Renovating a Cork home on a budget: Prepare for some DIY and graft

Lindsay Bertram is the owner of The Pilates Studio in Midleton, but this wasn’t her first career. She worked as an interior designer until the financial crisis hit in 2008, when she turned her attention fully to Pilates.

Although she never went back to interior design, Lindsay has found an outlet for her creativity and skills. She is currently renovating the home she shares with her husband and two sons in Rostellan, East Cork. They previously lived in a three bedroomed semi-detached house, but Lindsay dreamed of something bigger.

“I really wanted to have a bit more space,” she says. 

I wanted to do more gardening, grow more of our own food, and I wanted to get bees and hopefully chickens down the line.

Growing up, Lindsay was inspired by watching her parents doing DIY on her childhood home.

“I grew up in an old Victorian terrace, and there was always work being done around me when I was a child, and mostly my parents did the work themselves,” she says.

“I was very proud of their achievements, and always wanted to do it myself.”

In January, 2023, she purchased a 1990s house on an acre of land, with the aim of renovating it herself. The house had been empty for eight to ten years, and the garden had become overgrown.

“This property was just the right amount of renovation that I wanted to do, in that structurally, it was perfect,” she explains. “It was sound, and it was just really taking down one or two walls, taking up the floors, redoing the bathrooms.”

Lindsay has been documenting her progress on Instagram, where she shares behind-the- scenes snippets, before and after shots, and antiques and second hand finds. She also posts about her gardening activities, such as collecting honey from her beehive and growing her own vegetables.

Lindsay is particularly proud of the kitchen and dining space, which was created by transforming two rooms into one larger area. She felt the design of the original house worked well overall, except for these two rooms.

“By taking down the central wall, vaulting up the ceiling, putting in skylights, and a few other things that we did in that space, it just really opens it up,” she says.

One feature she loves about the house is the sitting room, which is a work in progress. It has an inglenook fireplace, which Lindsay has restored and updated. The original fireplace had brick and stone in two colours that didn’t match, so she took out the brick, clad over the stone, and painted it a simple white. She put a sandy coloured stone from O’Connell Stone on the bottom.

“It reminds me of the stone from Northumberland, where I’m from, and they have a lot of sandstone buildings,” she says.

The biggest challenge for Lindsay has been trying to keep things under budget. There’s also been issues with the windows. When problems arise, it can be hard to keep things moving in the right direction.

“That probably is the biggest challenge, just to keep the flow of everything,” says Lindsay.

Although keeping costs down can be tricky, she has found ways to save money. She buys furniture second hand through auctions and online. She found a pine dining table for €70 on Facebook Marketplace.

“It’s 2.4 metres long, and it had that really heavy 1990s varnish on it,” says Lindsay. 

We used caustic soda to strip off the varnish and sanded it all back, and we gave it a lovely wash with a white wax, and it looks beautiful.

Charity shops are also great for a bargain. Lindsay found 10 kitchen chairs for €10 each in a charity shop in Limerick. They were beech wood, with green leatherette seats.

“I really liked the shape of them, very similar to wishbone chairs,” says Lindsay. “I painted them all black and reupholstered them, and they’re perfect.”

Lindsay sourced material for the chairs from St Patrick’s Woollen Mills in Douglas, where they sell fabric for €5 a metre. She also picked up fabric for blinds.

“I made all the blinds for the house,” she says. “I got Roman blind kits, and made the blinds with fabric from that shop, and it made it very affordable.”

The next priority for Lindsay is getting the sitting room finished.

“We need to get the floor down in the sitting room, that’s a priority,” she says. “I’d really love to have that room finished for Christmas, because it’s a lovely Christmassy room. It’s really cosy with the lovely fireplace.”

To anyone considering a DIY renovation, Lindsay’s advice to is to go for a house that is structurally sound. If you can avoid major jobs like replacing windows, getting a new roof or upgrading the plumbing or electrics, you can lower costs. She says there are ways to save money if you put your mind to it.

“Get quotes for the windows, look around for tiles, and see where you can cut corners,” says Lindsay.

Could you leave a room till next year? Or, can you paint the kitchen yourself?

Lindsay believes it is possible to renovate on a budget, “but you have to be a bit of a grafter.”

She is on Instagram as @rostellanrenovation.