How one entrepreneur turned a derelict basement into a stunning store using pre-loved materials and DIY YouTube videos

Daily Mail​

3 days ago

The household
Kate Blower, creative director and founder of café and lifestyle store Resinn, her partner and head coffee-roaster Erik Ohrstrom, and their two children.
The project
When Ohrstrom was made redundant while Blower was heavily pregnant during lockdown, her first reaction was to panic about paying the mortgage. Then she realised the solution to their financial predicament could lie in the basement of their four-storey townhouse in Sunderland.
The space, now pop-up coffee shop and lifestyle store Resinn, was originally uninhabitable and plagued by damp. There were no electrics or plumbing, and the layout was a maze of corridors formed by stud walls – remnants from when the property had been used as student accommodation. The renovation took six months.
The cost
★ Labour (rewiring the basement, adding smoke alarms and outdoor lighting): £2,000
★ Gas-supply connection, including a full boiler service: £400
★ Wall excavation: £800
★ Building materials: £1,000
★ Furniture and coffee-station equipment: £1,700
TOTAL: £5,900
The first steps
'You don't need a pot of money to start a business; you just need an idea,' says Blower, in reference to the early days of Resinn. 'Erik is a trained barista, so he could make pour-over coffee using our kitchen kettle, and my sister is a baker who could contribute homemade cakes.' Blower had honed her design skills earlier through running an Airbnb business and from working at Urban Outfitters and H&M in Sweden for 15 years, before moving to Sunderland. 'We combined forces to get the business off the ground,' she says.
Blower sourced a selection of marble bistro tables for £50 each from Facebook Marketplace and paired them with a few plain black tables from Ikea. Seating includes secondhand chapel chairs she bought from an Instagram seller in Manchester, sent via shiply.com, an online business that connects you with delivery companies that bid to transport goods.'I managed to get 21 chairs sent to me for £70,' she says.
Shelves were stocked with affordable decorative items that complemented the coffee offering, such as mugs, small plates and breakfast bowls, which Blower found in charity shops. Then she invited the local community to come and experience the space.
'I thought it would last a few months, but people kept coming,' she says. 'I think a key selling point was that customers got to walk through part of our house to reach the basement. They loved seeing through the keyhole!'
In fact, it's been such a success that Blower is launching Resinn's first standalone store and café on separate premises, due to open in Sunderland in October.
The existing features
Prior to the renovation, Blower had no idea that there was a bare-brick fireplace and chimney in the basement. 'It was boarded up with cement, breeze blocks and horrible woodchip wallpaper,' she says. She stripped the wallpaper and chipped away the cement to reveal the fireplace and make it a focal point.
The basement's lime-plaster walls were left to shine, with Blower touching up any areas once damaged by damp with a coat of black paint. 'I left any original markings and shapes from earlier renovations on display,' she says. 'They tell the story of the space while creating a natural mural.'
Blower repainted the floor, which had been hidden beneath carpet and covered with glue, using an eco-friendly sealant from celticsustainables.co.uk. 'It contains natural silicone, which prevents the floor from cracking,' she says. The original windows and high ceilings remain intact.
The DIY hacks
Most of the renovation budget was swallowed up by paying for the installation of electrics and plumbing, along with the removal of the stud walls from the property's student-accommodation days. 'We couldn't afford to hire tradesmen for everything, so we taught ourselves how to build items through research and YouTube tutorials,' says Blower, whose own DIY tutorials have since amassed a loyal following on Instagram.
The new timber staircase, which leads down from the hallway to the basement, is a case in point. It was designed and sketched by Blower and built by herself and Ohrstrom.
'It's the bare bones of a staircase,' she says. 'There are no fancy bits or trimmings.' She coated it with Osmo Oil, which helps enhance the natural character of the wood while making it resistant to stains and scuffs.
Minimalist twin-slot shelving, a wall-mounted system consisting of uprights with two vertical slots and brackets that slide into the slots, feature throughout. Blower fitted these with birch plywood shelves from B&Q (diy.com) that she stained black. 'It's so much cheaper than buying new shelves, and this way you can achieve the exact look you're after,' she says.
The 'yarden' space
As Resinn grew in popularity, Blower extended the space into the courtyard. 'It was originally a concrete slab, with one mud patch and an old waste pipe sticking out of the ground where there used to be an outhouse,' she says. Blower couldn't afford to dig it all up and re-landscape, so she poured gravel over the concrete and converted the mud patch into the main flowerbed.
Blower built her own planters with reclaimed timber from a local reclamation yard, and filled them with evergreen plants for low maintenance. Plant pots from Home Bargains were grouped together for a container-garden effect and to create depth. 'It also means I can move them around whenever I fancy a change,' she says.
Finally, Blower mounted ladders on walls to support climbing plants, and built a dining table using recycled fencing. 'Making a table may sound scary, but it's just a frame with a top and four legs,' she says. 'YouTube is a wealth of information. Just start small.'