When Jeremy and Louise Brown bought Upthorpe Farm in Gloucestershire, they envisioned the Grade II listed 16th Century farmhouse becoming their dream home. Back then it was practically untouched, still retaining many of the original features like beams, doors and so on. But with the property being completely unmodernised, it required an ambitious renovation plan to bring it into the modern era. However, a series of problems sent their budget spiralling to around £300,000 - far above their original estimate of £70,000. They changed their lives to realise their dream - they sold their Bristol flat and moved into a caravan to save money. They also put their pensions on hold to generate extra finance for the project. They stuck at it and their dream home is now a reality. It is a combination of the modern and the old, and they've invited us in to take a look around their pride and joy. The dining room In the first part of our series, Jeremy and Louise tell us the story of their dining area with its enormous Inglenook fireplace. Jeremy explains their approach to the room: "This is the dining room, in effect, but because of the front door it's almost like a dining room/hall. It's such an old house that there's no front door, there isn't a proper hallway as such so we've tried to combine the two. That's why we haven't put much furniture in here, it's quite simple." It's a very nice room too. There are some fabulous slender light fittings and a huge, glorious dining table which looks a bit special in itself. Louise takes up the story: "It's walnut and there's an inlay of oak there. It was made by a Japanese designer. We're really pleased with it because there's so much going on in this room with the beams, the wooden surrounds around the doors and the big Inglenook fireplace - we just wanted to keep it as minimalist as possible, really." Immense Inglenook The Inglenook Fireplace is immense, at least two and a half metres long with a huge beam above it. However, it wasn't visible when they first bought the property. Jeremy explains: "The whole fireplace was actually covered up when we moved in. There was a small, Victorian-type fireplace originally and then we uncovered that. "We found there was a slightly bigger fireplace behind it, we uncovered that and we came back to the original Inglenook. "The two stone jams either side are the originals but the beam over the top, the two ends were there but the middle section had caught fire over the years so that was missing completely. We've replaced it with a new oak beam, which is already full of woodworm!" Glorious wood feature It is a gorgeous piece of wood and it's obvious that having such original features around the place makes it a very attractive and unique property. Louise agrees as she remembers what made them fall in love with the building in the first place: "I think it was the fact that it was just completely unspoiled because you find a lot of these old properties over the years have had stuff ripped out. I think we were really lucky that there was still so much preserved. "When the architect first saw it, he was absolutely amazed. He was so excited because he hadn't seen so many things for years. "I think it was the first thing that attracted us to the house. Obviously we couldn't see all of the things, we had an inkling that they were there and in some cases we've had disappointments - for example, the beam was destroyed. But in a way we ended up with this fantastic fireplace which was a lot bigger and a lot better than we could have hoped for, really. "It was quite traumatic, that fireplace, because they had to rebuild the whole of that gable wall - all the way up to the top." Trauma This brings us to the moment when Jeremy and Louise almost lost the entire gable wall and with it, possibly, the entire house. To save money on the renovation work, Jeremy took on some of the demolition work himself. It was while working on the fireplace that they discovered the gable wall was built on less than ideal foundations - rubble. Jeremy remembers: "It was just to save money, really. I'm not very DIY orientated so the only bits that we did were demolition's and that was quite a dangerous bit of demolition. "The builders actually kicked me out and evacuated the whole house because it was that dangerous so that was quite hairy." Low point That must have been a low point of their renovation project because it must have seemed like their dream had suddenly become a structurally unsound horror that was going to drain cash from them - a true money pit! However, Jeremy and Louise were determined to see their dream fulfilled and, besides, it was wasn't the first setback they'd encountered since they'd begun the project. Louise explains: "I think the worst thing was when we uncovered this wall that we had already had three pretty huge nightmares before that so we hoped that we'd seen the worst of it but, actually, this was a major problem. "Some of the builders had been in the trade for fifty odd years and they said they'd never seen anything so bad. "It was a bit stressful because we really thought that we'd done most of the structural repairs at that point. It was quite scary." Nevertheless, they faced the problem as they had with the others and overcame it. Now their dream home is finished to their specifications and, as can be seen with the dining room, it's all rather spectacular. Follow the next part of Jeremy and Louise's renovation story in The money pit - part 2. 
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Renovation can be an expensive business but one couple in Gloucestershire went that extra mile to get their dream home...
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