of the ceiling,

a technique known as sizing.

This will go off in no time at all.

With the ceiling prepped,

Drew is going to complement the gold leafing

with a striking silver wallpaper.

It has that really great sheen to it.

If we have to go around the ceiling rose,

this initial cut will just help

when I'm up a ladder with hands full.

It's like the Caped Crusader.

I'm quite sure a professional would be laughing right now.

It just weighs so much.

This wallpaper consists of paper and leather,

which is pummelled together when made.

So it's strong and heavy, making each roll weigh over two kilos.

One slip of the knife here would be a disaster.

So you kind of got to do this fringing

so that the paper will curve.

OK.

Now we just get the bubbles out.

And I quite like it, because you get this

nickel pewter in the main hall.

And then as you go further back into the building,

there's the matte down gold leaf.

OK. So I'll let that dry off.

And slice her up.

Yeah. Very happy with that.

With the theatrical hallway taking shape, Drew turns his attention

to creating a show-stopping entrance.

We've got the front door being replaced,

so George is currently taking out the old commercial glass door.

The glass front door dates from when the building

was a restaurant, but it's certainly not in keeping with the period

of the property.

Drew has found a wide door in architectural salvage,

typical of the Georgian style,

as doors tended to be larger to accommodate the fashions of the time.

It's a wider door than usual, but it'll be really nice to see

the house with its proper front door on again.

This is such a beautiful piece.

I mean, it absolutely weighs a ton.

It's solid brass.

I actually found it in the back streets of Rome,

so I bought this before buying the house.

Um, I guess you could say that I had to buy the house

to work with the knocker that I had.

Two days later, with the door now having a new coat of paint,

Drew is keen to see how it will look in situ.

Well, Alf, what do you think of all your fine paintery work?

It looks really mint.

It's such a great colour.

Next, Drew's touching up plasterwork where drilling

for electrical fittings has left some damage.

So the lobby is really quite important because

that's what sets the tone for the rest of the house.

The pink ceiling of the plasterwork echoes the plasterwork that runs

through the centre of the house, in the hallway and the landings.

The atmosphere is then set when you walk in and of course,

as an ex-show home in the 1820s, you would have come in,

chosen your plasterwork, chosen your fire surrounds.

And we're just echoing back to the reason that it was built

in the 1820s really,

to show the craftsmanship of the building team.

They're just brilliant.

And with you leading them,

remaining jobs such as a functional cloakroom toilet,

working hallway lights and the addition of some

Drew-ly inspired finishing touches will surely turn this ground floor

reno into a ground-breaking masterpiece.

Over 270 miles away in Warwickshire,

and in between major renovations on the main house,

Andrew and Mandy have also been busy in the grounds,

clearing ivy and overgrown shrubbery to reveal the original

Victorian sunken garden.

And now horticulturalist friend Vicky is back...

Hi, Vicky.

..with some ideas that will help them to restore the garden

to its former glory.

This one is the more formal idea of splitting it into quadrants.

Right. Having a tree growing in the middle.

Another idea. This one just puts in three segments for planting.

My initial reaction is I like this thirds.

It feels less formal.

So I think we need to make a decision on what we're going to do

in the centre.

Armed with the plans and a tape measure,

it's time to head down to the sunken garden to finalise the design.

You'd never have known that you cleared all of this. I know!

Using the tape measure and a length of bamboo as a marker,

their first job is to work out where the centre

of the sunken garden will be.

So you reckon it's what, four metres, what?

Five metres.

Exactly five metres? Yeah. OK.

Take a step to the left.

I think you want to go to your left a little bit.

Well, I am, but the tree's staying there!

Now they've found the centre,

Andrew rolls up a tree offcut to represent a seat

they're considering as a centrepiece.

Did you forget your gloves?

No, because we weren't going to do any work.

Time to decide which of Vicky's plans to use.

Today is decision day about everything.

You have to decide. Four or three?

Thirds. It's going to be thirds.

Three. It's in thirds.

That's it. Decision made.

Well, they got there eventually.

Now the hard work making the design a reality can begin.

Three months later, and with the whole site now cleared,

Andrew and Mandy are ready to plant the silver birch tree

that will be the centrepiece of their new sunken garden,

and it's all part of recreating what might have been there originally.

So we have a tree to plant in the centre.

That's sort of like the crowning point of the sunken garden.

We have some bark chippings to put around it,

and then we have a nice tree seat to go around.

Once it's finished, we can sort of go down there and escape

from the madness of doing the house.

That's my vision, anyway.

That's what's in my...in my head.

So as we cleared this ground, we found that

the really large fir tree which had taken over

was pretty much dead in the centre

of what we then discovered was a circle.

And that made sense that they'd

built it for a focal point in there.

So we had to fell that for various reasons.

So we said, well, we've obviously got to put a tree back in there.

Now with expert help from Vicky,

it's time to get planting.

Can you two lift the tree? BOTH: Yeah.

And I'll pull the pot down and it should slide out.

And with a bit of teamwork...

I'm going to slice it.

Right. Do you want to lift it?

..the five-year-old silver birch goes in perfectly.

Straight in the hole.

Oh, what an amazing sight.

To me that looks straight that...that way. Yeah.

For Andrew, it's a huge moment.

So imagine in ten years' time,

it's going to be a little bit taller.

And then the canopy over there. Going to look amazing, isn't it?

Yeah. It's got a bit of catching up to do

with its 200-year-old neighbours!

The next job is to assemble the circular seat

that will surround the new tree.

We bought it from a local reclamation yard that's selling

new tree seats, as well as the odd reclaimed one

that they get in.

Genuinely old ones are too expensive,

and we bought this one because it's curvy.

So you can see the base of it curves down rather than coming out flat.

Bottom-shaped!

So while Mandy gets cracking with the nuts and bolts,

Andrew and Vicky can start covering the ground with woodchip.

Straight up the middle.

So this is woodchip from the trees that have, um,

been either cut down or trimmed.

The Victorians would have used that for, um,

heating their greenhouses.

So they would have put fresh manure or, um, woodchips down

and the action of it composting would create heat.

With the showpiece circular seat constructed...

Ta-da!

What do you think?

Brilliant. Finishes it off nicely.

How many people do you think we can sit on here?

..nothing for it but to try it out.

So we're an eight-person seat?

Yeah. That's all right.

Well, I'll check the weight limit first!

Yeah. It's satisfied a lot of our tick boxes for the house, hasn't it?

Yeah. Research, investigation,

and back-breaking work!

Coming up,

every second counts for Steve and Sally.

When you live in a property like this and you constantly see

things need doing and you get a couple of minutes,

you do tend just to pick something up and get on with it,

and the next thing, a couple of hours is gone.

It does become all-consuming.

And Drew is flush with excitement in his Cornish cloakroom renovation.

Do you know, I don't think I've ever been quite as excited

to see a toilet flush.

You're the maestro!

In New Brighton,

renovations on Steve and Sally's Victorian butler's pantry

are picking up pace.

With a butler's sink bought online for just £10, temporarily installed,

Steve now wants to build a unit around it

using only recycled timber.

Straightaway there's a selection of driftwood.

All this has come out of the Mersey.

Um, we have many a thing.

So, there's a nice bit of skirting there.

I mean, it doesn't look a nice piece of skirting, but there it is.

You'll see once we burn this off and sand it,

we'll have a very usable piece.

So, let's go.

Ever inventive Steve has even made a worktop from an old door.

Just gently.

The spare skirting Steve found in the basement will be used

as a cladding finish on the front.

Meanwhile, Sally's scraping saga continues,

removing old paint from the floorboards.

When you live in a property like this and you constantly see

things need doing and you get a couple of minutes,

you do tend just to pick something up and get on with it,

and the next thing, a couple of hours has gone.

It does become all-consuming.

Time flies when you're having fun, eh, Sally?

It's come up a lot, lot better than we thought it would.

So that means a wash and a dry, and then we can sand it

and then see what it looks like after that.

It's nice to actually see a difference.

Sometimes you can do something and you can't see a difference.

But that one, you definitely can.

Next, Steve gets to work fixing all the old skirting

to the front of the sink unit.

Then he fits a drawer, which he has made from an old wardrobe

and finally attaches a door.

Let's see what that looks like now.

Yeah. No, I'm super pleased.

Being as it's cost us nothing.

For me, it's just a perfect win-win. Absolutely.

Repurposing all the wood and cracking on with the job himself

has saved Steve around £750 in materials and labour costs.

So it's a win all round.

I've just got all the sink unit together.

Ooh!

What do you think? It looks great.

Yeah, with the door, it's so cute!

You wouldn't say that anything stands out as wrong?

No. Once it's all stained in a similar colour... Yeah.

Or whatever we're doing with it. It looks great.

Four months ago, the butler's pantry was a dark, dingy cupboard

hiding under decades of paint.

The 120-year-old ceiling was showing signs of ageing

and the floor was far from flawless.

Today, the butler's pantry has been given a silver service

by Steve and Sally.

The walls have been painted in a rich turquoise.

The floor has been given a new lease of life with a crisp white varnish,

but it's the original butler's pantry cupboards once used to keep

the silverware under lock and key that take centre stage,

having been painstakingly restored and varnished with a nourishing oil

to enhance and protect their period charm.

I don't know if we've got any silver to put in here.

No. The dog's bowl.

Yeah. The dog's... The dog's bowl.

It's a bit of a comedown from the church silver, but...

No, no, no silver.

I got a lot of satisfaction from building the sink unit,

because that was always a bit of a challenge to get

it to match the existing.

If you just walk in here, you'd never know that

that unit was not here before.

Because of Steve's many skills,

this renovation has hardly cost them a bean.

I think all in it has been under 200. Yeah.

And then obviously your time. Yeah.

So yeah, it's been an absolute bargain.

It's beautiful, it's functional and it's ours.

And the end product is just incredible.

It's lovely.

With another room ticked off the list,

just another 12 to go.

And we'll be back with Steve and Sally later in the week

to find out what's next on their renovation to-do list.

Back in Cornwall at Drew and Stu's Regency villa,

the hallway ceiling has now been fully crowned

with the silver wallpaper.

New carpet is being laid on the staircase

and Callum, the electrician, is installing

Art Deco style pendant ceiling lights

sourced by Drew from an old bank.

Yay!

Well done!

The reclaimed period door has now been hung,

and Drew and joiner George are attaching its furniture.

Fairly tight? Yeah.

Fantastic.

I think it's super important to, um, give people the first impression

of what to expect when they come inside the house.

You know, these bits have been found ages ago in various places.

They've found their home finally, now, and they work well together.

Also working well now is the toilet in Drew's charismatic cloakroom.

How are we doing, Alex? All good, mate.

Do you want the honour of the first flush?

How exciting!

I think I'm going to leave that to you, Alex. Ah!

You've slaved and sweated in the Batcave here.

Right. Here we go.

Woo-hoo!

Look at that.

Do you know, I don't think I've ever been quite as excited

to see a toilet flush. Well, there you go.

You're the maestro!

Six months ago,

the former restaurant hallway was a dumping ground,

a dusty mess in much need of some TLC.

But with Drew's creative vision,

his team have utterly transformed the ground floor space.

Every square inch has been carefully considered.

Entering Castle Lodge it now feels like you are stepping into a palace.

So we're working with that vibe of that dusty old palazzo

that we wanted to create.

The papered ceiling is in a champagne silver

and that helps to bounce the light around a little bit.

And the banking lights just add that little extra flavour

of the period that we're trying to achieve.

And we've taken the tones from the ceiling,

from a champagne silver

into a slightly deeper gold on the rear hallway here.

I swear I lost a few days of my life doing the gold in this area.

I can't imagine there's many houses that have Heracles

as the gatekeeper. I love him here.

I think he's a great surprise.

I mean, we've had real fun in this little rear hallway,

and people are asking, well, where's your cloakroom?

Well, head to the stage door, of course.

And here it is.

Where before there was a dark, uninspiring toilet,

now in the smallest room of the building is Drew's masterpiece.

Truly a cloakroom fit for a king.

It's a little bit of fun, it's a little bit of theatre,

and it's such a small space, you can really go to town.

Going to town is surely Drew's mantra for life.

And who would argue?

What a result!

I'm really, really happy with the way the space feels,

I love it.

I think the volumes that we were gifted,

we tried to work our best with that.

Yeah, I'm really happy.

I love it.

Later this week, we'll see Drew go to town once

more in the upstairs bedrooms.

Next time,

in Kent...

I am actually really,

really nervous about this.

Wallpapering the attic...

5-2-2. 5-2-2

..tests Ian and Miranda's math skills.

Just need some time to think about this.

Completely flummoxed by it all.

In Cornwall, unlocking the past...

It's not every house that you buy

has got a safe of this size and age.

..proves harder than expected.

Hopefully we can see what's inside today, huh?

And on the Wirral, the drive to complete a shower room...

Stop making excuses.

Just get on with it.

I'm doing my best. Yeah.

..needs all hands to the pumps.

Time is money!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media