Last year, we bought our first house. The house is 104 years old and looks it! You can tell it was well-built, well-loved and well-maintained… until about 20 years ago. It has high ceilings, ornate cornices and big rooms – and we love it! But it has been, and will still be, a lot of work fixing all of its old-age issues.

Our home has three bedrooms and it’s just the two of us, so we are able to work on it and live in it at the same time. We started with the guest bedroom, working on it in the evenings (after full workdays) and on weekends. We are on a budget and did all of it ourselves. We used loads of recycled items and hand-me-downs and spent plenty of time on Facebook Marketplace.

We call it The Pink Room, but the room is pink and green. We aimed not to be scared about using colour – we wanted to make it fun! The room has some fairly big cracks in the walls and lots of peeling wallpaper. The carpets smelled terrible! We got rid of all of that. The Pink Room gets lovely natural light and has a door out onto the patio, and our guests seem to love staying in it.