Welcome TO MY HOME

A BIT ABOUT ME

I’m Laura Cave, 42, and I’m currently on a career break. I live with my husband, Alex, 42, children Rowan, 10, and Rufus, eight, and our cats, Coco and Ghostie. I Instagram at @after_the_fire_2018.

WHERE I LIVE

We live in a four-bedroom Victorian detached house in Dartford, Kent.

WHAT I WANTED TO CHANGE

We had only just finished renovating the house before we had a fire in 2018. But when we first moved in nine-and-ahalf years ago, it was fairly mundane with cream walls and laminate flooring, and a lot of the original features had been stripped out.

HOW I MADE IT MY OWN

We put all the original features back, such as cornices, ceiling roses and the open fireplace. We decorated all the bedrooms, lounge, kitchen and extended the ground floor to create a large living and dining space. After the fire, we had to start all over again. As we were on a very tight budget and timeline, we decided to repeat the same schemes in most of the rooms.

MY FAVOURITE PART

The open-plan lounge. The blue sofa was our first step towards adding colour, and since the fire we’ve added so much more colour and pattern.