A pair of dilapidated council houses have been transformed into an award-winning country mansion – worth nearly £3 MILLION.
Yardgrove House is a stunning Georgian property with six bedrooms, five bathrooms and a huge farmhouse kitchen.
But a couple of years ago it was a pair of rundown workers’ cottages on a local authority farm.
Property developers Kate and Johnny Bourne took on the project and over three years transformed it into one luxury family home near Sturminster Newton, Dorset.
With the help of Yeovil-based architects Boon Brown, they knocked the buildings together before adding new wings which link to the milk parlour behind the main house.
It has around 6,500 sq ft of “free-flowing accommodation” with a rear wing one-bedroom self-contained annexe, 9.5 acres of land and is on the market for £2.75m.
Brave Kate, 51, said: “I am always on the look-out for buildings and we came across this huge great Georgian facade and thought we’d give it a go.
“It was devastated. It was grubby and absolutely gruesome and ghostly, but we would come away every night and dream about what it could be.
“Now it is done we are so very proud of it. We just loved putting the sash windows back into this Georgian house and bringing it back to how it should be.”
The husband and wife team bought the dilapidated semi-detached houses from North Dorset District Council in September 2011 for just over £1 million.
It is thought the building was once a single Georgian family home which was later bought by the council and split into two during the Second World War.
While the land around is still used by the council for farming, the buildings had fallen out of use.
After obtaining planning permission, the couple – who both used to work in event management – “gutted” the property and knocked down the dividing wall.
They added new wings to each side and linked them to the old milking parlour behind the house.
Helped by a team of up to 30 electricians, plasterers and stonemasons, they finished the project in August 2014.
The home has now won the Local Authority Building Control award for North Dorset and the South-West. It was runner-up in the national final.
Kate and Johnny are currently living in the property with their children Olivia, 17 and Will, 15, but are now keen to sell up and start their next project.
“We’d love to live in it – it is absolutely lovely – but we are after a nice little cottage somewhere,” said Kate.
The house is on sale with Knight Frank.
