WALKED AWAY’

With a specific wish list, Julie struggled to find a property that had it all, so she took on a project, and has never looked back

inding the perfect property wasn’t easy,’ says Julie. ‘My husband Adam and I were looking to upsize, so that our home could double as an office for his company.

‘He has a small team that comes to work with us, so it was crucial to find somewhere with a home office and loo somewhat separated from the rest of the house. This was the very first property we viewed at the start of our search, and it was just a 10-minute walk from our home at the time. We liked that it had the office space that we wanted, but otherwise it didn’t exactly blow us away. It needed a lot of work, and neither Adam nor I were sure about taking on such a huge project, so we put this property in the “maybe” pile, and kept on looking.

Over the weeks that followed, we viewed a number of houses. Each had its merits, but none met our criteria in terms of the all-important office space, so we decided to give the first property a second chance, and came to view it again. To our surprise and relief we found that we actually really liked it, despite all the work it needed. It offered more space and potential than anywhere else we had viewed, and we could see it really suiting our lifestyle, so we took the plunge.

FRoom rejig

We started renovating the house right away; it needed so much work we didn’t want to waste any time. We wanted the house to have a better flow and a more functional layout, so we hired a builder to help reconfigure it slightly. In the bathroom we had part of the wall removed and a new one built to make it feel more spacious, and elsewhere we had a wall built to divide one of the reception rooms in two, so that we could have a snug for Tv-watching and a separate home gym. Our house was built in

1918, which means there’s no shortage of character and features – something I absolutely love about it. The downside, though, is that it’s a little higgledypiggledy, and some of the rooms really weren’t fit for modern furniture. This means that, unfortunately, we had to sacrifice a feature or two for more harmonious living. In the master bedroom, for example, we had to remove a really beautiful old fireplace, so that we could get our bed positioned comfortably. On the whole, though, we did our very best to preserve the property’s history.

While the building work was going on I spent every day chipping away at the decor. Every wall, and every ceiling for that matter, had layer upon layer of wallpaper that needed removing. There were at least three papers piled on top of one another per wall. Every room was a grubby cream-magnolia colour that I hated so, room by room, I painted the walls in shades that we love; blues, greys and whites, and added decorative wallpapers here and there. We also