A new adventure at Drummond Hill

After 30 years of living in a house that was built back in the 1800s, retirees Kenneth and Aileen, decided it was time to move to an efficient, low maintenance home.

We decided to move for a few reasons, one to downsize, but mainly because our home, as beautiful as it was, endlessly needed refurbishment and was very expensive to run. It was time to move on. We had done our stint of running an old property and we wanted to escape to something new that didn’t require costly upkeep.

We’d been keeping an eye out for a flat in Inverness, but everything on the market just wasn’t what we were looking for. We were keen to find a home with a little outdoor space, large windows, open plan living, and, as I’m a townie at heart, it needed to be close to the city. Then we stumbled upon Drummond Hill. It had everything we were looking for and we knew Tulloch is a well-established, reputable building company, and one of the good things about buying a new property is the fixed price.

We’d never lived in a new build before – we had gone from one extreme to another ­– it was a new adventure for us. The grounds in Drummond Hill are lovely. There are lots of old established trees, and I’m looking forward to seeing the refurbishment of the old house take place. Drummond Hill has a lovely rural feel yet we’re only a 30 minute walk to the centre of Inverness.

We went for a top floor 2 bedroom apartment from The Birdhouse Collection. It has a large open kitchen and lounge area which is nice to have. Entertaining is much nicer when everyone can comfortably be in the one space together. We get fantastic light into the home as well – it really is beautiful, especially sitting out on the balcony in the morning.

Our kitchen is a bit of a talking piece too. We wanted to add a bit of colour and went for yellow units with a black quartz worktop. The kitchen designers, Ashley Ann, did a great job and seemed quite enthusiastic about the choice too, I imagine it’s not one that is selected very often! We’re really pleased with how it’s all come together though.

We’ve found downsizing quite liberating, clearing out things that we don’t need anymore. We’ve got three cupboards in our new apartment which is great and we plan to shelf them to fully utilise the space. 

Moving was a dramatic change for us – but in a good way. Not only did we move to a completely different style of home, we changed around 99% of our furniture to more modern styles. What we had would have looked awful in this home! We’ve been able to keep lots of our art as our Tulloch home has plenty of good wall space to accommodate this.

It’s such a difference going from an old home to a new one, particularly in relation to the heating. We’ve not needed to put it on yet as the apartment is south facing and gets the sun all day. It feels warm and retains the heat well. We’re certainly not envisioning paying the same for our energy bills as we did in our older property!

There are only a few of us living here at Drummond Hill so far, but we’re looking forward to other neighbours moving in and getting to know them. We actually already knew one of the other couples that are now our neighbours before we’d bought so there is already a nice community forming.

As I say, it’s been a dramatic change and the start of a new adventure, but the time was right for us to move and it’s already starting to feel like home.