Who: Emma Watson, a self-employed project manager at Square Lettings and renovation influencer on Instagram and TikTok.
What: A traditional granite tenement flat with one bedroom, a large living room, galley-style kitchen, bathroom, and a small entrance hallway.
Where: Great Northern Road in the Hilton area of Aberdeen and conveniently located near the University of Aberdeen.
Here’s what she had to say about her home renovation journey…
“Prior to moving to Aberdeen, for seven years I worked in PR roles at THG plc in Manchester.
I started DIY’ing during lockdown, after refurbing a property on my evenings and weekends in Stockport.
I did a few more projects and knew this was my real passion and I wanted to pursue a career in property full-time – especially as my corporate job became more and more stressful.
Aberdeen is becoming a hot-spot for property investment within the UK so I moved back to Scotland and became self-employed. I am still learning, but enjoying every second!
Great Northern Road flat was a fixer-upper
The property had been unoccupied for around seven years. We believe the property may have struggled to sell due to the damp issues before we took on the renovation.
It seemed sad that a flat with such great potential had been sitting so long, empty and rotting away – I am grateful that I was able to have the opportunity to completely transform it.
I knew it would need a lot of TLC, but that didn’t faze me. I knew that with my help, it would eventually be a lovely flat!
The rear of the property was suffering from severe damp due to gutter and drain issues. The kitchen and bathroom were both in a dilapidated state. The boiler system needed to be replaced. The flat was covered in woodlice and other bugs.
Overall, the flat wasn’t up to modern standards whatsoever, and needed a full refurb, top to toe!
After addressing the damp, boiler and electrics, I stripped the whole flat of wallpaper.
Although I did some small areas of plastering myself in the kitchen and bathroom, we did need the full bedroom and living room plastered, and this was outside of my skillset So we got someone in to do the two full larger rooms.
We put in a new bathroom. I did all the tiling myself in a crosshatch pattern in a lovely taupe-coloured tile from B&Q.
We removed all the old kitchen cabinets for new, but managed to save the cooker and washing machine.
We opted for open shelving since the ceilings in this room have been lowered and the cabinets made it feel claustrophobic. The open shelving makes the space feel bigger.
For the flooring, we put a lovely Herringbone Vinyl from a brand called Tarkett down throughout the flat, apart from the bedroom.
I had never put vinyl down in a living room before but it looks fantastic and was easy to have installed.
I did all the decorating myself – a key feature was the paint colour choice.
I had my favourite designer paint shades colour-matched by Decorating Centre Online. I opted to have Farrow & Ball shade ‘De Nimes’, I think it was the perfect shade for the living room!
I wanted quite a contemporary style, but also wanted everything to feel cohesive and not feel out of place within a period property.
The dark skirting boards across the hallway and bedroom, the crosshatch tile pattern and the colour-blocking in the kitchen modernise the space.
My favourite design choice was reinstating a picture rail in the living room and then colour-drenching down from it. After I stripped off all the wallpaper, I could see marks in the original lime plaster where there had been one previously.
I immediately knew I wanted to restore some more of the original character so I put up the picture rail again myself. I had never done this before, but I’ve done a lot of panelling and skirting boards before.
I love the colour-drenching fashion, but thought it might be more timeless to leave the ceiling and top section white, and drench from the picture rail down, and I am so happy with the choice!
Emma’s biggest challenge
As I have recently moved to the city, my greatest challenge has been finding reliable tradespeople that I can trust – it takes time to find them. It’s a learning curve and I’m building a reliable network as I go.
My advice for renovations is to create mood boards. It doesn’t need to be physical ones, I do mine on a software called Canva – they help me envision the space.”
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