A builder who couldn’t resist snapping up his first property at auction has transformed a derelict shop into a beautiful home.
As reported by the Liverpool Echo, Stephen Taylor bought the derelict shop for £26,000 on Borough Road in Birkenhead.
The property had been vacant for 20 years, but this did not put off the intrepid joiner when he bought the property in 2016.
The past five years has seen the 36 year old from Wirral resurrect the shop dump at a cost of around £74,000.
The joyous joiner now enjoys the fruits of his labour by living in the house he did up. He filmed his journey which can be viewed on his YouTube channel @Three Eagles Recordings.
Stephen said: "I've been a builder for around 20 years’ now and when I first saw it I was looking online.
"I didn't have any intention of going to auction but when I saw the building and the guide price of £10-12,000 I thought to myself 'what the hell is that?'
"I thought I've got to have a look at least, so I arranged to go and have a look, and I could see the potential in it because of the amount of space in the building.
"In my head I could see straight away the potential to cut the building in two and have a little shop as well as a house, so sort of kill two birds with one stone and then I could eventually set up a business as well.
"It had a lot of things going for it. I could see the bigger picture."
After buying the building and being handed the keys, Stephen said the backyard was like “a jungle” and the general state of the building was “pretty poor.”
Stephen said: "I didn't get a structural report done before I went to auction either which was a big risk but there wasn't enough time.
"By the time the estate agents organised a block viewing where everyone turns up, there was about a week before the actual auction.
"I've never done it before and finding someone to come and do the report and everything, I just didn't have enough time so I just had to take a gamble on it.
"The worst case scenario when I did get the structural report done is he could have told me to knock the building down because it was that bad.
"But luckily he said 'you're going to have to knock the front of the building down' and rebuild it as that was about to fall down, so that's what I did in the end."
The budget savvy joiner kept costs to a minimum by doing most of the work himself. He managed to squeeze in his passion project with his full-time day job as a joiner and got specialist help when he needed it.
Stephen paid a structural specialist company to work on the front of the building that needed a full rebuild.
The past year saw Stephen’s passion project build momentum. In order to finish renovation on the shop, he had to cut back his hours at his day job.
Stephen said: "I did as much of the work as possible myself to keep the cost down.
"When I took the roof off and the front wall was down, that was about two years into it because the first couple of years was just me clearing the place out, saving up more money and planning what I was going to do; that was from 2016 to 2018 - the summer.
"Then when I took the roof off and I saw the bare shell and how poor the state of everything was, there was a point where I was like 'what the hell am I doing?' I was thinking this is going to take forever.
"I had to learn how to be positive, put it that way."
The building now has a new lease of life and Stephen has exciting plans for the future too.
The multi talented joiner who also produces and writes his own music, has plans to run an independent record label and artist residency from the newly revamped property.
The ground floor will be dedicated to a collaborative space for musical creatives and DJs to record their music. Stephen’s long term plans for the ground floor bedrooms are to make them available for musicians to create a unique artist residency.
Stephen said: "I did have a vision for it. Even though it was a shop it's obviously been a flat above it, so it kind of had a bit of a layout that I could see in my head.
"It just came together really. It took a bit of time and I was spending a lot of time getting ideas on apps like Pinterest and Instagram."
"On the outside of the building I wanted to kind of keep it as original as possible, so I liked the fact that it had a natural slate roof and the funny corner window with the crazy little roof on it I thought I want to keep it.
"On the inside I just wanted a clean and modern house basically so I kept it all pretty plain. I wanted to make it feel like a nice, large living space, particularly the kitchen and living area because that's the main room that anyone will go in.
"I wanted to make sure there was enough bedrooms and I'm using one bedroom for my own music studio."
A surprised Stephen added: "I kick myself most days and just think I can't believe I've done it really because I've always lived in rented places that were completely falling apart and to have a place of my own that I've had the chance to work on myself, it's just a dream come true really, especially being a builder."
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