Finding Aubrey Hall

12:53pm Wednesday 6th August 2008

Dream home or total waste of time and air miles? This was what I was thinking as I stepped off the plane from Johannesburg (temp 95 degrees) onto Heathrow tarmac (temp -5 degrees).

It was February 2004 and I was long-distance house-hunting. For the past ten years our family had had a nomadic existence around the world due to my husband Stuart's career as a foreign correspondent for Sky News.

Work began at the very top as the four attic rooms were uninhabitable. The ceilings were low and many of the beams full of woodworm with more spiders than Hogwarts Wood. The kids were less than impressed that these were to be their new bedrooms!

Countries included Ireland, Russia, the United States and South Africa, where we had had relative stability for the last four years; however, a move was long overdue, and this coincided with a job offer for Stuart that was too good to miss - so we were homeward bound.

We had found the property on the Internet, and our main criteria was to be within commuting distance of Sky News in Middlesex and near friends, most of whom seemed to have landed in Oxfordshire.

Other factors were to have a large old property with land and in need of some renovation, as I am an interior decorator and I was never going to settle for ready-made style - our new home had to be a complete blank canvas for me to get my design teeth into.

So here I was after one overnight flight (no children in tow, utter bliss) and I was finally driving towards the house along a lengthy gravel driveway.

The single most impressive feature of Aubrey Hall is the approach as one draws up to the Victorian Gothic revival entrance that opens up into the substantial hall.

The owners were out, hurrah! - so I had free rein to explore without time constraints. At the end of a very nosey hour I was in love, had mentally redecorated from attic to cellar and notched up a fortune in mobile phones calls to Stuart in South Africa. It had not been a wasted trip.

The Oxfordshire housing market was booming, so Lane Fox estate agents were not interested in major reductions and finally accepted an offer just below the asking price, after some negotiations from Stuart via a satellite phone and during a lull in fighting in the Ivory Coast civil war.

It was a scary amount, but it was cushioned by the sale of our London home that we had in truth outgrown several children ago, but had managed to keep hold of.

So from seeing this house only once we had bought it in record time - now all I had to do was some long distance renovation, and find a builder!

Apologies to all the perfect builders out there, but I have yet to come across one. We settled for a company that had excellent artistic interpretation of my plans, but with a tendency to cut corners on cost to their advantage, and a few timekeeping issues to boot. They did, however, come highly recommended - an absolute must - together with a quote that was 20 per cent less than all the others.

The house was a large grade II listed property with nine bedrooms, three receptions, an internal tack room, inside corridors that used to be outside - original features galore, but a huge amount of work. The house spanned the ages from early Georgian to Victorian and even Edwardian in parts.

Used as an institution several owners previously, it still showed all the signs of its working status, with huge fire alarms and break glass' boxes in various rooms. The bedrooms ranged from huge and beautiful to small with ridiculous coffin-like utilitarian bathrooms that simply had to go. Structurally, the place was generally sound but decoratively everything had to be torn out and started from scratch.

Work began at the very top as the four attic rooms were uninhabitable. The ceilings were low and many of the beams full of woodworm with more spiders than Hogwarts Wood. The kids were less than impressed that these were to be their new bedrooms!

The real dirty work began in October 2004 where ceilings and partition walls were demolished, beams exposed and my beautiful hallway tiles which had been covered in two inches of plaster mix.

Long-distance renovation has its advantages and disadvantages. On one hand you avoid the stress of being there, but on the other you aren't on-site when major decisions have to be made, and quickly. Having a sympathetic builder worked in our favour. The only time I really jumped up and down was when beautiful exposed attic beams were stained a nasty pub black.

We finally returned to Britain in January 2005 leaving the South African summer for what was, in truth, a freezing cold building site.

Timings had got a little out of sync and promises of we're almost there' were not quite the whole truth. To my horror the only rooms that were habitable were stuffed full of furniture from our London home. The children were starting school in two days and there was nowhere to unpack a suitcase, so we stayed at friends for a week then moved into the one room now made available, all sleeping on mattresses in dormitory formation, wondering what we had done.

However our return galvanised action and the next few weeks saw the attic rooms completed, including a new guest bedroom with its own en suite fashioned from a cupboard that ran into the eaves.

On the second floor partition walls came down to open out the floor space, making it flow like a family home, not a cheap guesthouse.

Everything was beginning to fall into place and the decoration had begun.

I am a great believer in creating an expensive look without the expense. So bathrooms were achieved with a touch of Fired Earth luxury, but mainly a good quality Topps tile selection. Bathstore.com has an excellent range of reasonably priced contemporary/traditional styles which I also made good use of.

Other tips - a good carpenter is worth his weight in tea, which he certainly drank. Never agree to pay decorators by the day and don't be precious about mess because even my hall tiles eventually polished up to beyond their original Victorian shine.

I lived with my builders, carpenters, plasterers and painters for almost five months, and can honestly say I miss their company, but not their presence Despite a list of additions, we were more or less on budget. If I say so myself, we have achieved a family home that has a design-lead but timeless feel that we are all immensely proud of.

It was most certainly worth the effort and if we had to do it again? Well now you mention it I have spotted something near Charlbury with major potential!

Toni Ramsay Interiors, call 01295 750627 or e-mail: toniramsay@btinternet.com

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