‘i have so many more memories to make here’

Dining area Chosen to suit the era of the house, Kate has carried Johnstone’s colour match of Farrow & Ball’s Stiffkey Blue through from the kitchen, with the dining table and chairs, a lucky find in John Lewis & Partners’ clearance section, paired with a rug from Next Home. ‘Ours is one of the few houses on the Promenade that still has the original fireplace intact, which I love,’ says Kate, ‘and the Divine Savages lampshade is one of my favourite things‘

When Kate Glynn inherited her parents’ home in North Wales, selling the seven bedroom, four-storey Victorian property was never on the cards. With its stunning sea views towards Anglesey and Puffin Island, Kate could imagine her children enjoying the same weekends on the beach she’d enjoyed as a child.

‘The house has been in my family for over 80 years,’ she explains. ‘In the early 1980s my parents bought it from my grandad, so as my mum was an art teacher in Liverpool, we stayed in Wales at weekends, and she decorated the whole place with a creative eye. After she died when I was in my early twenties, my dad lived there on his own for many years and the house was never updated.’

After Kate’s dad passed away five years ago, she inherited a house that needed a complete renovation. ‘I was always going to keep it, as all my childhood memories are wrapped up here,’ she says. ‘But it needed everything doing – new windows, roofing, rendering, plumbing, electrics and replastering, as well as a new kitchen and bathrooms.’

The plan was to create a holiday rental that sleeps eight in four king-size rooms, and reserve the three top-floor rooms for Kate and her family to enjoy holidays when there are no bookings. ‘It works really well as we can lock away our stuff up there and we don’t have to worry about bedroom changeovers,’ she says.

One of the biggest alterations was knocking through the two ground-floor rooms to create an open-plan kitchen diner. At the same time, the old kitchen on the first floor was turned into a bedroom, while a small kitchenette became an additional shower room. ‘When you have eight people in a house, you need that bigger, more social space for cooking and chatting,’ says Kate.

Throughout the project, Kate and her husband Joe have been careful to preserve the character of the house – reinstating ceiling roses and hiring skilled local craftspeople