By Molly Malsom

Published: Tuesday, 15 March 2022 at 12:00 am

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Just as he’d begun to despair of ever finding a suitable new home, antiques dealer Robert Amstad realised the solution had been staring him in the face all along. ‘I’d been looking at all these tiny box-like properties and then, one day, while I was visiting a friend who lives in a place with lovely spacious rooms, it dawned on me that I wanted somewhere like that.’ And then the penny dropped, he says: ‘I already owned somewhere with exactly that kind of space.’

Robert’s business, Hastings Antiques Centre in St Leonards-on-Sea, was based in a three-storey Georgian townhouse. ‘I’d bought it nearly 30 years earlier and the whole building was filled with antiques. You couldn’t move in there,’ he recalls, explaining how he’d grown blind to its potential. ‘It was so full of stuff, I’d stopped seeing it.’

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Having decided he could easily run the business from the ground floor and convert the upper storeys into the spacious home he’d been looking for, Robert edited his stock and sold off the pieces he no longer wanted at a local auction house.

With the space empty, he was then confronted with layers of ill-considered additions to the original interior – badly divided rooms, old carpets laid on top of even older ones, and walls clad in layers and layers of paint, plywood and wallpaper. ‘I wanted to get right down to the bare bones, so I stripped it all back, ripped the roof off, pulled up the floorboards, and removed and restored every window.’

As work progressed, Robert unearthed original features that, in 30 years of owning the building, he had never seen before, including part of a wall that dates back to Norman times. ‘The church next door is the third one to have been built on that site and this would have been part of the original church,’ he says. ‘You can tell which stonemason shaped which stone because they used their own tools and so their markings vary. It’s incredible to have history like that in your own home.’

Above a false ceiling in what is now the sitting room, Robert discovered the original ceiling rose, which he painstakingly removed, restored and reinstated. The work was lengthy and hard. Both staircases were stripped by hand, each one taking two weeks, although he was careful not to take the process too far. ‘I wanted to leave a sense of their history, so I stopped before they were perfect,’ he says. ‘You have to know when to stop restoring – you have to listen to your gut instinct.’

It wasn’t all plain sailing, however. When the specially cut glass for the conservatory roof arrived, it was too big. ‘That was probably the worst thing that happened in the whole project,’ says Robert. ‘But you just have to get over it and work out a solution.’ In the end, he decided to extend the wall on which the roof would sit. ‘Funnily enough, it actually looked better.’

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Despite the stress of such mishaps, Robert admits that he enjoyed the renovation, not least because of the sense of achievement at the end. ‘The nicest thing was getting so much for so little money, especially when compared to what I would have got if I’d bought something else.’

Once the work was finished, Robert whitewashed everything, ‘just so I could see it properly, and it evolved from there. I didn’t really plan anything.’ Although he was influenced by the country houses he visits through his work as an antiques dealer, Robert also wanted the interior to feel fresh and modern. One of the most striking rooms is Robert’s upstairs bathroom, which is painted black with gold and white accents. ‘The whole room is inspired by the painting hanging in there. All of the colours in the bathroom are taken from that one artwork.’ Black is a distinctive and bold colour, he concedes, ‘but sometimes you have to take risks and I think it works.’

When it came to furnishing the apartment, Robert didn’t have to look too far to make a start: a French daybed in the living room, which doubles as a spare room, was picked up on a local house clearance job, as were many of the rugs, pots and small pieces of furniture. Cushions and soft furnishings came from a neighbouring interiors business, Shop, while other items were bought at fairs and flea markets in Germany and France, which Robert visits in the course of his work. The overall look is a charming mix of old and new, the aesthetic a blend of French country and English country house.

‘Somebody said my flat looks like a New York loft apartment and I can see that, too,’ he says. ‘I see so much stuff in my job, but I know what I like and what I want in my house. It’s about how you want to live. My home is really just me in building form,’ he laughs. ‘I think that’s why I feel so comfortable here.’

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