CINDERELLA HOUSE
Jess Alavi-ellis (@cluelessrenovators), a TV news journalist, bought a rundown three-bedroom Victorian terraced house in north London with husband Darius.
Why this house? Buying a ‘done’ house was never an option for us financially. This one had a poorly laid out footprint and a long, unloved garden but there was lots of potential, and lots of our friends live within walking distance.
What condition was it in? Far worse than we first thought! Many problems were masked by the previous owners’ furniture. There were a few hours of tears when I realised the scale of what we had taken on – but by the end of day one we were knocking down an internal wall.
What have you done to it? Pretty much taken the whole house back to brick, re-wired, re-plumbed, moved a bathroom, added a utility and downstairs loo, knocked down an existing extension and replaced with a new one and a side-return and completely landscaped the garden.
How has it gone? Apart from building the extension, we’ve done most of the work ourselves, so it’s been a steep learning curve! We spent every evening and weekend of the first year doing DIY, but realised that wasn’t sensible or sustainable, so now we do most weekends but rarely evenings. We’ve had a lot of help from my parents and also watched lots of Youtube videos. Instagram has been a great resource too. Late nights – covered in dust with no kitchen or bathroom and no clean room to sleep in – certainly made us wonder what on Earth we thought we were doing. But sitting now in our window seat, planning how our baby (on the way) will grow up in this home we’ve built together makes us feel overwhelmed by love and pride!
Any low points? I got quite poorly at one stage – I’m sure burnout was a factor – and that taught us a renovation can’t be done overnight. We also had a period last year where only one of us was earning, which was pretty terrifying as, at the time, we had no roof. But we made compromises and somehow got through it.
The high point? Finishing the kitchen! We lived in the house without one for three months. Turning on the oven for the first time was amazing!
What interior look did you want? At first we were totally overwhelmed, but then we started to think about how we wanted to feel in each room. We based the colours on our memories – the terracotta lime-wash of the garden room is our honeymoon in Mexico, the dark greens of our bedroom are the hills of the Basque country on our
wedding day... every colour brings us joy.
What do you know now that you wish you had known before you started? Everything is more expensive than you think and hardly anyone talks about cost, which makes it really hard to know if the price you are paying is fair. We are trying to change that in our own way by sharing costs on our Instagram and on an IGTV series – Transparency Tuesday – that we started with designers, trades and renovators.
So, let’s talk money... The whole thing has cost us £125k. The extension cost £60k; the kitchen from a local cabinet-maker cost £20k including appliances. The bargain was our £1.09 Ligne Roset sofa bought on ebay. The fabric was trashed but the sofa was in perfect condition so Darius’s mum reupholstered it for us.’