After 20 years working for a fashion agency in Hamburg, Christine Pink needed a break from the rush of the city. ‘I loved to spend my holidays by the Baltic Sea; I enjoyed the peace and tranquillity, so whenever I could, I’d rent a cottage.’
It was on one of those holiday trips, back in 2007, that she came upon an old house with a ‘For sale’ sign. ‘It was love at first sight,’ she says. ‘I didn’t even have to look around; I wanted to buy it immediately! Initially, I was only planning to use it at weekends.’
The location of the former smithy, built in 1856, couldn’t have been more idyllic: surrounded by fields as far as the eye could see, and a garden filled with mature magnolias and plum trees. It was clear the property had huge potential.
Christine enlisted her father to help with the renovation and together they replaced dated electrics and plumbing; took down walls; exchanged old windows for new ones in keeping with the age of the house; and transformed the old hayloft into a sleeping gallery.
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Next came the decorating, which involved stripping bright orange and yellow paint from the walls and refreshing them with soothing shades of white and pale grey. In the kitchen, terracotta floor tiles that had been laid in the 1980s were replaced with salvaged stone bought at auction. ‘We had to remove the mortar from every single piece,’ Christine remembers. ‘That was quite a business, but so worth it.’
A highlight of the house is its old thatched roof, which was not only still in good shape, but also had a little surprise for Christine once she’d moved in: ‘Lying in the bathtub, gazing through the window, I suddenly saw ducklings falling from the sky! Turns out a duck comes here each spring to lay her eggs in the thatch. As soon as the ducklings are old enough, they jump from the roof and into the garden pond,’ Christine laughs.
The original plan to only use the house at weekends was soon abandoned, and Christine moved into the cottage permanently. ‘I liked it here so much that I didn’t want to go back to Hamburg after the weekends,’ she says.
And once the cottage became her permanent home, she felt it was a bit too small, so in 2010 she added an extension using historically appropriate materials. The newest part of the building blends seamlessly with the rest of the property, and is now a spacious living room, with a wood-burning stove and a little reading gallery above.
The permanent move to the Baltic coast also necessitated giving up her career in fashion. Since then she has become a full-time landlady, looking after several other cottages that she has renovated and now lets to holidaymakers. In 2020, Christine’s partner Oliver moved in and they married two years later.
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Together they have embarked on further conversion work, which saw a second living room converted into a dining room and the attic becoming a study and guest room. Downstairs, an old stable window was fitted into the wall between the kitchen and dining room, to improve the flow of light.
Today, the whole house is furnished in a Nordic brocante style, filled with many finds from flea markets and antiques dealers from Denmark, the Netherlands and France.
Meanwhile, outside, a new terrace was created to better enjoy the view of the fields that runs, uninterrupted, to the horizon. It’s a pleasant place to sit, sheltered from the sea breezes, surrounded by low hedges that look as though they have always been there.
‘During the summer months, the garden is our second living room. We eat and live outside and throw garden parties for our friends,’ says Christine, adding that spotting that ‘For sale’ sign all those years ago ‘was the best thing that happened to me!’
To view Christine’s holiday homes visit derarnisser.de
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