uFurnish.com Founder Deirdre Mc Gettrick sat down with Serena Dobson - 2025 uFurnish.com Home Awards runner up to talk all things interiors inspiration and advice for those on their own interiors journey.
Name: Serena Dobson
Instagram handle: @renovating_hillside_house
Location: Lincolnshire
Sum up your home interior style in 3 words or less: Colour drenched heritage
What’s your favourite item in your home?: It changes on the daily. Quite possibly the pair of Jindrich Halabala bentwood armchairs which have been restored and reupholstered in beautiful Becca Who fabric - a 40th birthday present from my husband.
If your home had a theme song what would it be?: She’s a Rainbow by the Rolling Stones.
Toilet roll over or under on the holder?: Definitely over. That’s not even up for discussion!
Do you place your cups and glasses facing up or down in your cupboard?: Facing up
What inspired your home’s interior style and how did you bring that vision to life?
I’ve always been a huge fan of colour and pattern so in this house it’s been about bringing that through in a way that remains sympathetic to the house and it’s 200 year old history. I’ve taken elements of what I know about the house and what I’ve found during our renovation journey to do this. By way of example, when we turned the smallest bedroom in to the family bathroom, I knew that I had to design it around the incredible view across the farmland (once farmed by the tenant farmers of this property). I searched high and low for a wallpaper that was evocative of the farming history without being twee - Farrow and Ball’s Gable wallpaper fit the bill perfectly, and I took the colours from this through the rest of the room (including our wonderful pink bath). I love to bring different patterns together. The stripes and florals in our spare bedroom were born from two pairs of curtains I found still hanging on moving day. I knew I wanted to use them as they were so pretty, but I wanted to elevate them beyond chintzy - so I introduced stripes via the fabulous wallpaper from Lust Home which I took up the back wall and over the ceiling. I used one of the pairs of curtains to reupholster our headboard and hung the other pair. It’s about finding something you love and working with it to design a space that eventually looks as though that item or that pattern has always belonged there.
How did you balance your design goals with your budget and do you have any clever hacks or cost-saving tips for readers?
I have a husband who keeps talking about money!! In all seriousness there is an element of us each bringing our strengths to this - he’s the first to admit that he’s not so great with the design, but what he does bring is a solution focussed approach. I’m the one coming with the grandiose plans. He’s the one scouring YouTube to figure out if it’s possible to make the item I’ve seen that would blow our budget! That and second hand - Facebook market place is my toxic trait! Our vanity unit cost £40 and I bought two leather chesterfield armchairs the other week for the cellar which cost £190 for the pair. You’ll find everything you want there, but you need to be quick and snap it up when you see it - good stuff doesn’t hand around!
What has been your biggest challenge designing your home and how have you overcome it?
Possibly the combination of never having quite enough money or quite enough time! It’s the wicked renovation problem. The challenge has been making our peace with this being a slow renovation. We initially thought this was going to be a five year project. Three years in and we haven’t yet finished upstairs. But slow is good - we have made more considered choices and spent time understanding the house and what we need from it to design a layout and rooms that will last and grow with us as a family.
Of course there have also been very practical challenges - discovering the floor I was about to sand in my new office/studio space was in fact the original lime ash floor (and not the floorboards I was expecting) was a big surprise. You have to roll with it… in this instance I made the decision to hand stencil a terrazzo design in the floor which I adore and now wouldn’t change for the world (even if it took me hours and hours of lonely painting to do!!)
If you could give one piece of advice to someone starting their own renovation journey what would it be?
There’s so many but perhaps what I would say is… where possible work from the top down. The last thing you want is to have your dream kitchen, beautifully wallpapered hallway and gorgeous new carpet in place downstairs, only for them to be ruined when the to-ing and fro-ing of the upstairs transformation takes hold. That and don’t forget to take some time out occasionally. A renovation project can be all consuming and it’s easy to let the rest of life pass you by. Getting out occasionally gives you the break you need to keep being energised and excited by it.
Is there a particular space in your home that you’re most proud of and why?
Whilst it’s not strictly inside our home, I’d say our garden has been our biggest transformation to date, and one I’m super proud of as we did it all ourselves which not only saved us money but meant we had to master new skills. The bottom part of the garden was a hard standing tarmac tennis court when we arrived - so dilapidated it had nettles nd brambles growing through it and a chain link fence all the way around. We knew we wanted to turn it in to a proper family garden but the £60k we were quoted for turf was just beyond our reach. So we hired a digger, dug it up, had 60 tonnes of topsoil delivered, seeded it and waited! Spring delivered us the green shoots of a lawn and we got on with building pergolas, laying a tiled patio and shifting seven tonnes of stones - using YouTube and Instagram to pick up the skills we needed!! Now, with a gorgeous lawn, a seating area, hot tub flower beds and views for days, it’s truly one of the most magical parts of the renovation so far, and somewhere we can escape to when the dust inside gets too much.
On a much smaller scale, rescuing what turned out to be the original door pull midway through our front door renovation is something I am so proud of. It nearly went in the skip as it was so caked in thick black gloss paint but at the last minute I took a punt, popped it in the slow cooker for ten hour's and the paint just fell off revealing the most intricate, beautiful metalwork. It is now back on the front door where it belongs.
Where do you find your inspiration? Are there designers, Instagram accounts or brands that influence your style?
I remember my mum being a huge fan of fashion designer Zandra Rhodes and as a child thinking she was utterly fabulous and unlike any other adult I had ever seen before! As I’ve got older that’s followed me - that approach to using colour, pattern and texture to bring joy and fun. Now I’m drawn to accounts and designers that bring me that same dopamine hit. Sophie Robinson’s use of colour and pattern is fab - and very accessible. There’s so many accounts on Instagram that bring me joy on the daily and inspire me to try things out - Greg Penn (@manwithahammer) is inspirational - his renovation of Admirals (a Georgian beauty) is on a much bigger scale than ours but the challenges are often similar so his is a really helpful and inspirational account for me.
What's the next interiors project you want to work on?
We are currently working to transform our cellar from grimy, damp, frog infested hole to a cosy welcoming space to store (and drink) wine. The bigger project though is the last room upstairs which will become our master bedroom suite (bedroom, bathroom and dressing room). Work has now started on the rip out and reconfiguration - watch this space!
Any other information you’d like to share about your home interiors journey?
Hillside House is a 200 year old former tenant farmhouse in Lincolnshire. Part of the Leadenham Estate, the seat of the Reeve family our house is one of four farmhouses built to house the tenant farmers who between them worked the Estate’s arable land. We are the first owners outside of the estate - lithe house hadn’t been lived in for two years before we moved in in 2023. I document the journey of our renovation on Instagram: @renovating_hillside_house
Each month we'll be interviewing one of our uFurnish.com Home Awards finalists asking them all about their home renovation journey, their inspiration and more so be sure to come back each month to learn more. Find out more about our Home Awards here, follow us on Instagram here for more inspiration and updates and subscribe to our emails here for weekly offers and more.