It was far from the house of her dreams when Martine Veniez bought a run down semi in 1998 for £65,000.

In the aftermath of her divorce she desperately needed a home for herself and her two teenage children and it had to be a case of any port in a storm.

Thanks to her determination to get over the trauma in her personal life and build a new life for her family, her story has a happy ending though not surprisingly the turnaround in her fortunes didn't happen overnight.

It took emotional resilience and years of hard slog but the journey back to believing she would come out on top began when she took up a scouring pad, dipped it into bleach and hot water and set about getting rid of the layers of dirt that waited for her in the house she'd bought in Woodfield Road, Princes Risborough.

"We couldn't move in for a week due to the disgusting state," remembers the petite Parisian who's lived in England for 20 years. "There was no flushable toilet and no hot water. The hot water tank had burst causing a lot of damage. The house and the garden had hardly been touched for 11 years."

Her initial priorities, apart from sorting the plumbing, washing down the walls, floors and ceilings of every room in the house and cleaning a small square of the kitchen just large enough to enable her to prepare meals, was to redecorate the bedrooms for her son and daughter to give the teenagers their own space.

After that, she began the renovations in earnest to turn a bog standard three bedroom semi into an enviably stylish home. She estimates she paid more than £20,000 for the materials alone but labour costs were kept to a minimum because she did most of the work herself. And this is a woman with gritty determination who never does anything by half and never asks for state handouts. After the first year, she had to squeeze the renovations into the free time left to her after doing a part-time job.

"I had to redo all the plumbing," she reports. "I had a plumber to do the big work and I did the rest. I had done some plumbing work in my previous house but not to that extent. I learnt on the spot. It was difficult.

"I put in a new bathroom suite upstairs and built a new shower room downstairs. I hired a builder to do the stud work, then finished it off myself.

"The lounge had Artex on the ceiling. I had to get that off. There was a horrible brick fireplace. We pulled that out and now there's a nice modern slate fireplace. There's wood on the floor. It is nice and beautiful.

"The plumber did the major plumbing work when I refitted the kitchen but I installed the washing machine and dishwasher and turned the old boiler area into a cupboard.

"The kitchen opens onto a terrace which I made in such a way that it could become a conservatory and dining area at some point in the future.

"All the walls in the house are now insulated," adds 54-year-old Martine who shed a stone while she laboured every hour of the day to build the home that gives her such justifiable pride. "I've even insultated the garden shed. I got rid of the old garage which had been filled with rubbish and I put up a shed which I insulated so it can be converted into an office. I redesigned the garden and had it fenced so that it is secluded and private."

She admits: "There have been days of despair and days of joy but now only the joy remains as the house has been a way to prove to myself that I could do something to ensure my children a home."

Martine's present happiness is also due to her new husband. Last year she married a widower she met two and a half years ago. "He changed my life by being near me day and night," she smiles, "and he's wonderful at DIY, too."

Martine's three bedroom house is for sale through the Princes Risborough office of Jennings & Partners for £220,000.