We gave our thatched Dorset farmhouse a modern makeover

Relocating had its ups and downs for designer Cat Earp, but she has now created a beautiful rural home for her young family

When Cat Earp first moved to rural Dorset seven years ago, the transition took a little getting used to. “At first, there were times when I thought, what have we done?” she says.
She and her husband, Ant, had relocated from London, where she had worked as a press officer at Gucci, to move into a bungalow on the arable farm that his parents bought almost 40 years ago. Life couldn’t be more different.
“At the start, I really did miss my old life a lot,” she says. “I moved down and had our daughter [Willa, now 7], and I knew nobody. I had no friends, and I really missed working. But it had always been Ant’s dream to take on the farm once his parents were ready to step back from it. I was loving being a mum, but those first few months were tough at times.” 
After about a year, they bought a house near the farm, which became their first family home, and gradually started getting to know people.
For Cat’s design sourcebook, click here
They had their son Woody, now 4, and started a holiday-rental business as a way to diversify the farm, building four shepherd huts that Cat decorated in an uplifting mix of colours and patterns. The huts quickly became a hit due to their playfully stylish aesthetic; so much so, she also started a homeware business selling the headboards, cushions and tableware she designed for them.
The creative outlet helped her to settle into her new life, and when Ant’s parents decided to downsize into a modern house they’d built on site, she was ready for the challenge of renovating the farmhouse for her and her young family.
The house dates from the 16th century and is Grade II-listed, so there were limited options for restructuring. The couple were keen, though, to maintain its period character while updating it for modern living.
“There are no straight walls in the house, it’s all completely higgledy-piggledy,” she says, “but that’s the charm of it. We didn’t want to take down any of the thick original walls or cover up the beams, so we re-jigged it by taking down some of the stud walls that we were able to move, to make the interior flow better.”
With the help of local architect Stephen Way, their plans involved removing one of the staircases, moving the kitchen to another part of the house, and reconfiguring the upper floor.
Where previously there were six bedrooms and two bathrooms, there are now five bedrooms, all en-suite. They also replaced the plumbing, electrics and boiler, and improved the drainage system to accommodate the new bathrooms.
The house is T-shaped, with the front door opening onto the top of the T, where there is the entrance hall, the snug, the living room and farm offices.
The stem of the T is occupied by the playroom, which opens onto a conservatory dining room at the back, the cloakroom, a second hall with a door out to the garden, and the kitchen/breakfast room, which also has French windows opening on the garden.
Cat and Ant built into a barn attached to the kitchen, which now houses a utility room, a pantry and a boot room. 
They discovered when the build started that the roof of the former barn was rotten and had to be replaced, but fortunately the thatched roof of the house didn’t yet require restoration work. “Ant’s parents used to have it done in sections as it’s such a long roof, so there are bits that are older than others,” says Cat.
The build, which took a year, was completed earlier this month, and the family lived in the house throughout, other than staying with friends for two weeks while the plumbing was done. “We moved from room to room during the work; it feels like we’ve moved house about a million times,” says Cat.
“Over the winter, we had one usable room downstairs, so we did go a bit stir-crazy. One of our dogs (the family have three: cocker spaniel Ruby, and miniature dachshunds Frankie and Rocky) had six puppies, so it was really chaotic for a while. But we had sold our old house to pay for the work, and we couldn’t justify spending on renting somewhere.”
Decor-wise, Cat wanted to introduce a similar, uplifting look to the interiors of the shepherd huts, but in a more pared-back style. “I love bright colours and it’s a great look for a holiday home, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to live with it all the time,” she says.
“This is a very particular house that wouldn’t suit all decorating styles, and I was very conscious that I wanted something we wouldn’t tire of easily, as it’s going to be our house for life. I also wanted to have fun with it though.”
That playful vibe comes out in the colour choices she has made: a mix of soft blues, greens and pinks, with the odd splash of stronger colour, for example the orange paint used in Willa’s bathroom, and the raspberry pink chairs in the breakfast room.
Scallop motifs appear throughout on furniture, shelving and accessories.
The lamps include styles by fashion-forward designers such as Beata Heuman, Alice Palmer and Matilda Goad; and floral print wallpapers and fabrics by Ottoline de Vries, Soane and others reference the rural setting while also adding a fresh, youthful note.
“I wanted to get in every fabric that I love in one way or another,” says Cat, “but they are repeated in some rooms, so that it all ties together and isn’t too much of a mishmash.”
With the house now complete, Cat has turned her attention to launching her own design firm, The Aller Studio (named after the farm), and plans to expand her homeware line. “I’m not a trained interior designer, but it happened quite naturally when people started asking for design advice after seeing the huts,” she says. “I thought, I’m just going to go for it.”
Now that she is fully settled into rural life and her work, any initial wobbles about the move are clearly in the past.
“We’ve got so many friends now, and I don’t look back on my old life at all,” she says. “It’s beautiful being down here; you never get that Sunday blues feeling. We’re really lucky.”
Visit theallerstudio.com for interior design by Cat Earps and allerdorset.com for holiday lets at Aller Dorset
“With all of my projects I like to have some sort of connection between the rooms with colours and patterns, so that they all flow on from one another,” says Cat.
She’s repeated the same wallpaper and fabric motifs in different rooms, and used the same palette of paint and fabric colours throughout the house, so that there is no jarring effect when you leave one room and enter another. Most of the woodwork throughout, for example, is painted in Lichen by Farrow & Ball, which provides a visual link between the rooms.
Cat has used paint colours with soft, knocked-back tones – pale dusky pinks and slightly faded blues and greens, rather than bolder, vibrant shades or sickly-sweet pastels. The result is neither garish nor twee, and has a style that works with its unique character.
Many houses – not only old ones – have awkward corners or distinctive features that can limit what you can do in a room in terms of furniture placement. “I think the best thing to do is to try to work with every nook and cranny, and maximise the space you have,” says Cat.
“In my daughter’s bedroom, there’s a massive beam in the middle of the room, so we’ve used it to create shelving. I think you’ve got to keep the charm of a house like this, because that’s what makes it so special.”
Cat has used lots of frills, scallops and florals on upholstery and soft furnishings, but has tempered their prettiness with the strong geometric lines of the chequerboard floors and recurrent stripes, which add some edge.
A country house needs to feel liveable and comfortable, which Cat has achieved by using a lot of fabrics and plump furniture.
In the living room, for example, there is an upholstered ottoman rather than a coffee table, and large squashy sofas; all the bedrooms have her own-design upholstered headboards; there are cushions and rugs aplenty; and many of the lamps have gathered fabric shades to add further softness.
The mix of old and new has always been something I love,” says Cat.
Here, the age of the farmhouse speaks for itself, and rather than filling it with antiques and traditional patterns, she has mixed in modern floral motifs and contemporary furniture such as the Love Your Home sofas and Wishbone-style dining chairs, giving it a youthful look that doesn’t fight with its history. 
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