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Room reveal: our calm, cosy cottage living room

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[Advertisement – this post features some PR products, but all words and opinions are my own] I’ve shared a few peeks of our living room in recent posts, but today I’m excited to finally reveal the finished space as a whole. This room appealed to us the moment we viewed our little cottage, as it has two windows and gets lovely light from morning through to evening. But it was also the trickiest space to get right. Not only did it present several layout challenges (more on those below), it had also been stripped of most original features, leaving it looking bland and soulless. Figuring out how to turn it into the calm, cosy living room we wanted took a bit of thought – in fact I spent quite a while mocking up various renderings and floor plans before we even submitted an offer for the house, to ensure we could make it work for us. Here’s what it looked like on the day we moved in:  And here’s how we’ve transformed it...

Exploring North Wales & Snowdonia

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Back in June we spent five days in North Wales, celebrating Chris’ 50 th  birthday amid the spectacular scenery in and around Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park. It’s a region we’d long wanted to explore, especially as neither of us had anything other than very sketchy memories of our previous childhood visits. And it was well worth the five-hour drive from Wiltshire.  Our trip coincided with one of the few cool spells amid the recent UK heatwaves, and the velvet-green mountains, rolling mists and gushing rivers were a wonderful antidote to the bone-dry fields and relentless temperatures of southern England.  We stayed on the northern edge of the national park at  Hinterland Cabin  – a cosy timber-built hideaway for two, booked through Unique Homestays. It’s done beautifully, with a top-spec interior, an alfresco hot tub, a sauna and an unbeatable location on a remote hillside overlooking the Conwy Valley. Best of all was the ever-changing view, and we loved sitting back to w...