{"id":5828,"date":"2022-03-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=5828"},"modified":"2022-05-06T15:13:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T13:13:39","slug":"renovation-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/2022\/03\/29\/renovation-qa\/","title":{"rendered":"Renovation Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Renovation <\/span>
Q&<\/span>A<\/h2>\n\n

Leanne Kilroy shares her journey transforming a dilapidated terraced house in Tufnell Park into a sublime family home\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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The exterior of Leanne\u2019s home<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

What\u2019s the story of your house? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

It\u2019s a Victorian mid-terrace, and by checking old censuses we discovered it was built between 1881 and 1891 and was occupied by the same family for at least the first 40 years of its life. When we bought it last year, it was a boarding house with seven bedrooms and two kitchens, and was in desperate need of TLC. The old lean-to kitchen and the two bathrooms were especially dire \u2013 full of mould and quite literally falling to pieces. Despite this, we fell in love with the grand proportions, the stripped woodwork and \u2013 most of all \u2013 the ornate original cornices and ceiling roses.<\/p>\n\n

What are the main changes you\u2019ve made? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Over eight months, we completely redid the ground floor, adding a side-return extension and a threemetre extension to the original lean-to kitchen. We created an entirely new kitchen and dining area, added a bathroom, coat closet and access to the basement. We also created a large doorway between the two sitting rooms, and turned the dark and forgotten middle room into a library with built-in bookshelves. Other work included transforming an unpleasant old bathroom into a home office with vaulted ceilings, exposed original beam and brick; and changing the old boarders\u2019 kitchen into a family bathroom with double sink and pink grouted tiles.<\/p>\n\n

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The side-return extension houses the new kitchen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Have you been able to salvage any of the original details?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

We took great pains to make sure none of the original cornicing fell during our rewiring of the ground floor. The builders screwed it into the ceiling joists above, just in case. We also saved all the original high skirting and reused it where it had previously been removed.<\/p>\n\n

The seller had removed all the old cast-iron fireplaces from the top floors and stored two of them in the basement. We purchased these from her and I set to work trying to remove layers of red and gold paint from them. In the end, I surrendered and we sent them away to be chemically dipped. With a coat of iron paste they look good as new, and we reinstalled them in the second-floor bedrooms. Though they\u2019re merely decorative, they add so much.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Was it easy finding fittings to suit the house\u2019s history and aesthetic?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

I found lots of antique fittings on eBay, including the massive double doors connecting the two sitting rooms and the French doors to the pantry. My father worked in the Scandinavian antiques trade for nearly 40 years, so my parents\u2019 basement has also been a trove of old latches, escutcheons and the like \u2013 we used glass door knobs found in my parents\u2019 house on three doors on the ground floor.<\/p>\n\n