Our House: I fell in love with bachelor – and his pad!

Nov 3 2009 by Emma Davison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Our House: I fell in love with bachelor – and his pad!

WHEN Darren Hirst was looking for his first home, he found a cottage that had the potential to become the swanky bachelor pad of his dreams.

The two-bedroom property in Honley was a wreck, but that didn’t deter Darren, who got cracking transforming the neglected interior into a des-res.

His handiwork proved to have a lot of pulling power for partner Kate Ruddock when she later set up home with the self-employed fitter there.

Kate, a waitress at Hinchliffe’s farm shop, said: “Darren did all the work himself and made a fantastic job of it – I was definitely very impressed the first time I saw the house.

“It had a lovely feel to it and straight away to me it felt like home.”

The property was virtually run-down when Darren took it on as a first time buyer, viewing a house with potential as a great way of getting on to the property ladder.

Kate explains: “It was absolutely horrendous and needed a lot doing to it.

“Darren put a huge amount of work into the house – from the plastering and plumbing to building the garage and porch – teaching himself how to do new things like fixing the skirting boards.

“He’s very busy and works all hours so the whole thing took about a year.

“He likes a bit of a challenge and really got stuck into this one and, because he’s an absolute perfectionist, had to make sure everything was just right.”

The cottage is believed to date back to the early 1900s.

It forms part of a row of six homes and an inscription on the brickwork of one of them suggests that they formed part of the village’s old mill complex and were once occupied by its weavers.

The couple’s home is full of original features, which Darren was keen to preserve in his sympathetic renovation of the cottage.

The lounge particularly has a superb sense of character, with its beams and fantastic exposed chimney breast with in-built little cubby holes used to store candles.