Hardcastle Towers, an Eclectic Colourful Edwardian Home in Yorkshire

It’s always lovely to find someone with a passion for colourful and eclectic interiors. It is even better when they have become a friend, someone you met through instagram and the various interior events that have sprung from the platform. Finding out that despite calling her Jo in every response to her comments on your feed or through commenting on hers, that she actually prefers to be called Joanne, a bit of an Oops moment and something rapidly corrected.

Here is my first home tour in a little while, a colourful, eclectic Edwardian. I could be describing my own home, although it is different period of property, but it is the wonderful home of Joanne Hardcastle who you can follow and find out more about here.

If you are anything like me, there is nothing better than a good old nosey around someone’s home and hearing in their words, what inspired them, of how they came up with their decor ideas, so over to you Jo………

We live in a four-story red brick Edwardian house. It’s on the outskirts of a town in West Yorkshire and we are really lucky to be surrounded by green open fields on each side. We first bought the house as a young couple with a new baby, and were overwhelmed by the space. We didn’t use the top floor at all for a good few years. We are now a family of five, the house is beginning to feel small, and we are just about to begin to renovate the basement.

I work from home and with older children who need to study, we need more workspace. We hope to convert the basement into a utility/work room, a snug and a downstairs bathroom
When we moved into the house it was in quite a state of disrepair as it had been used as a rental bedsit property. We have lived here for 20 years now, and have been constantly decorating the entire time. We fell in love with the period features, the etched glass windows in the downstairs doors are a particular favourite of mine

We moved into this house from a very small little cottage that had been very bright and colourful. I was afraid of the scale of this house when we first lived here and played it safe by decorating in very pale, neutral colours. I suppose I would call my style quirky, eclectic maximalism. I love colour, art and beautiful things. 

Since I’ve joined Instagram I have been influenced by the beautiful homes I have seen online. I had never known anybody decorate their home like mine, and didn’t realise that I fitted into a style. I can remember finding accounts on Instagram and being amazed when homes look like mine, particularly yours Nicola! When I first saw your green sofa, I couldn’t believe how much our living rooms looked alike!

Before Instagram I used to take inspiration from lots of different places. For example, the dining room was decorated around a sofa I found in the discount section at Redbrick Mill.  The living room was decorated based on a colour palette I liked on a plate that I had found in a junk shop. In both rooms, I had the paint mixed to match the items.

When we first moved in there wasn’t a kitchen as such, there was an old gas stove, one cupboard and a wonky concrete floor which was painted red.

We couldn’t work out how to fit an extension in because of the lay out of the back garden. One day I had a brainwave to move into the space where we kept the dustbins. It wasn’t a very big space, but we’ve built a side extension and it’s made a huge difference. It was about five years ago and I had an Instagram account and followed a baking account called a passion for baking. I absolutely fell in love with the style of Manuela’s kitchen. The colour palette for the kitchen was based on that, and everything is centred around the pink fridge. I collected things like a magpie during the build. I knew I wanted open shelving, and the brackets were going to make a massive difference to how things looked. My husband is an engineer and he had the idea of using plumbing fittings. He had the brackets made.

Ever since watching Homefront back in the 1990s, I had been in love with the idea of real lino. A house which they renovated on there, (it was Kevin McCloud and the house was in Pudsey) they had a beautiful floor using old-fashioned lino.  Trying to talk the floor man into sourcing lino and lay it was another matter! He tried to persuade us to get a cushion floor but we were adamant and I’m really glad we stuck to our guns. 

For the first 10 years that we lived here the dining room, or the family room was a play room with the dining table pushed back against the wall. One of the first jobs we did in here was to knock out the fireplace and install a log burner. We sanded the floors, and were lucky the original fitted cupboards remained.  One Christmas I moved the dining bedroom table into the middle of the room and I liked how it looked.

I saw a little red and dark grey sofa in the outlet section of Redbrick Mill over Christmas and I bought it.  It fitted perfectly into the bay window and the room never changed back to how it was before. This was the first room where we went a dark colour. I had some paint mixed to match the dark grey shade in the red sofa.  I love how all the bright colours pop against the dark walls and this room houses one of my prize possessions; a self-portrait that my daughter did for her GCSE art. Painting this room gave me the confidence to move through the rest of the house and update the look. 

The front room (below) is dominated by a huge bay window which takes up the entire side of the room. The original fireplace had been removed and there was nothing there, just a hole in the wall. We sourced this fireplace from a shop in Knaresborough, it is from an old schoolhouse, and fits the footprint of the previous fireplace perfectly. Again, we have stripped floorboards in here. This room had been painted a very pale cream colour until I found two l plates in a junk shop in Howarth.  The purple shade on the plate matched the Chaise long perfectly, and I loved how it worked with the muted bottle green. We had some paint mixed to match it. The wallpaper in here is actually anaglypta, and I think that’s coming back into fashion isn’t?! 

We are currently decorating the hallway and I feel that everything I’ve learnt decorating the house has come together in this space. I have been able to create a maximalist feel just by layering colour and textures together. I’m very pleased with how it’s coming along. I am in love with the Lincrusta and would really love to use that somewhere else in the house.

Here is my bathroom. We had previously re-enamelled the original bath, but it chipped and was looking worse for wear so we decided to buy a new one. I was influenced by the Frugality with these beautiful scintilla floor tiles. It’s a very small space so I kept the colour palette very simple, and added colour with a lot of plants and accessories.

I loved decorating this child’s bedroom with a space theme. It was inspired by the mural.  I enjoyed putting lots of different things together to complement that. The fireplace is a reclaimed one and the floorboards are sanded in here too. 

This Master Bedroom has only been decorated for about a year and I think you can tell I’m beginning to be bolder with colour.  The walls are a colour match of Farrow and Ball’s Vardo. Storage in this house has always been a massive problem with us not having a loft space. We employed a local joiner to build fitted wardrobes to our specification, and couldn’t be more pleased with the results. They are finished off with Dowsing and Reynolds handles. We didn’t have the budget to replace the bedroom furniture, and there was nothing wrong with it, so I repainted the bright orange pine with chalk paint, it is colour matched to Farrow and Ball’s blue black. And I’ve used bronze gilding wax to highlight the details.  It looks super cosy because of all the cushions and throws on the bed and the rugs on the floor.  In reality, it’s quite a draughty space, we have the original sash windows, they are single glazed and replacing them is a job that we hope to do this year.

We have got two more bedrooms up in the attic, this is where my teens hang out. 

What I love most about Joanne’s home is that it has been a real labour of love built over years and you can tell. She has collected items to fit into her home, or decorated around them and it creates a real eclectic vibe that is hard to pull off. I also love how brave she is with colour. Thanks for sharing Joanne!