Alexandra Road, Poole
2017
Read about the project
See how it was before we started…
2017
This house was taken on as a renovation project, a keenly priced probate, with huge potential for re-sale being in a popular road in catchment for the local schools. Don’t fall into the trap i did though! I fell in love with it once it was done, having designed everything exactly as i would want it.. & decided to stay!
The house was untouched since 1949 (I know this because I found newspapers under the floor boards from November that year (See my blog)! At the time they were advertising electric ovens about to hit the market!)
This was the perfect blank canvass to work from, and I found buried treasure behind walls that had been covered to hide beautiful period features. I found I was able to embark on one or two upycle projects, and restore some of these features back to their former glory, and are now used to create gorgeous focal points, such as the fireplace in the master bedroom (see my blog)
I remodelled the house, and extended the ground floor to create a substantial home office, and an open plan kitchen dining area with large doors opening onto the garden that once housed a huge Marley building.
This project was not without its problems, such as one of my tradesmen miscalculating his dimensions when dropping the ceiling to allow for new spotlights (needless to say he is not in my team any longer!), and thus finding the patio doors did not fit! And under-estimating the amount of work that was needed to make good the floors, ceiling and roof, to current building regulations, once a huge fireplace and the entire surrounding wall was removed from the ground floor right up to the roof. (We already had two fireplaces where I installed log burners which are used almost on a daily basis, but needed to maximum living space). So be careful when calculating your costs!
The house being north facing was painted in French Grey throughout, a lovely warm colour that showed off this period property to its best in my opinion, and put aged chestnut oak flooring throughout the ground floor, to give it a lovely rustic feel. (Painting darker properties in white doesn’t always help to make them feel brighter.. sometimes it can end up just feeling cold)!
As money for this project was starting to run out towards the end, I went for made to measure wood venetian blinds as an alternative to shutters (£20 per metre vs £200 per square metre), and ended up with Ikea office shelving at £28 for a 2m bookcase vs about £260 per metre for a carpenter to come and build something to fit, and then paint it.. I also managed to find 8 brand new dining chairs that a restaurant had over-ordered and were selling off for very little money, that matched my scheme perfectly! These are all things that can be re-visited later on!
There are lots of money saving tips and simple up cycle projects! For info and advice call…