When Lorraine and John Pilkington realised their dream of buying a property in the Lake District eight years ago, the purchase wasn’t quite what they had planned.

“I wanted the idyllic chocolate box Lakeland cottage. I kept looking but nothing was quite right," said Lorraine. "I actually saw these cottages - in Bouth near Newby Bridge - on a website because they were holiday lets and told my husband they were perfect, just what I was looking for, then 12 months later they were on the market.

“We’d only planned to buy one place for us, then suddenly we were viewing two and considering buying a business!

“They were just perfect so I sold the dream to my husband and we put in an offer. It was a real baptism of fire. We picked the keys up then our first guests were arriving!

“We thought that maybe we could have one cottage for us and the other one as a holiday let. It wasn’t the right time for us to move up permanently. I had a beauty salon and my husband has a civil engineering company, and our daughter was still at school, so we would use the cottages ourselves when they weren’t booked.”

It was only when a bungalow joined on to No 2 Rose Cottage came up for sale a few years later that Lorraine and John decided to make the leap to Cumbria permanently.

They bought the bungalow, demolished it and, when they rebuilt using natural Lakeland wood and stone, took the opportunity to add a two-storey extension to No 2. This is now the property’s utility room and bathroom.

Lorraine says: “The cottages were in good condition when we bought them but I wanted to bring them more up to date and put my mark on them.

“I’d describe my taste as modern country without the chintz. I love a luxury hotel so I wanted to create somewhere that I would be excited to arrive at on my holidays. There are a lot of properties in the holiday market so the cottages needed to stand out from the crowd.”

Lorraine trawled reclamation yards to find the quirky pieces in the house. No 2’s kitchen table was once a door in a chapel, while the main seating next to it was a church pew. Elsewhere in the room are chapel chairs, complete with Bible stands on the back.

In the bathroom is a mahogany chest of drawers, with a scroll detail, which she has painted and distressed to give it a totally new look. The wingback chairs and sofa are all small format and have been reupholstered to give them a fresh county style.

Though they were totally hands-on during the cottages’ transformation, Lorraine and John also found some great local tradesmen to help. Simpson Construction of Kendal did No 2’s extension and they also discovered Chris Murphy Electrical in Ulverston.

“The area outside the cottages and the bungalow has seen massive change from when we bought them,” says Lorraine. “It used to be a full country garden and, though we maintained them, we’re not keen gardeners. It was a condition of our planning permission that we had to crane the building materials in and use the garden as a storage compound so we took the opportunity to change things.

“Now you can sit in the courtyard and look across the meadow where Shire horses graze. On a lovely summer’s day it is paradise.”

Lorraine loved the project so much she completed an interior design diploma and is now planning to use the skills she’s learned to help others.

She added: “It’s really lovely to be here living the country dream. We pinch ourselves – we still think we are on our holidays all of the time. We are immensely lucky.”

No 1 and No 2 Rose Cottage are available to let through The Lakeland Cottage Company.

This article first appeared in the award-winning Cumbria Life magazine.