The Old Dairy

your chateau

The Old Dairy

Chris and Nicky Leslie were searching for the perfect holiday home and found a fabulously quaint one-bedroom cottage in rural County Durham. Here they share their renovation journey from finding The Old Dairy to creating a cosy home from home full of vintage finds and touches of The Chateau.

Who are you…

We are Chris and Nicky Leslie. We met at work in 2013 when we were 30 years old, and both lived in the coastal village of Blyth, Northumberland where we still live now. We lived a few streets away from each other but didn't meet until our shifts crossed paths at work one day in January. It's very much a cliché but it was love at first sight. We started dating within a few weeks and haven't looked back.

Tell us about your property search…

We were fortunate to still work during the pandemic, so we worked and worked and managed to save some money. Holidays were cancelled and refunds given. This made the savings pot a little larger. We decided on Christmas Eve 2020 that we wanted to invest the money and buy ourselves a little holiday home. Somewhere within an hour’s radius of our house so we could jump in the car after work and be there before teatime. We decided we would rent it out to others too. We didn't get into it to make a profit. Our plan was just to make enough to help cover some of the costs.

We started looking in January 2021. We battled snow storms and hail stones travelling into the Pennines. There were some properties we had to give up on as the weather was just too bad to view it. And if we couldn't get there, how would guests get there? 

How did you find the right one?

Eventually I was sitting scrolling through the internet when I saw the cutest one-bedroom cottage had just gone up for sale the day before. I called up immediately to arrange a viewing on our next day off, Thursday, 4 days away. The estate agent advised me that there were 5 viewings already for that day and a few more Monday and Tuesday. We didn't want to miss out, so we both put in a day's leave from work and headed the hour South to view the cottage on Tuesday.

Once again, it was love at first sight. The cottage had previously had some renovations done and they had done everything they could to keep the character. It still had a long way to go though!

Before we had even turned the car engine on to leave, we had called the estate agent and put in an offer. We weren't the only ones though. We were given 24 hours to come up with our best offer. We went in full asking price. We had to wait 48 hours before we heard back. But it was worth the wait. Our offer had been accepted.

What did you do first?

We spent the next 12 weeks finding items for the cottage. We had been told the owner was leaving some of the furniture and we could have what we wanted. This made our £14,000 budget stretch that little further. But we needed everything. Fortunately, no structural or electrical work needed to be done. But plumbing was a must. We scoured charity shops, Facebook market place and Gumtree to find the right bargain pieces.