Buzzards wheel and circle in the warm spring air.
The wooded hillside on the other side of the valley is beginning to get its first hints of greenery as it emerges from winter. A sunny haze shimmers and blurs the ridge of Highland Perthshire mountains on the distant horizon.
It’s fair to say Laundry Cottage has fabulous views.
Dating from 1868 and extended several times over the years since it sits on a hillside overlooking Glen Farg.
The village of Glenfarg is a short distance away, as is the Bein Inn – known for its food and live music.
Laundry Cottage is part of a small hamlet called Newfargie. A collection of around 15 or 20 homes, it sits up a long gravel track. Despite being well away from the road and surrounded by fields and woodland, it is incredibly close to the transport network. The M90 is just a couple of miles away. You can be in Perth within 10 minutes and Dundee in half an hour.
Graham Nicholls and his wife Angie bought the house in 2012. They live there with their eight-year old twin boys Robert and Thomas.
Creating their dream home
In 2014 the couple carried out a huge renovation and overhaul of the house. “The twins were just born and there was no way we could live in the house while the work was done,” Graham explains. “So we moved out for a year while we carried out the work.”
Not afraid of a bit of hard labour, Graham worked alongside the contractors and tradesmen with every spare minute he had.
He continues: “We stripped the walls right back to the bare stonework and lifted all the floorboards up. We insulated the external walls using sheep wool. It’s more sustainable than rigid insulation and it’s also breathable, which is important for stone walls.”
At the same time, the couple extended into the attic, creating two extra bedrooms and a WC.
Laundry Cottage is a very handsome house. Build from a mix of fieldstone and cut stone, it has an attractive double curved gable end. Crow steps and archways further showcase the skills of the stonemasons who built the original parts of the house.
The main access to Laundry Cottage is at first floor level, through a bright and welcoming entrance porch. There are three bedrooms on this floor. The master bedroom has an en suite bathroom and beautiful views across the glen.
There is a second double bedroom that is south facing and gets plenty of sunshine, and a spacious bathroom. The third double bedroom is currently used as Graham’s home office and also enjoys superb views. Graham smiles: “I have two monitors. In part because I need them to work, but they also help cover up the views and stop me staring out the window all day.”
Upstairs are two bedrooms and a WC. One is slept in by the couple’s two young boys while the other is used as their playroom. When they carried out the renovation Graham had extra plumbing installed so the upper level WC can easily be turned into a shower room.
Open plan living
Stairs lead down to ground floor level where the main living spaces are. A door partway down the stairs opens into a useful walk-in storeroom with light and power.
The heart of the home is the fantastic open plan living/dining/kitchen and adjacent conservatory at ground floor level. As part of the works the couple moved the kitchen from what is now the utility room to create a large open plan living space.
An exposed stone archway showcases the quality and craftsmanship of the original building. Meanwhile, an arched glazed door mirrors the stonework and gives access into the garden, as well as throwing extra light onto the dining area.
The living area of the room has a modern wood burning stove which casts a warming glow across the whole room.
I step into the conservatory and take a few moments to drink in the views. It stretches across the entire width of the house and has an outlook across the glen that is simply breath-taking.
“If we were staying here our plan would be to replace the polycarbonate roof and an insulated roof and move the kitchen in here,” Graham explains. “It really is a fantastic room and we would like to make more of it.
“We get so much wildlife here. There are red squirrels in the trees. You get deer, hares, owls, woodpeckers, buzzards. We have a family of jackdaws nesting in the eaves. It’s a really lovely house to enjoy nature from.”
A garden with a view
To the front of Laundry Cottage is a parking area. The side has a small garden that is stone chipped for ease of maintenance.
The rear garden is the real show stopper. Gently sloping, it has stunning views over the glen and across to the Perthshire mountains in the distance. There are sections of lawn, planting areas, a shed and a bench to enjoy the view from.
Stone is piled high in one corner and Graham has begun the process of building a drystone wall around the garden. “I volunteered with an organisation in Dundee that does drystone walling and went out with them quite a lot of times. I wanted to learn the process so I could turn my hand to it in our garden.”
After a career in the RAF, Graham moved into a job in finance. He and Angie lived in Dundee before making the move to Newfargie.
The couple are selling Laundry Cottage and moving into a new build home not far away so their boys can stay in the same primary school.
“We had a lot of plans for the house,” Graham says. “I wanted to put in a ground source heat pump and make the switch to renewable energy.
“We will miss the place but we had 10 fantastic years here and will always have good memories of it.”
Laundry Cottage, Newfargie, Glenfarg is on sale with Thorntons for offers over £420,000.
