A Childhood of Questionable Taste
I think the Everstead aesthetic started before I was old enough to have an aesthetic, certainly before I was old enough to spell it!
Apparently, when I was barely old enough to talk, I would happily chatter away to “the nice old lady” in my bedroom.
No one else could see her.
In hindsight, that feels like the sort of detail my parents might have investigated rather than filed under adorable childhood quirk.
Years later, by complete chance, my dad met the original owners of that house. At some point, they asked whether he had ever seen the ghost…
An old lady. Their grandmother. She had died years earlier.
And guess which room had been her favourite?
Bingo! My bedroom.
So that was reassuring.
As far back as I can remember, I was drawn to things that were a little odd, a little dark and, according to my mother, not remotely normal.
My bookshelves were full of horror stories, Poe, books about communicating with spirits and other titles that probably weren’t what my parents had pictured when they imagined raising a daughter.
And yes, I still have most of them. They’re in the dining room now… obviously. More on that another time.
I suspect they had hoped for picture books, ballet and perhaps one harmless obsession with ponies.
Instead, they got a tiny paranormal librarian.
My mum regularly asked (and occasionally still does) why I couldn’t just be normal and like flowers and pretty things.
The thing is, I do like pretty things.
I just also think the macabre is beautiful.
Skulls. Ghost stories. Mourning imagery. Old things with questionable histories. Basically, anything that looks faintly haunted or as though it witnessed something terrible in 1897.
That, apparently, is my version of pretty.
My dad, meanwhile, mostly just leaned into it.
He indulged the strange books, the odd interests and the general fascination with anything vaguely gothic or unsettling.
He once bought me a life-size rubber skeleton because he knew I would love it.
I was twenty.
Not eight. Not twelve. Twenty.
So, of course, I hid it in the bed. 🤭
So really, none of this is new!
The Haunted Townhouse of My Dreams
So, naturally, when it came to house hunting, I knew exactly what I wanted.
An old Victorian townhouse.
Fireplaces. Attics. High ceilings. Odd little rooms. The sort of place that creaks at night for reasons no surveyor can quite explain.
Basically, I wanted something with a very definite this is most definitely probably haunted vibe.
That was the dream.
Something old. Something full of character. Something that looked as though it had stories in the walls and possibly one room nobody had opened since 1894….However, that was not quite what happened.
Because when you are actually buying a house, apparently things like parking, gardens, bedrooms, location and whether the roof is about to collapse are considered important. Who knew *obligatory eye roll*.
So we did what any sensible people would do and scrutinised practically every house Guernsey estate agents had to offer via an ever-growing spreadsheet, meticulously curated by yours trulyIt had to be right and nothing less than my haunted vision would do.
I had lived in my old house for nearly twenty years and I wasn’t moving for anything less than the one.
Enter: The Spreadsheet
The spreadsheet became increasingly serious.
Every house we even vaguely considered went on it. Price. Location. Bedrooms. Garden. Parking. Layout. Work needed. Pros. Cons. General likelihood of bankrupting us.
Nothing escaped scrutiny.
And because I had lived in the same house for nearly twenty years, I was ruthless about it. I wasn’t moving for “nice”, I wasn’t moving for “it’ll do”.
If I was going to pack up almost two decades of my life and leave the house I knew inside out, it had to be worth it.
At one point, we went to see what we thought might actually be the house. On paper, it was brilliant. Modern. Beautifully finished. En-suite bathroom. Playroom for the kids. Everything neat and coordinated and very grown-up….and grey,so Much. Grey. It was like Mrs Hinch’s Castle Grey.It was objectively lovely.
I hated it the minute I walked in.
There was nothing wrong with it. That was almost the problem.It had no odd corners. No strange little details. No sense that anyone had ever made a questionable decorating decision there at 11pm with a glass of wine and misplaced confidence. It was a beautifully curated box.
And apparently, despite all the practical boxes on the spreadsheet, what I actually wanted was a house with a pulse….and Track House was most definitely not it!
The Benchmark House (Rouge Rue House)
We carried on looking, but my heart was still firmly set on a five-bedroom townhouse just minutes from my old house.
It was empty, dangerously close by, and I drove past it twice a day every day and then walked past it a third time….every day!
We peered through the windows, inspected it from every possible pavement angle and I had already mentally installed myself in the grand kitchen.
Technically, it was what I wanted.
Townhouse. Character. Space. Close to everything I already knew.
But then we did what we had done with every other house. We picked it apart.
The parking wasn’t ideal. The garden was small. The outside needed some fairly serious maintenance.
None of that stopped me wanting it, obviously.It was still the benchmark.
Joel, however, was becoming increasingly distracted by another house entirely.
A house in Oatlands that wasn’t particularly high on our spreadsheet and, if I’m honest, wasn’t even one we were especially considering viewing.
What it did have was an estate agent’s floor plan that appeared to have been drawn during some sort of fever dream. Doors seemed to lead nowhere. Rooms appeared to have no doors at all.
What was this What was this? A Guernsey Sarah Winchester mystery house?Consider my curiosity piqued. We had to go and see it…If nothing else, I needed to know what on earth was going on with that floor plan so, in my mind, we could put it to bed and move on to mentally moving into Rouge Rue House.
The House That Wasn’t Supposed to Win
So we went.
And no, it was not the glorious Guernsey mystery house I had briefly imagined. There were no impossible corridors, no doors leading to nowhere, no secret passages. It was just a crap floor plan.
Slightly disappointing, if I’m honest. But hey we’re here lets look around…It had a fireplace, a HUGE (albeit banana yellow) dining room, plenty of parking (something I have never had in all the properties I have owned and lived) A lovely garden, enough rooms for the kids to have their own space.
And a red and black kitchen….I mean, come on. Me much?
It wasn’t the Victorian townhouse of my dreams. It wasn’t even especially close to the brief I had started with. But suddenly it was ticking box after box after box.
So we did what we always did. We went home, pondered it, ripped it apart and analysed every possible flaw and I continued making my case for the townhouse.
And then, without really noticing it happen, something shifted. Every other house we looked at started being compared to the Oatlands house….Including my beloved townhouse.
Somewhere along the way, the house that wasn’t supposed to win had quietly become the benchmark. Hmmm…..
The Kids Decide
After benchmarking basically every other house against Oatlands, including my absolutely the one townhouse, we went back for a second viewing.
This time we took my parents and the kids with us….I wanted to know how it felt with actual life in it rather than just the two of us wandering around mentally moving furniture and arguing over parking and get the very rare seal of approval from my very picky mother. I knew she would pick up on all the little things that I would call quirky in my haste to find “the house” but would surely drive us all insane within 2 days of moving in.
And then the Miss and Master tore off into the garden, running around and squealing with joy…..Well. That was it.
It still wasn’t my haunted Victorian townhouse…BUT:
It had a fireplace.
Proper parking.
A lovely garden.
A bloody apple tree.
More space than either of us really knew what to do with.
Rooms for the kids to have their own space.
And now, apparently, the full child seal of approval.
We had to offer.So we did.
There was some negotiation, some tense back and forth, and eventually an offer was accepted just within the absolute maximum we were willing to go to.
FUCK.
And Then It Became Everstead
Getting from offer accepted to actually getting the keys was not exactly a calm, graceful journey.
There were ups and downs, delays, stress and more than one wobble from me that I was somehow compromising on the townhouse of my haunted dreams.
Had I been too sensible? Had I let the spreadsheet win? Was I going to spend the next ten years driving past Victorian townhouses and sighing dramatically?
Possibly.
But eventually, on 13 August 2026, the Oatlands house became ours.
And almost immediately, it stopped being the Oatlands house. Because if I wasn’t getting my Victorian manor house, I was at least going to give this one a proper name.
So, much to the apparent horror of the previous owners, we went to court and officially renamed it.
Everstead.
The house hunt was over and now the real fun could begin!!!
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