I have always enjoyed making my home surroundings as comfortable as I can, regardless of how my bank balance has looked throughout the years. I am a typical Cancerian, and home is where I feel safe, happy, relaxed and it’s where I can truly be me. Home is where I can be at my most creative and home is where my heart truly lies.

I’ve lived in many houses since leaving my parents’ home at the age of 18. And, whether it’s a university flat, my first mortgage on a city apartment, an old crumbling country house old or a new build, I have loved all the homes I have lived in and I’ve done pretty much most of my home-making on a budget. There is ‘What I want’ and there is ‘What I can afford’ , but I have always loved making my own four walls into my space to fill with warmth, love and my own style.

When I first viewed Margaret’s Cottage July in 2014, I could feel warmth and love within the building as soon as I stepped through the front door. I think buildings are like that, especially houses. They emanate the feelings of those who have lived and died in the house across the years…and it instantly felt right for Kelsey and I to live here.

I have only once stepped into Margaret’s Castle, and I got the exact opposite feeling, with a distinct chill running down my spine. I’m quite sure the walls would tell a very different tale if they could speak of the last 600 years. So I quietly acknowledged the presence that I felt in the castle, and told ‘whomever’ that I was leaving and pulled the door tightly behind me. I am not rushing back into Margaret’s Castle and content that we live here, and whomever is in the castle will stay in the castle.

I love this wee house. It is our home, our income, our project, our business, my pension plan, my work-in-progress and my labour of love.

Margaret’s Cottage is a peculiar wee house. The original old one storey cottage, was built in the late 1700s and the top half [it was described to me, by a villager, as a carbuncle!] was built in the late 1970s, by my uncle Michael O’Shea. The house is called Margaret’s Cottage because it is beside Margaret’s Castle, which is one of the village’s many tower houses and dates back to 1420. Margaret’s Cottage was once the Ballast Office for the harbour, it has also been the coastguards’ residence, the lighthouse keepers’ cottage, a domestic family residence, a residential care home for older people and then Margaret’s Cottage became a B&B. If the walls could talk, I am sure they would tell a story or two.

I’m here to stay ….and they can carry me out in a box, feet first. x