A DIFFERENT ANGLE
An inventive approach has resulted in a brave new look for this London house
discovering a new angle sums up cheryl and andy’s approach to their london home, where they have looked beneath its formal Victorian style to reveal something sharper and altogether more intriguing. their masterstroke was slicing decisively through the house’s traditional core, inserting sections of glass and crisp lines, so that the once buttoned-up 19th-century space now flows with renewed energy.
cheryl and andy have succeeded in solving an architectural puzzle that has lain at the heart of this Fulham home since it was built. it’s not obvious at first, but the floor plan of this handsome double-fronted house is more trapezium than rectangle – probably the result of bickering Victorian builders when the land was divided up. it means that the house’s two exterior side walls gently angle inwards, meeting in a point at the end of a wedge-shaped garden.
Given his work as a property developer, andy was unfazed by this. ‘i’m used to finding solutions to unusual problems,’ he says. cheryl was less blasé. ‘the irregular angles were a bit scary and complicated, and had put off several other buyers,’ she says.
but neither andy nor cheryl are in the habit of shirking a challenge. and andy’s philosophy – to work with the problem rather than trying to disguise it – has paid off. ‘in the end, the wall angles were the driving force behind the house’s redesign and architecture,’ he says. the tapered, triangular floor spaces seemed to be crying
out for a new central staircase. this, in turn, divided the lower-ground floor into two zones – kitchen-diner and family room, where the couple’s sons like to play.
the angle-oriented design is echoed in the details. the marble island in the centre of the kitchen area was made so that each long side is parallel with its exterior wall, making a subtler mini trapezium. ‘if we’d gone for a standard rectangle, it would have drawn more attention to the disparity,’ says andy. instead, the lines of the island and the walls recede into a point in the garden.
andy’s boldest move was removing two walls and a ceiling to create the impressive kitchen-diner. the glass balcony and balustrades over the double-height atrium mean it’s now a ‘ dramatic dining space, where light fills every corner’, says cheryl.
the family-friendly interior’s sense of fun is augmented by pops of neon and flocks of pink flamingos. Upstairs, colour is also worked into geometric fabrics, rugs and throws that reference the sharp lines and angles that are part of the house’s dna.
in the family room, there is a set of framed photos that show ‘ before’ and ‘after’ images of the house. the previous lower-ground floor is unrecognisable. ‘it was dark and dank, with tiny windows,’ says cheryl. ‘the only things that glittered there were layers of tin foil stuck on the walls, which was rather intriguing!’ but these days, there’s no doubt that andy and cheryl’s gleaming, glass-enhanced update is a winning transformation.