A couple are battling the ‘maddening reality’ of renovating a 500-year-old cottage in the Cotswolds – from a leaky old roof to finding ’50 dead mice all in different stages of decomposition’ and mushrooms growing on the walls.
Jacob Harrell and his wife Amber are sharing their progress on YouTube – where they have 251,000 subscribers – as they begin their second year of the project.
They have recently installed an artisan tiled roof and were able to sleep in the house for the first time some 11 months into the renovation, which they say has been both ‘exhausting’ and ‘exciting’.
However, they have a long way to go, with floors and interiors yet to be finished.
And what’s more, at the end of last year, Amber found out that she’s pregnant – meaning the pressure is on to make the property as hospitable as possible.
Jacob admits he spent his younger years walking past the house and envisioning one day living there.
So when it went on the market in 2024, the couple quickly snapped it up.
While Jacob and Amber haven’t revealed how much they spent in total, they made it clear that they ‘don’t have enough money to pay people to renovate this place’ and ‘aren’t even sure they have money for materials’.
When they first got into the property – which ‘has been derelict at least twice in history’ – to gut it, ‘nearly everything was wet’.
The original roof was also clearly in need of a facelift, as water had been getting inside through it.
Even more gruesome was the annex next door, which Jacob said needed to be thoroughly cleaned out as it had rot and ‘50 dead mice all at different stages of decomposition’, a petrified rat and ‘maggots everywhere’.
There was also poison ‘that needed dealing with’.
Dealing with the damp in the main house was also an issue because of the old heating system, which featured an oil tank and an Aga system which was ‘not quite up to scratch’.
As autumn turned to winter, ‘the reality of the house set in’ with storms, rain and snow making water pool up at the sides of the house.
There was also a lack of insulation – so the couple got a government grant to install an electric heat pump. It gave them a discount of £7,500 but the process still cost roughly £10,500.
However, an examination revealed grievances with the piping and workmanship, meaning the house failed the electric safety certificate.
‘What should have been progress turned into six months of disputes, rewiring, undoing work that should never have been signed off in the first place,’ Jacob admitted.
However, their luck improved when they were finally able to get into the roof, tearing down old overgrown, mossy ivy and getting rid of wasps’ nests which had formed.
Jacob had to go into the loft at one point to ‘blow away all the dead mice’ with a leaf blower – but they were eventually able to shield the roof ‘to make the house as watertight as it had been in years’.
When it came to deciding what to do with the roof, the pair were quoted a whopping £77,000 for a rethatch.
So, deciding to make an economic choice – rather than one that pertains to the Cotswolds’ aesthetic – they decided to go for clay tiles, which was ‘tens of thousands less’.
The couple were also able to buy land in the meantime – and put the house on an acre.
Jacob was emotional as, closing up one year since the beginning of the renovation, the roof was complete, calling it ‘a work of art’.
The couple also found out their family will be expanding, as Amber revealed that she is pregnant.
‘A year a go we took the biggest leap into the unknown we’d ever taken,’ he shared.
‘We thought renovating a 500-year-old cottage would be the defining thing that happened to us this year, the thing that everything else would revolve around.
‘Well, we were wrong! All that’s left is to make this beautiful wreck of ours a home.’
‘What started as a renovation quickly became something bigger,’ he added.
‘Not just a building project, but a lesson in patience, uncertainty, and doing things properly when there are no shortcuts left. We are not builders. We are learning as we go. Some decisions took months. Others were forced on us overnight.
‘Most of the year was spent simply trying to stop the house from getting worse before we could even think about making it better.’
