'We made our rental into a handmade home'

By buying up bargain leftover paint and making her own furniture, Kanza Borthwick has shown that you don’t have to break the bank to transform a rented new-build into a unique and beautiful home

- Lisa Moses

‘Looking for a rental during the pandemic was really tricky,’ says Kanza Borthwick, who goes on to explain, ‘myself and my husband, Alex, were initially living in the centre of Durham but we were keen to move out of the city and get closer to nature.’ The couple were viewing as many places as possible but finding a property with the countryside environment they longed for was tough.

‘Luckily, we finally found a place in a location we loved and managed to move in between lockdowns,’ she says. The couple would have preferred a period property but couldn’t find one within their budget. However, Kanza adds, ‘this place was clean, which is so important when looking at rentals, and it was a blank canvas, being a new build, so was basically full of plain white boxes waiting for us to put our stamp on them.’

Kanza and Alex initially worried about the possible difficulties of injecting the character and cosy aesthetic they both love into the bland space, as Kanza admits they were decorating novices. ‘Our DIY journey started with the dining table,’ she begins.

‘We like to entertain, but the kitchen is small, and we struggled to find a table that could work in the space and seat six people, so we decided to try and make something ourselves.’ After doing some research, Kanza and Alex came up with the ingenious design of combining a narrow wooden worktop, to function day-to-day as a kitchen island, with a hinged piece that could fold out to create a six-seater dining table.