Abandoned cottages are frequently the stuff of legend. However, with the advancement of technology, the cottage can easily be used to create something wonderful. And this is exactly what George Dunnett, a Kinnesswood, Scotland resident, did. The video editor had spent his entire childhood in this village, and he remembered walking past the abandoned cottage just a street down from his parents’ home…

Sure, Dunnett could have bought any of the other houses in the village that were far nicer, but there is a rustic feel to a building that is about to fall apart. This cottage was weathered and old, with cracks filling the masonry walls completely. “It was kind of dilapidated, so I always thought it was a bit of a shame that it was left to this condition,” the 28-year-old told Insider. Nonetheless, he could see the potential of this location.

George made the decision to buy the abandoned cottage and renovate it into his first home. It wasn’t easy, though. The cottage was about 400 square feet and had no insulation. The building had been abandoned for so long that it no longer had running water. The cottage, incidentally, lacked a proper floor. The video editor paid 55,386 pounds for this property in October 2020. Insider also examined the proof of purchase to confirm the price.

“The floor was basically just ground and mud,” Dunnett said. The floor was not made of concrete. The windows were in poor condition. The roof required extensive repairs. It was basically just a shell of a building.” Because of the building’s age, some foundational parts needed to be reinforced for safety. “There was a lot of structural work that had to be done before I was at the stage of picking out my curtains,” George added.

Because it had been abandoned for over 50 years, the abandoned cottage had a thick layer of cobwebs and dust inside. The building’s previous owners merely used it as a storage space. “There’s a family in the village that’s owned a lot of property that they’ve picked up here and there over the years,” Dunnett explained. They owned this as one of their properties.” The locals told George that the structure was built in the 1700s and was used as a sort of bookstore to distribute and bind religious books.

“People have said that it used to be connected to a church that was taken down, and that was just the next-door neighbor’s garden,” Dunnett explained. Dunnett hired outside contractors to assess the house’s condition after clearing out the debris. According to the contractors, the two stories had an open floor plan with no internal walls that could be divided into rooms. “There was almost nothing in the house except an old fireplace and a flimsy wooden staircase,” George said.

The owners of the abandoned cottage were informed by the contractors that some parts of the wall needed reinforcement. They also claimed that the old fireplace had to be boarded up to prevent a fire. “The wall on the side of the house where the chimney was turned out to be hollow and unstable,” Dunnett said. It would obviously be a nightmare if that caved in while I was inside.” The video editor made the decision to get his hands dirty. So he began collaborating with the builders to make the most of the limited space.

This would also allow him to design his home the way he wanted. The plan was to divide two rooms on the lower floor into a bedroom and a bathroom.” The kitchen, combined living area, and dining area, on the other hand, would be on the second floor. The contractors also decided to add some much-needed insulation to the walls. “With all the insulation put in, it was actually nice to come in here during the cold winter and have it be semi-warm,” Dunnett said.

The biggest disadvantage of the insulation was that George would no longer be able to keep the exposed brick walls inside the house. The abandoned cottage also required extensive roof repair work. The roof had its own set of issues, which the contractors discovered. It was not strong enough and had waterproofing issues. “As a result of this,” Dunnett says, “I had to pay a fair few unexpected stacks for the scaffolding and the repair work that followed.”