The Victorian School Renovation – A tour before the renovation begins!
If there’s one word that comes to mind every time I speak with any of the students on our renovation online course, it has to be: courage.
As amazing as renovating is, there’s no denying it’s one of the toughest projects you can take on. Physically, emotionally and financially. Renovations demand not the absence of fear, but the strength to face all the challenges they throw with great determination…
…and wow do our students have courage by the bucketload!
They see a fixer upper and despite the challenges old buildings throw, they transform them into homes that are the right layout, the right design and flow for their needs now and into the future.
Meet Sarah and Col, courageous renovators
We’ve introduced Sarah and Col on this blog and on our Instagram over the last few months. They joined our online renovation course a few months ago and have just got the keys to their first renovation property, a Victorian School in the Scottish highlands, which they’re now turning into a sustainable home and income project.
As their adventure begins, we could no way pass up documenting it. We asked Sarah & Col to share a monthly blog post with us on the development of their renovation, and we can’t wait to see their journey unfold!
Are you ready to see inside this beautiful building, steeped in history?
The Tour – Before
Inside Sarah & Col’s Victorian School renovation, in the Scottish Highlands
by Sarah Nicholas
We’ve now been in the Old School for almost a month, and it is starting to feel like home. Our planning sessions have stretched late into the night, and every new visitor sparks fresh ideas for layouts and solving the design conundrums that come with converting an old Victorian primary school into a comfortable, sustainable home and flexible venue.
When we first viewed the Old School during a Christmas visit to Col’s family in the Highlands, we instantly fell in love with the character and potential of it (even through the fug of a raging hangover). And it was significantly cheaper than some smaller, less interesting properties we’d been to see. But having lived happily on a canal boat in the south of England for the past 4 years, the scale of the school was daunting – we reckon we could fit the boat 5 times in the kitchen alone!
The Old School from outside – the double height window on the left is our biggest design conundrum. You can see the full 70s glory of the staffroom extension on the right and our neighbours in the old school master’s house behind. Image: Sarah nicholas
It wasn’t until our long car journey back south, talking it over (and over and over x 10 hours) and realising that if we looked at it as not one property, but two, that it could start to make sense.
We could easily imagine turning the south side of the school with quirky arches and big windows overlooking the garden and Cromarty firth into our ideal future family home. The north side we would think of as a potential income-earner.
After many iterations of ideas, our long-term plan is to use the north half of the school as a venue space and studio for workshops, small gigs, talks and screenings in winter, while keeping the potential to use it as a holiday let for summer peak season on the North Coast 500. For now, we’re living in it while renovating our ‘home’ in the other half.
Floorplan of the Old School (McEwan Fraser) with my scribbles of future plans Image: Sarah Nicholas & McEwan Fraser
It’s a big project and we’ll be trying to transform the space in as sustainable way as possible. Our mantra of ‘do it once and do it well’ means that there will definitely be times when we’ll have to re-prioritise, and we are fully expecting this to keep us busy for years to come!
But before we begin, we’d like to show you around the school as it was before we moved in, share a few of our plans and ask you to help with some ideas ☺ Most photos are from the estate agents, or pictures we took when viewing the property.
So come on in and let us show you around, the ‘before’ edition!
Tour of the Old School: before we moved in
The entrance hall is a big room in itself – it used to be the showroom for the pine furniture business that was based out of the old school in the 90s and 00s. We have an enormous collection of books (43 boxes, to be precise) so this room will double as a library with a wall of floor to ceiling bookshelves.
There are 3 doors from the hall into the different parts of the school, and this space will need to work flexibly to either be a public or private space depending on what’s scheduled.
Entrance Hall. Image: Sarah Nicholas & McEwan Fraser
The south side: our future home
Let’s start by going through the left hand door and into what will become our home, with a big kitchen-dining-living area on the ground floor. This was a huge empty lounge with enormous windows (including two double height ones which present a design conundrum over two storeys), beautiful solid oak floors and stairs to the second floor in the back corner. A partition at the end separates off a TV room with an exposed stone wall and a wood-burning stove (plus a slightly suspect cement surround which will be going).
Former TV room - will remain a snug but the door will become a window to let in evening light, and stove will be swapped so it can be recessed into the fireplace. Image: McEwan Fraser
Former lounge – this will become our kitchen-diner. Image: McEwan Fraser
This room is going to be the biggest transformation and has been the focus of most of our brainstorming. We have a current favourite Plan A which we still need to fully cost up to make sure it’s feasible in Phase 1. This involves turning one of the small windows into a door to the garden (pending a quote to get the electricity meter moved from under it) and moving the staircase (eep!) to make the most of one of the double height windows and maximise the amazing views out across the fields and the firth.
Former lounge – this will become kitchen-diner and staircase moving to the window on the left. Image: McEwan Fraser
Once the structural changes are made, we will move the existing kitchen into this space. Eventually we would like to upgrade the doors, sink and worktop, but for now it’s perfectly functional and means we can save crucial budget to concentrate on the big structural changes first.
Upstairs, there are three bedrooms and a bathroom in the eaves, punctuated by the amazing curved structural arches of the school. Moving the staircase will mean we lose the central bedroom in the short term, but there will be enough space to partition off a small room longer-term and add a Velux window which will open up views over to the hills on the West coast of Scotland, which currently you can only see from outside. The bathroom would also benefit from a make-over (and a window!), but again that’s relatively low on the priority list as it’s functional for now.
Former small bedroom – we will unblock those windows (behind the elephants and MDF) and this will become the stairs and landing upstairs. Image: McEwan Fraser
Former second bedroom – the half blue, half white ‘cloud’ has already been painted over and this room is currently my lockdown office. Image: McEwan Fraser
The master bedroom currently has the top half of one of the big arched windows boarded up – we’ve yet to come up with a clever way to make the most of this feature. We want to open it up to reveal the light and the views in the bedroom while maintaining privacy and protection from the sounds and smells of the kitchen downstairs. Currently my favourite solution involves replacing the whole window, so we’re still scratching our heads for a satisfying but more budget-friendly alternative. Ideas on a postcard please!
Master bedroom with the beautiful but problematic double height arched window, currently boxed in. Please send clever solutions and ideas our way! Image: Sarah Nicholas
Back down the stairs, we go in to the back corridor (complete with a mural of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If’) which currently houses a wetroom and a sauna. Yes you read that right. The house may have no central heating (see my previous blog post for more on that), but it does have a sauna.
Sauna will be moved to the garden and this will become our back door and utility area. The yellow poem mural’s days are also numbered! Image: McEwan Fraser
While that sounds brilliant in principle, in reality it’s a drafty and disappointing experience (our first attempt only got to about 29oC!) with a rotting roof (possibly because of the humidity from the sauna...), so it will have to go. Hopefully we can dismantle it carefully and reconstruct it in the garden shed. Then the back corridor will be reconfigured to be a back-door, downstairs loo and utility room. Less glamorous yes, but sadly pragmatism won the day!
The north side: venue, studio, holiday let
So that’s our ‘home’ side of the school… if we haven’t lost you yet then it’s time to head over to the other half!
The old kitchen – the stove will move against a wall and cabinets and cooker will be re-used next door. Image: McEwan Fraser
This is a big, mostly double-height room with a mezzanine area and multi-fuel stove in the middle. The previous owners used this as an enormous kitchen-diner. We plan to take out this kitchen (to re-use it next door) and to move the stove against a wall to open up the room into a big multi-functional space. The back corridor is a step up from the rest of the room and makes a perfect stage!
View to the ‘stage’ at the back (imagination essential!). We are currently sleeping in the mezzanine and growing worryingly fond of the purple. Image: McEwan Fraser
Behind the door on the right is the deceptively glamorous-sounding ‘gym’ and ‘art room’ of the floorplan. This is in fact a grotty 70s flat-roofed extension that once housed the staffroom for the school, and has now reached the end of its life with a leaky roof and crumbling chimney. Remarkably, the survey we got last week found only a small amount of asbestos, so once that’s removed we will be going at it with a sledgehammer and skip! Once flattened, this will become car-parking.
The old crumbling staffroom/’gym’, which once demolished will open up views to the west and become car parking. Image: Sarah Nicholas
So that’s the grand ‘before’ tour! We hope you enjoyed seeing the old school in its former state before we moved in. We’re looking forward to sharing updates with you as we settle in and the work begins in earnest.
We’re excited to be doing a monthly blog here on Fifi McGee (thanks for having us, Fi and Neil!) and you can also find more photos and follow our renovation’s highs and lows over on Instagram @old.school.scotland
