THE SUSTAINABLE HOME
Sebastian Cox on his eco-friendly renovation project
In the excitement of buying our first house in Margate, we dreamed up plans for making our mark on it. But what we overlooked was the seemingly latent stuff which needed removing and disposing of. It seems most interior-design projects start with a skip. Sometimes they necessarily fill with the rotten and decayed, but all too often they are loaded because a house ‘needs updating’. We wondered if we could tackle the conversion of our house without a skip. A skip-less renovation would be an achievement, wouldn’t it?
We began by focussing our grand creative plans through the lens of asking ‘to what extent can we work with what’s here?’. Inevitably, even as a skip-less project there would be some trips to the tip, but we could minimise them, repurposing materials or leaving things be rather than stripping back.
Astonishingly, the bulk of the unworthy material was made in this century. Victorian features stand strong, while the cracked plastic bath, collapsing kitchen carcasses and bafflingly permeable plastic front door all are destined for landfill or recycling; not because they look tired and cheap, but because they are functionally failing. Ripping out a plastic bath pains me – if only the previous owners had bought better I wouldn’t be adding to the waste system. I promise myself that future owners won’t have to do the same.
So how do we make sure the things we add to our house last? The answer to this tricky question has to look beyond physical longevity. The vinyl grey wood-effect floor in the kitchen probably had another couple of decades left in it; parts of that roll of plastic will sadly still exist in centuries time. But what it lacked from the moment it was printed was aesthetic longevity, or the ability to develop any kind of what the academic Jonathan Chapman calls ‘emotional durability’ with its owners. Knowing there are original Victorian pine boards underneath, we couldn’t keep it.
We’ve settled on a plan shaped around integrity, repairability and truth to materials. We are upholding the integrity of the original house by preserving and restoring its original features. Everything we’re adding will be designed with the same emotional durability that the house possesses, but it will also be entirely re-purposable. The kitchen, for example, will have solid-wood doors that can be repaired or reused or should retain enough value to be sold if necessary. The one existing modern feature made from solid material was a marble fire surround added to a 1970s electric fireplace in the living room. We carefully removed it and reused it in our bathroom, learning to cut and work stone to do so in a way I hope future owners may re-work our solid fixtures and fittings. Nothing will be extravagant in expense, but purposeful in effort. We’re making as much as possible ourselves from inexpensive materials.
This gives us the go-ahead to make bold statements with colour on surfaces, such as walls or solid furniture, that can be reversed, and to also be considered when adding to the fabric of the building. We only include that which serves the needs of future owners and our environment. With another baby due this spring, this tight brief will help us focus.