Living the life
When we first moved in we had very little in the way of possessions; just two chairs, a workmate and a Baby Belling cooker, and until a kind neighbour gave us their old sofa, this was our only furniture. For a bed, we had two pallets on the floor in the room off the kitchen that had been a storeroom and later became our office. It was all boarded up with iron bars on the inside. It was very damp and leather shoes left between the pallets ended up green in a matter of a few weeks.
Dave at the time had a company called Acre Engineering, which specialised in bespoke agricultural machinery, as well as decorative gates and railings. He had a young apprentice who was later became his valuable right-hand man called Steve Kitt. Steve was clearing out his grandparent’s house and generously gave us their old bed. This had a headboard and springs, so was quite some upgrade.
For the temporary bathroom Dave had spied an old shower in a barn at Trerule Farm, the Bond’s family home. The Bonds were to play a large part in our history. They rented Dave his workshop at Bake for many years and Dave did a lot of work for them, both on the farm and on their three golf courses. Later we would store carriages on their land and they would frequently be called in to help move them. Martin Bond kindly gave us the shower. The frame was pretty rusty, but we kept the valve to use in our new bathroom and it is still going strong.
Our first bathroom was set up in the old gents toilets. We’d removed the ceramic fittings, so the wall was formed of old Victorian slate urinals. There were no proper windows in this room, just boards, and so in the mornings I would take my shower to the sound of commuters catching the train outside.
We set up the temporary bathroom in the former gentlemen’s lavatory for convenience of plumbing. We had to first knock a hole in the adjoining room, the former station master’s office, because there had never been a through way into the main body of the building, and the doors from the platform had been fixed shut many years before. So to access the bathroom we had to pass from the kitchen through a door into the station master’s office, which was left pretty much unused, apart from displaying a few wedding presents on the slate mantlepiece. A curtain divided the two rooms.
The ceilings and floors of the station were unstable because the place was so derelict. One day when Dave was out at a round table meeting I heard scrambling in the station master’s room. I was just about to investigate, thinking there might be rats in the roof, when there was an almighty crash. Part of the ceiling had fallen down. It was a close shave! The noises I had heard must have been the sound of the lathe and plaster creaking before it finally tumbled.
Because my piano was so important to me we had a music room from the start – the corner of the old waiting room was partitioned off, so one side was a workshop and the other housed my piano.
The kitchen was the first place we did up, and this became our everything room for a number of years, and is still primarily where we live. Dave made a stove and so we kept warm. We put up old curtains we’d been given as a temporary measure; another of those jobs that over thirty years later is still on the to-do list!
The bank manager finally visited a year after purchase. On arrival his face looked like he’d seen a ghost, he was so shocked at the external appearance of the place; we’d prioritised the inside, so it continued looking rough for several years. He’d just come from another property where they’d got the outside looking picture perfect, but completely stripped out the inside; there were no walls and floors left at all, just an external shell. At this point they had run out of money. He was visibly relieved when he stepped into our newly restored kitchen!
Architraves and mouldings
Early work focused on the kitchen. The ceilings were fourteen feet high, so we frequently worked our lives around a scaffold tower. Dave made a mould to repair the architrave. My cousin Malachite came down and taught Dave how to plaster.
We restored the original wooden panelling wherever possible, but where they had been removed Dave made new ones out of ply-board. The picture below shows me mixing plaster for the architrave. We had probably been living in the station for a few months by this point!
The early days
Life in the early days was a continual struggle. Every spare minute was spent on house restoration, and money was always very short, but there was always a lot of fun too. We had lots of friends and a great social life. St Germans as a village was a great place to live as a young person.
In the earliest days of our marriage, Dave would head off to his workshop around 8am, got back just before six, tea would be served and he would then work until ten on the house every night. Work would also continue through each weekend. This was to set the pattern of our lives for the next six and a half years.
When not cooking, shopping or practicing the piano (at the time I had set out a punitive and impractical timetable of four hours a day), I would use my time at home to scrape paint, sand wood and other tasks suited to artists. However I was very easily bored and found house restoration was not my forte, so did . However I did very much enjoy the company of Dave’s Grandad Roy, who would come several days a week.
I was however fairly good at simply labouring tasks, including concrete mixing and painting boards. Learning how to paint from Grandad Roy was a gift that has proved useful for many years. (Always sand with the grain. Paint with the grain rather than against it. Clean surfaces with a little white spirit before applying the first coat. Stir the paint well. Use a fine sandpaper between coats and wipe again with white spirit, paint thin layers, clean the excess paint off the brush by slapping it on the inside of the tin.)
Dave has always been practical, which stood him in good stead in his new role as part-time builder. With the exception of Dave’s grandad, help with the electrics from his Dad John, who was an electrician by trade, and a visit from my plasterer cousin, we did all the work ourselves. By the time we’d finished the house Dave had built walls, salvaged woodwork, made templates for restoring architraves, dug cellars, plumbed in sinks, boilers and showers, made stoves, laid floors (wooden, slate) and underfloor heating, repaired the roof, rebuilt the chimneys and much more.
All the windows in the house needed replacing, which we did room by room. This was an expensive job. The windows were made by a carpenter friend called Geoff Bailey, and he did a lovely job. We opted for Douglas Fir.
Our mortgage was £25050 and we were able to borrow a further £4600 from the bank in order to pay for materials, which was very handy for big expenses such as the windows, joists and floors. The rest we funded from day to day earnings. We had a pension mortgage, which came with its own trials and tribulations due to the vagaries of the financial market, and didn’t quite live up to its promise, but still made sense for us as we have always been self-employed, so it was a tax efficient way of doing it.
Being at home was often useful. I was there when the council came to make its assessment for council tax. I had my suspicion that the tall man in a suit who seemed to be sizing up the place might be there on some kind of mission, so I asked him what he was doing. He had sized up the property as a four bedroom detached house and said he’d give it band D, so I was pleased to be able to explain that there was only one bedroom.
We then had quite a debate, as it transpired council tax is based upon the potential value of the house, rather than its value as a building project. I felt this was very unfair, and still do, as it discriminates against people with low incomes who work hard to create a home using their own labour. There was no way we could have afforded a high band of council tax. I must have had some persuasive powers, because when the summons came through we’d been put in band B. A big sigh of relief!
There were many times in those early days when people would simply walk in, assuming the building was still in use. One day a very well-dressed, well-spoken larger-than-life lady burst through the door. When I explained that the building was no longer a station but our home, she cast a look around and asked “When are you going to move in?” We’d been living there a year by then! To be fair to her though our house has always had a certain chaos around the edges.
On another occasion I was practicing the piano when I became aware of someone watching me. To get to the music room requires walking along the corridor, so it’s quite a way into the house. The feeling grew until I finally looked up, and there, leaning on the door surround and staring at me with unnerving intensity, was one of the roughest looking men I’ve encountered. I was quite scared until he muttered “signal box?” He was quickly ushered out and pointed into the right direction!
In 1996 we travelled through Eastern Europe to Turkey. There we were struck by the kindness of the people, and their commitment to hospitality. This journey greatly influenced us in how we approached anyone who landed on our doorstep, and continues to do so to this day.
