Welcome to the home of Elizabeth & Alex at The Sandpipers

Our customers Elizabeth and Alex were inspired by the interior design of the Whittingham show home at Create Homes' prestigious development in Longridge. So much so, they bought their very own!

The couple, who both work from home, are now in the process of creating their very own furnishing scheme by incorporating some of the ideas they have taken from the show home, and adding some of their very own personal touches to make their new own home totally unique.

The proud home owners and their little dog Matilda love their new forever home and its stunning semi-rural location, and are really enjoying their exciting interior design journey in their first home together.

    

        

Q. Which house type did you fall in love with and why is its design & layout perfect for your family?

We like all of the house types, but our favourite has to be the WHITTINGHAM. Obviously we are biased, because it is the house type we ended up buying. We love the layout of our home and how open and welcoming all of the space is. The house has been designed extremely well in terms of layout.

There is a generous hallway that leads to a large office/dining room and living room. At the back of the house is a gorgeous open plan kitchen, dining and tv area with bifold doors leading to a turfed garden, which is perfect for entertaining friends and relaxing after a hard days work.

We think our home is such good value and a great investment for the future, with space to grow. It's a fantastic place to live.      

Q. What did you like most about the show home and how has it inspired you in terms of interior design?

The show home has given us great inspiration in terms of how we would like to do up our home. I love the warm neutral and brown tones of the design and have incorporated some of that look into our home.

In particular my favourite rooms are the kitchen and the master bedroom. I loved the kitchen so much that I have had similar colour scheme in my kitchen!

We are planning to install banquette seating at the dining table like the show home, and have put our sofa and mirror in a similar position, although our home is the opposite in terms of layout.

         

Q. How did you personalise the style of your kitchen?

The kitchen/diner is our favourite part of the house. To be able to have a Stuart Frazer kitchen as standard in our home really sold it for us. It is such a high quality kitchen and our experience with James Ashton at Stuart Frazer has been fantastic from start to finish. We had a meeting with him at the Stuart Frazer showroom to go through our options, look at all the samples and choose our colours & upgrades.

We loved the colours of the show home kitchen from the Create Homes Mocha Collection, but made a few tweaks to make it totally our own. We decided to upgrade to a quartz worktop and also added Stuart Frazer units and quartz to our utility room to go with the rest of our kitchen design. 

It was exciting to see the kitchen come to life from the computer visual design! Here's what we chose:

UNITS: AGATE GREY

ARCUS: TERRA LARIX

WORKTOP: Oro Quatrz, 

TRIM & RECESS: Agate Grey

    

             

Q. How have you personalised your bathrooms?

One of the ways we have personalised our home is by upgrading all of our bathrooms to full floor to ceiling tiles. We love the tiles that have been chosen, which are amazing quality from Porcelanosa.

We have chosen different colours of tiles for each bathroom and highlighted them with dark coloured grout. I think they look really beautiful. 

Q. What are your design plans for your bedrooms?

Like the show home scheme, we have incorporated dark furniture accents in one of our bedrooms, which really pop out of the neutral background. We also have added some of our favourite yellows, ochres and greens in the soft furnishings to contrast and make the scheme our own.

My second favourite room in the entire house is the master bedroom. It comes with an en-suite and walk in wardrobe and a gorgeous view of the nature reserve where we live. This room for us is still work in progress and I'm currently shopping around to get inspiration for its look. 

It will be great to see the new show home at Chapel Mill, Elswick for inspiration. I can't wait to visit.

               

Q. What did you do to the outside of your home to personalise it?

We have added additional lighting to the front of our home to highlight the architecture, which looks fabulous at night and some extra paving to extend the parking space for when friends and family visit.

We have added a new Indian stone path at the front of the house to make it look a bit different. Our colourful wreath on the front door welcomes people into our home.

We have not started work in the back garden yet, but in the future we plan to make a doorway in the side of the garage so we can convert it into a bar, which will look out onto the garden. There are also plans to add Indian stone flags at the back and a nice bbq area for summer too. 

              

Q. What other interior design touches have you added so far?

We have sourced our own flooring on the ground floor. The laminate herringbone flooring brings a warmth to the scheme, and goes really well with the oak doors and staircase carpentry.

Another big design decision was not to fully carpet the stairs. Instead, we decided to paint it white, and bought a stair runner from a local shop in Longridge, which really elevated the look of the entrance hallway. 

              

Q. What more do you want to do to your new home in the future?

Our home is a work in progress and we want to make sure we get our styling right. We have decided to tackle one room at a time as we save up to decorate each room and add more individual and personal items to decorate our home. 

We have so many plans for our home that we are so excited for! Next job on the list is an office for us to work from.

This is our forever home and we 100% don’t see ourselves moving from here for at least 10 years, so we have a long time to make this our own.

INTERIOR MAGAZINE STYLE

Elizabeth & Alex's home will be featured in the next issue of Create Homes Magazine.

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+ READ MORE BELOW ON WHY THE COUPLE CHOOSE CREATE HOMES

Alex and Elizabeth explain why a Create Home was the right choice for them.

Q. Why did you choose a new build over a secondhand home?

We are a young professional couple with little DIY experience. I have to admit, initially when we started looking for our forever home, a new build was not even an option we considered because we wanted a property that was unique and had character. However, as soon as we came across Create Homes, the properties sparked our attention as brand new homes that ticked our boxes of being unique with character and most importantly being new, we didn’t need to do any renovation works. On seeing the properties online we just had to book a viewing to find out more. 

Q. What do you most like about your new home and why?

We were particularly impressed with the specification of the property - our absolute favourite things about the house are the Stuart Frazer kitchen, the bay windows in the lounge and master bedroom, and also the high end fixtures and fittings such as chrome light switches & sockets and the Neff appliances in the kitchen.

Q. What do you like about the design and layout of your new home?

We are extremely impressed by the architectural design of the Create Homes properties. They are nothing like usual new builds which are quite boxy and boring, and are of much higher spec. The bay window and colour of brick were stunning and add a huge amount of character to the property. 

Q. Tell us what you enjoyed about your experience with the Sales Team

We primarily dealt with your Sales Executive Gill Wilkin for the duration of our home buying journey at Create Homes.

From the moment we met Gill on our first viewing, we didn’t just fall in love with the show home but also with Gill’s warm, friendly and welcoming personality that made us feel at ease.

Gill is a credit to Create Homes and was amazing with us from start to finish.

Every time we visited the show home we were offered tea/coffee and a friendly chat.

We really did build a great relationship with Gill, which was extremely comforting when we are making one of the biggest purchases of our lives! 

FOLLOW ELIZABETH ON INSTAGRAM

Elizabeth, an interiors blogger in her spare time, has shared her interior design journey with her new Create Home on Instagram.

+ Follow her page as the couple continue to furnish and decorate their new home at homeinspo_byelizabeth

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