Our house: Joy Edward's Deighton family home completed in time for baby

Feb 2 2010 By Emma Davison

Our house: Family home completed in time for baby

WHEN Joy Edwards transformed her Deighton home she found skills she never even knew existed.

The mum-of-three spent months battling to get her family home completed – and she didn’t even let a little thing like being heavily pregnant with daughter Jessica – now aged one – stop her!

The result is impressive, considering the unkempt, dated shell Joy started with.

Originally from Nottingham, Joy followed her family when they moved to Huddersfield in the 1990s.

She moved to Deighton to be close to her mum and grew so fond of the community she soon decided to settle down there herself.

The 32-year-old bought and extended a little semi and as her brood grew started scouting the area for a bigger place to call home.

She found a house just down the road from her old home and knew it had potential – even though it wasn’t exactly love at first sight.

Joy said: “It was quite shocking how much work needed doing to it.

“It was quite gloomy and dark and looked like it had not been lived in for a while.

“It appeared that nothing had been done to it for decades – the interior looked like it was last decorated in the 1920s – and I took one look at the kitchen and walked straight back out again!”

Some of the rooms really were little more than a shell and none illustrated this more than the dingy kitchen Joy took an instant dislike to.

“It was horrible,’’ she said. “There were electric sockets where they shouldn’t be and there was just the one unit which was hanging off the wall – you couldn’t even open the door properly into the room.

“I would actually describe it as more like a shell than a kitchen.

“I knew the whole house would be a lot of work, but it had the size and potential to be a really good home for me and my family.

“It was also in a great location for us, down the road from the school and Deighton Centre with the shops just a few minutes away.”

Joy had a huge amount of work to do to turn around the fortunes of the dilapidated semi, but thanks to building contacts forged through work to her previous home she had a good head start.

This was fortunate as rooms had to be ripped out and re-jigged, walls knocked down and the decor transformed from shabby to chic.