Buying a house is exciting. Doing the renovations that make the new house feel right is demanding and important and can go on for years. Indeed, after selling our big family house just before I retired and using the proceeds to buy two ‘replacements’- one, our current home in the suburbs of London and the other a ‘summer cottage’ in a Brittany vilage – the renovations to both have rumbled on for years.  

This blog is about the two most recent changes – one to each house – both of which were major (in each case a new room) and likely to be the last on which we would embark. It also about how I discovered that with these changes it took time – months – before I could feel at home in the new spaces. Put another way – to feel I was in my own place.

First to the change to our London house. When we bought the house – and it was our fourth as a couple – I was in my early sixties and decided that this one would see me out. Indeed, I remember saying to myself that when I leave, it would be horizontally. In recent years it has become increasingly obvious that to avoid the need to move house again and so breach that pledge, provision would have to be made to allow me (or rather us) to live on the ground floor. While going up and down our stairs was still possible, it could soon become a challenge too far. But, in order to live downstairs, we would need to install a ground floor bathroom and this is exactly what this renovation was about.

The project involved major disruption, particularly to Rohan whose study would make way for the new bathroom and whose new work space would have to be elsewhere. In fact it would be set up across the corridor in a former library/sitting room. 

The actual bathroom conversion took just over a month but then came the weeks in which we needed to regain our bearings. For Rohan, making her new work place her own was very difficult. For me the change was less difficult; but even after I had fitted out the bathroom with pictures, cupboards, mirrors, towel rails, a blind  and a lampshade, the room still remained ‘alien’. 

For me, the turning point was bizarre and came unexpectedly. Scattered around the house was an eclectic series of eight family “animal friends” in metal and wire. For some reason, and on a whim, I collected them all together and arranged them along the windowsill of the new bathroom (see first illustration). Extraordinarily, with these in place, I suddenly felt I could own the new bathroom and relax.

The second renovation, involved a once dilapidated and dank, pigsty with a beaten earth floor in Brittany. Despite its humble beginnings, within five years of our arrival the building had become a comfortable space for guests, with a tiny bathroom and a bedroom/sitting room, electricity, heating and lighting and a tiled floor. Some years later Wifi access was added. With the changes, the pigsty was renamed the Penty (Breton for a small stone outhouse). 

Although re-designed for guests, we always saw the Penty as a place in which Rohan and I could one day live – again it would avoid the problem of stairs – although it would need to be enlarged. Being confined to one room, with nowhere to cook, to eat or to escape (in the early morning I still enjoy writing with a light turned on as Rohan sleeps), would be too limiting so an extension containing a new room and a balcony outside with steps down to the garden was our solution. 

Thanks to the investment of some ‘golden handshake’ retirement money that had become available, plans were drawn up, planning permission received and just last year the extension was built – it was a dream come true. However, despite hanging paintings, spreading out rugs and installing familiar furniture it needed something special for me to feel ownership. After several months we received from Sarah, my designer sister, three pairs of curtains she had painted especially for the room, and the minute they were hung (see second illustration), the extension felt owned. Just sitting and looking at them made me feel at home.

The discovery that I need to take ownership of spaces in my own house is new to me, but it is a feeling that I have learned to value.

For helping me write this blog, I would like to thank Annie, Sarah, Rohan and Vivien, 

The first illustration shows a photo of eight tin/wire animals standing along the windowsill of our newly installed downstairs bathroom in our house in London. The second illustration is a photo of one pair of curtains hanging in the Penty extension and painted by my sister Sarah.