Part four of Anna Halloran’s home  renovation blog about the derelict house in Marston she is transforming into her dream home (with only £30,000 to spend and six weeks to do it in):

When we first bought the property, we dreamt of ripping up the carpet to discover stunning Victorian floorboards but once we did, we had very different views on what we had found.
For weeks we debated about what we should do; whether to keep and restore the floorboards or start afresh with new walnut flooring but after realising we only had two weeks left of the build, it suddenly dawned on us that the decision had to be made one way or another.
Following a very informative meeting with ACH flooring, we decided to restore the existing boards but as they were not able to meet our timeframe, the task fell on us to do them at the weekend.
After filing in the quite damaged, ancient planks, we hired a sander and began the tiresome task of sanding them down.
After two days of sanding, the entire house had changed colour with a new coating of dust.
Then, after four hours of vacuuming, we finally managed to begin the painting.
We decided that, rather than staining the wood, we would opt for a more contemporary finish of a cement grey, which has worked wonderfully. I wanted to trial a grey theme throughout the majority of the house, so after testing multiple paints from Farrow and Ball, I settled on Strong White for the walls and Pointing for the woodwork.
The brilliant thing about this paint is that it looks completely different, depending on the light in each room.
In the brighter, more light-filled sitting room, it’s a subtle off-white, which will work well with my colourful cushions but in the slightly darker dining room it’s a blue grey.
In the master bedroom I opted for Joa’s White on the walls and Pointing on the woodwork.
Joa’s White is a really warm and inviting tone, the exact feeling I wanted to create in our bedroom.
The difficult task of demolishing, clearing, rotavating, raking and levelling our garden fell to my much better (and stronger) half Guy.
After four skips full of rubbish was cleared from the garden, he began the task of levelling it.
Against professional advice we decided to lay the first section of lawn prematurely, as ideally you would lay in the autumn, but we were keen to be able to make use of at least one section of our garden straight away. 
The wildflower meadow, trellises, borders, vegetable gardens and the wonderful water feature designed by my amazing mum, Monique Halloran, are all strictly on the back burner until some wetter weather.
Anna Halloran is director of Oxford-based interior designers Spiering & Co.