PROJECT NOTES

Homeowners Dawn Rogers and Sam Khomsi Project Flat renovation Location East Sussex Build time May – Jul 2016 Size 120m2 Flat cost £172,000 Build cost £60,000 Value £305,000

Suppliers

Builder AW5 Site Management: 07956 672412 Surveyor Stuart Radley Associates: 01273 420606 Plasterwork restoration G Stoodley: 01424 436201 Antique doors John Wiseman Antiques: johnwiseman.ph9test.co.uk Kitchen island Symphony Kitchens (Rotherham): symphony-group.co.uk Carpets Alternative Flooring: alternativeflooring.com Vintage Murano chandeliers Artinlife (Italy): artinlife.eu Lighting and furniture ebay: ebay.co.uk

The Floorplan

Although the main living room and kitchen area has remained the same size, the bedroom and bathroom have been made a little smaller in order to increase the size of the entrance hall. “Our priority was to create the right hallway to appreciate the views when entering the living room,” explains Dawn.

Ichose St Leonards on Sea as it’s one of the few seaside towns with high-quality Georgian architecture that is also affordable,” begins Dawn Rogers, describing the location of the stunning flat renovation she and partner Sam Khomsi have recently completed. “When I started looking in this area I was amazed by the Georgian properties here — I adore historic buildings. We looked at about 50 properties. Some had been badly done up already and others were missing their original features. Most looked stunning from the outside, but awful inside.”

A year later, Dawn and Sam found just what they had been looking for in the form of a first floor flat in a Georgian building. “We loved it from the outside and although it was in bad condition inside, it had 4m-high ceilings, original cornicing and stunning views — the bare bones were there,” says Dawn.

Sam, a builder by profession, took on the project, staying in nearby Hastings with his team for the six weeks it took to complete the renovation.

“We drew up the floorplans ourselves,” says Dawn. “We knew what we wanted — in fact I had already bought furniture before we had even found the flat!” Planning permission was not required for the renovation, so work could begin straight away on the one bedroom flat.

All the plaster had to be stripped from the walls and ceilings before any work could begin on remodelling the spaces. Four hundred bags’ worth of debris had to be carried down the stairs; a rewire was also required, along with new plumbing.

“We have kept the main living space, which was already open to the kitchen, the same size,” explains Dawn. “However, there were lots of partition walls dividing up the hallway, bathroom and bedroom. This meant we had a tiny hall and a long thin bathroom — it didn’t work.”

All of the partition walls were removed before the bedroom and bathroom were made slightly smaller to allow for a bigger hallway. “Our priority was to create the right hall so that we could appreciate the views when we went into the living room,” says Dawn. Enormous double doors – 3.8m high by 1.8m wide – now lead into the liv- ing space from the hallway, not only giving Dawn the dramatic views she was after but also allowing access to those views from the bed in the bedroom that lies on the other side of the flat. “We found the doors at a salvage yard — they came from a French château and we spent hours carefully cleaning them to retain the original paintwork and mouldings,” says Dawn. “We have doors from the same château, smaller in size, on the bedroom and bathroom.”

While Sam carried out all of the building work, Dawn also took a hands-on role. All of the original timber and plasterwork mouldings had to be cleaned up by hand. “Some of the cornicing needed some restoration work,” says Dawn. “We found a local specialist who made replicas of some of the missing floral decoration.” So important were the original features to Dawn and Sam that when they realised the sagging ceiling would have to come down, new insulation put into place and a new ceiling installed and plastered, their main concern was not to damage the original cornicing.

When it came to the new kitchen, Dawn had firm ideas of what she wanted to

achieve. “I didn’t want the kitchen to look like a kitchen from the lounge side,” she explains. “The original kitchen was unbelievably horrible — just a small, old, green formica thing in the corner.”

Dawn sourced the white cabinets from Ebay, shunning kitchen units in favour of dining cabinetry. “I bought four separate cabinets, sprayed them white and had mirrors fitted to the back.”

The island unit that separates the kitchen and living space was part of an ex-display kitchen. “The island has been cut in half. We dropped a sink unit in the middle to make the island double the length so it was big enough for the washing machine, hob, sink and dishwasher.” On the living room side of the kitchen, bespoke black gloss shelving means that “it ceases to be a kitchen from that side,” says Dawn.

Damp was a huge, yet expected, problem in the flat, too. “The old external render was damaged and had let damp in — but it also came in under the front window,” says Dawn. To prevent further damp, the balcony has been fitted with marble floor tiles which slope away from the window to allow rain to drain off.

Now complete, the flat is an amalgamation of Dawn’s eclectic taste and the handsome Georgian features that first drew her to the property. Bold furnishings, unusual antique finds and quirky contemporary pieces all work together against a backdrop of soaring ceilings and oversized windows and doors. When speaking of her decision to install black stone flooring and paint the small shower room entirely black, Dawn says: “If I am going to have a small space, I may as well make it dramatic!” A statement that could, perhaps, quite easily apply to the flat as a whole. H