A couple who purchased a Victorian castle spent a whopping £190,000 on renovations – £50,000 over their original budget.
Kate and Keith, who both work at Glasgow University, relocated from the big city and bought their dream home in the quaint seaside town of Dunoon.
Bonnie Blink, which is Scottish for ‘beautiful view,’ is a seven-bedroom property located on a large hill, overlooking the picturesque Firth Of Clyde.
The couple, who have two children, appeared on George Clarke’s Building Home on Channel 4, to document their journey of restoring the dwelling and bringing it into the 21st century.
Although Kate and Keith never mentioned how much they paid for Bonnie Blink, it was sold for £435,000 in March 2022, according to Rightmove.
The fortress was built back in 1878 and many of the structures and external features of the house had not been updated since then.
With an initial budget of £140,000 for all of the building work, Kate and Keith hoped they would spent most of that on making the interior sleek and modern, knocking down walls to free up space and create bigger rooms, instead of pointless smaller areas.
However, the pair encountered a couple of nasty, expensive surprises along the way which meant they splashed out an extra £50,000 on work, prompting George to make a joke about debt collectors arriving at their door when the project was completed.
They first found that it had a leaky roof that hadn’t been replaced since the castle was built and was therefore unsuitable for Scotland’s fierce weather.
Kate said: ‘We’ve got this one roof at the end here that we’re going to have to replace. We’d hoped that it wasn’t going to need a full replacement but it looks like it will. It’s incredibly heavy and it’s also starting to break in parts.’
A storm revealed how bad the gaps in the roof were, as there was flooding all over the oak flooring and the windowsills were saturated.
‘This issue I’ve got is we can’t have any more big surprises,’ Kate told the cameras.
However, their building team had to deliver more bad news to the duo, revealing that their flooring was uneven and rotten.
The [older builds] have a bit more character than a newer build does, but they also come with their problems,’ builder Callum said.
The unexpected expense of a new roof set them back £10,000 and adding new support beams to the property also cost them another £10,000.
Contractors found that the supporting wall had been solely leaning on the timber floor, echoing the type of building standards that were around in the 19th century.
Updating George on the situation, Kate said: ‘[Our budget] absolutely gone so far and we’ve incurred extra costs too. We’ll have to take time to recover.’
However, more problems were bubbling below the surface, as Kate and Keith were informed that they had water ingress, which is where water penetrates through the brickwork from the outside.
This meant they had to replace the render to further secure and protect their home from the damp weather.
Kate and Keith also had to make do with the original cast iron gutter, repairing it instead of replacing it entirely to free up some more money.
The bulk of the work took only three months to complete, which shocked George as he said it was a ‘big project’.
Kate and Keith knocked down walls to make their kitchen bigger and moved it to another area of the large fortress, as it was previously tucked away in a dark ‘cold corner’.
And the couple clearly take pride in their cooking space, as they fitted it with a top of the range cream Aga oven, which retails for an eye-watering £20,000, and also opted for herringbone flooring.
Upon seeing the refreshed home, George said: ‘Your kitchen is extraordinary, I can’t quite believe we’re standing in the same house.’
When he found out that the couple went between £40,000 to £50,000 over budget, he added: ‘Which to be fair for everything you’ve done is really good. I’m chuffed to bits for you.’
The trio then got an unexpected visitor knocking on the front door which prompted George to say: ‘I hope that’s not a debt collector,’ however it turned out to be Kate’s father holding a bottle of celebratory champagne.
While looking around the rest of the house, the couple showed the architect their snug room, a small, intimate area used for relaxing.
They wanted to ensure that the house still kept somewhat of a Victorian feel and styled it based on how it would’ve looked when originally built.
George was a big fan of this area and said it was his ‘favourite room of the house,’ even joking that the couple should name it after him.
Kate said she wanted to move to Dunoon because of the fond memories she had of family holidays there when she was younger.
Her father was born in the town and even remembers Bonnie Blink growing up, adding that she never thought she’d end up as the owner of it.
But it wasn’t love at first sight when the couple came across it on the market.
Kate said: ‘It took us to go inside and see its bones and the potential and I realised there’s a lot of the house I won’t change, like the tower.’
