A 180-Year-Old Stone-Built English Cottage Is Just as Dreamy as You’d Hope

Name: Eloise Adler and partner Harry, and Tibetan Terrier Ruby
Location: Peak District, UK
Type of home: Cottage
Size: 1290 square feet
Years lived in: 2 years, owned

Tell us a little (or a lot) about your home and the people who live there: Our home is a double fronted stone-built cottage in the Peak District—around 180 years old. We’ve been re-decorating and renovating it for the past two years, introducing color and mid-century style to complement the natural stone textures and original features of the house. We’ve also finally had the chance to use some of the beautiful wallpapers that I’ve been saving since working as a designer for ELLE Decoration UK—I’ve been carrying them around through several rental moves until we got our own place! We love to do stuff ourselves, from creating artwork to tiling and plumbing, and are always on the hunt to source stuff secondhand for a bargain.

We are also keen to try and have as small an impact as possible environmentally, so secondhand is great in terms of that too; we also used low-VOC organic paint throughout the house, and generally tried not to waste too much or replace things unnecessarily—like the kitchen where we opted to paint the cupboards rather than replace, and used reclaimed parquet for the floor.

Describe your home’s style in 5 words or less: Stylish, light, textured, natural, cozy.

What is your favorite room and why? My favorite room is the downstairs open plan living/kitchen/dining space. The light through the shutters is always beautiful and I’m very proud of what we managed to achieve in the kitchen on a very limited budget and with zero experience tiling, plastering or laying parquet—we repainted the cupboards and replaced the handles; managed to get all the tiles that we needed from Gumtree for £15; spent many many hours scraping and laying our Facebook Marketplace bargain reclaimed wood parquet; we also replaced the kitchen wall cabinets on one side with open shelves, and then repurposed those cabinets as a sideboard for under the stairs in the dining area, painting them up and replacing the glass with steel mesh. Pulling up the old carpets in the space to discover the stone floor underneath is also a great memory!

What’s the last thing you bought (or found!) for your home? The last thing I made for my home is a giant wreath in the lounge made from heather, bracken, twigs and other bits collected on our dog walks around the Peaks.

Any advice for creating a home you love? Take time and enjoy the process.

This submission’s responses were edited for length and clarity.