Couple buy 'uninhabitable' Welsh farmhouse and change their whole lives

Most people would have walked away from a crumbling farmhouse and a yard full of derelict outbuildings. But that’s exactly what attracted Nicole and Gav to the 13-acre smallholding in west Wales. While holidaying nearby in October 2023 the couple decided they “might as well” view some smallholdings for sale to simply indulge in a dream they had long carried.

The couple immediately fell in love with the dilapidated Pembrokeshire site – which includes a farmhouse and a series of outbuildings at varying levels of disrepair – and put an offer down right away. But they were only able to make it a reality thanks to a fortunate turn of events.

“This one was ambitious because it was on for significantly more than we could afford because it had a huge acreage," Nicole, 37, told Pulse Media. “But when we came to see it they said it was not selling so they would be willing to split the land.”

“When there was talk about splitting the land and it made it more affordable – everything aligned,” Gav, 35, added.

In June 2024 Nicole and Gav finally got the keys and aimed to start work straightaway, juggling their full-time jobs with restoring the buildings and tackling the overgrown acres.

But with the farmhouse uninhabitable the pair had nowhere to live. So they bought a static caravan online which would become home for the foreseeable future for the couple along with their dog Seren who joined them two months later.

The couple’s first priority was getting the farmhouse up and running so they could move in as soon as possible but it was the caravan that presented them with their first set of challenges. 

Nicole said: “We got the caravan off Facebook. We went to see a range of different ones and some of them were really gross.

“This one is 30 years old but it does the job – although when we moved in we saw massive amounts of rot and the floor was collapsing so Gav had to rebuild two of the rooms.

“I don’t mind the caravan but Gav hates it because he doesn’t fit in it. Gav is 6ft 3in so he doesn’t fit in the doors and he doesn’t fit in the shower or anything properly but I’m fine.”

Once the pair got the power running and the caravan in a fit state they turned to the farmhouse and some of the other buildings.

Gav, a carpenter by trade, said it was only then that the true scale of work needed became clear.

“This has been quite a big learning curve,” he said. “The plan was to come in and just use modern building techniques like celotex insulation and cement render.

“But the more you dug in the more you realised we had to go down the traditional route using lime and breathable materials for the building.”

Nicole, who works in production and runs the couple’s YouTube account, said the pair received “some grief” online from people seemingly upset that they were “ripping down the walls” of the historic buildings.

However the couple said the intensive work has been essential to save the rotting buildings.

Gav said: “A lot of the ceilings [had] water damage because a couple of the chimneys had been leaking. It was a case of getting those down and getting everything back to the bare bones really.

“And the electrics were not up to regulations so we would never have been allowed to leave that. It involved doing a lot of stuff I would have loved not to do but unfortunately we had to do it.

“We met a couple of local people who had viewed the property and said it was just too big a project for them so it would have continued to rot if we didn’t buy it when we did and started this work. It would have been such a shame because it’s such a nice building.”

As of November 2025 the couple continued to live in the caravan but they have made an exciting amount of progress. They are hoping they can move into the farmhouse ground floor very soon.

Nicole said: “We’ve made loads of progress. We've got the underfloor heating done, we’ve got the lime floor down, we’ve got started on some walls downstairs in the main house.

“Gav’s fixed the chimneys… It’s all the stuff that you can’t see he’s done.

“We had massive amounts of rot where people had previously used cement instead of lime so we had a lot of beams that needed to be replaced.

“I’d been away recently and when I came back all the walls were up and the stairs had been put back in. We’d replaced all the windows and we’ve just had the back door put in – all that important stuff. And I thought: ‘This is a house now – not just a building site’.

“We’ve done all this stuff and it’s taken the best part of a year but unfortunately we are about to cover that up and you’re never going to see it again.”

That sounds like it would be a major job even for a couple with all the spare time in the world.

But that is far from the reality for Nicole and Gav who are squeezing it all into their weekends and the odd weekday evening when they can — almost entirely with no help.

“It’s just us,” Nicole said. “Gav is working full time as a builder Monday to Friday and then working full time as a builder Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m doing my production job and then I do the YouTube and social media pre-work and post work and help Gav on the weekends as well.

“Gav leaves at 7am Monday to Friday and then he’ll be back about 6pm. During the week we might do some bits in the evening.

“Then on Saturdays we’ll try to go and get a nice coffee and a pastry for breakfast or take the dog somewhere nice.

“And then we’ll work all Saturday and Sunday on the house. For me it’s a 6.30am, 7am start on editing. I’ll start work at 9am and I could be working until 2am or I could be done at 6pm. Or I could be doing YouTube or social media stuff in the evening.

“On the weekend I try to help Gav as much as possible. We put our YouTube episodes up on a Sunday so there will be times I will be in a rush to get things out.

“We have had some help – we had a stonemason help us with some work on one of our barns.

“With how our YouTube is going we have managed to get a bit of help and we might get some more help now that YouTube is going well. But at the start we just didn’t have the money to do that.”

As they have worked their way through the renovation so far the pair have uncovered some interesting details about the history of the farm, which dates back to circa 1900.

Gav said: “I’ve found some cool old tools and signed skirting boards where the original carpenters had signed the back of the old skirting boards. There are no dates unfortunately but it says their names.

“[The last owner] also kept diaries from the animal sales. One of the piggeries has got '1913' or something branded on one of the beams.”

But other than those few hints little is known about the farm’s past.

Nicole added: “It had been in [the previous] family for a long time so there don’t seem to be lots of records. It was part of a bigger estate with a mill and a water wheel at the back of the long barn.

“Someone locally said it was actually for washing sheep wool rather than being a mill for flour. We want to go to the Aberystwyth [archives] to try and find out. But because it is this smaller house on a big estate there isn’t so much information about the house specifically.

“We were told by the estate agents it was empty for about six years but we think it might be a little less than that – but it lay empty for a number of years.”

When the pair move on to the exciting design phase of the renovation the couple said it’s important to them to honour the farmhouse’s history by keeping some of its original furniture and giving it a cosy Welsh cottage feel.

Nicole said: “The house was pretty gutted but we were left with a beautiful Welsh dresser and some beautiful Welsh furniture so the interior design will be based all around that.

“We want it to look like a traditional Welsh cottage but a modern version of that. There’s not going to be modern marble islands or anything like that.

“It’ll be wood and reclaimed furniture. We went to Rob Thomas' reclamation yard in Carmarthen and he’s amazing – he does this amazing reclaimed wood and old church pew doors which we want to use for the kitchen cabinet and stuff like that.

“We just want to reuse as much as possible. Ideally we don’t want to buy much new at all. We think we might be able to get from Rob some old snooker table slates to be repurposed into worktops in the kitchen.”

The longer-term goal will be to make use of land so that the pair can live as self-sufficiently as possible.

Nicole said: “Gav’s really interested in regenerative farming. He worked in Australia when he was travelling doing pig farming. We are looking at ways we could do rotation with the animals to make the best use of the land and bring nutrients back in.

“I really want to have a big veg garden and have flowers – that kind of thing. Hopefully we can do all the [traditional] home food methods like canning and storing our food. We will never be totally self-sufficient but it would be nice to live a simpler life.”

Although there is still a lot of work left to do the couple said they already feel as though they are already living that simpler life in some respects.

Having left a busier life in London Nicole said she adores waking up each morning to the beautiful views and takes comfort in knowing their vision is slowly but surely taking shape.

She said: “I always still feel like I’m waking up on holiday. Probably because we are waking up in a caravan but the view is amazing and the space is amazing. The potential of the site is really exciting.”

But they say the best part of all is having their dog Seren whose presence brings them light, happiness, and calm even on the most stressful renovation days.

“Our favourite thing is our dog,” Seren said. “We always wanted a dog. But we lived up two flights of stairs in London so we couldn't. We rescued her when she was on her last day at a kill shelter in Nottingham.

“They put a call out to all the shelters when that happens. They thought she was a collie-lab cross so a collie rescue place near here took her in but it turns out she isn’t a collie or a lab — she’s a malamar, rottweiler, staffy, mastiff cross.

“She was on the street apparently but she has definitely been in a home before. She knew how to sit and do different commands.

“Probably someone thought they were buying a labrador puppy and she was probably too much energy or something like that.”

Gav said: “She’s a class dog and she loves the land and chasing rabbits.”

You can follow the couple's journey on their YouTube and Facebook accounts which are called From City to Smallholding.