Leap of faith
Renovating her first property gave one woman the chance to develop fresh skills and start a new life
Renovating a property helped one woman start a new life
Searching for a new house should be a wonderful event, but for Suzie Freeman it could hardly have been worse. Newly single, she was keen to start afresh and buy her first property in London, but her budget was small and she faced one disappointment after another. ‘The estate agents were cruel,’ recalls Suzie, who works at a local Crisis home for teenagers. ‘They took me to the worst places – places you wouldn’t dream of living in.’
Eventually she was shown a property in Tulse Hill, south east London, which had been on the market for two years. The onebedroom flat is on the top floor of a four-storey, detached building that dates back to 1876. ‘It had been rented out for a long time, so it needed a lot of love. But I could see its potential and I needed something to focus on.’
On the day she got the keys Suzie began dismantling the interior. ‘I started ripping off the plasterboard in the bedroom immediately, uncovering the original Victorian lathe and plaster beneath. Within three hours, I’d created a room full of rubble!’ she says.
Despite having no previous experience, Suzie did most of the renovations herself. ‘I had a £10,000 budget, and a couple of friends – a plasterer and a plumber – to guide me along the way,’ she says. After taking off the plasterboard, she borrowed a hammer drill from a friend’s husband and unblocked two chimney breasts herself. ‘The drill was the size of me!’ she recalls. ‘In hindsight, it was brave, but stupid. But then, I’ve always been the kind of person who gets on with something and then looks afterwards to see if it’s done correctly.’
In the bathroom a double layer of terrible tiles was removed and a dingy grey suite was replaced with a new one from eBay. Mismatched units in the kitchen were swapped for bespoke, oak-veneered cabinets. Suzie did the tiling and decorating herself, took up the grim carpets, painted the floorboards
and walls and exposed the bare-brick walls. ‘I spent a bit of money on the kitchen. The rest was done on a shoestring,’ she says.
Aside from the bespoke kitchen, the entire contents of Suzie’s flat, from the fireplaces to the reupholstered three-piece bergère suite, were salvaged from skips or purchased from auctions and secondhand shops. The shelf in the bathroom, for example, was rescued from a skip in west Dulwich. ‘It was a box for an external awning,’ she explains. ‘The guys throwing it out thought I was completely mad, but they helped me cut it down to size and fit it into my van.
‘I’ve always been a maker, and drawn to saving old junk. I like the mystery of the history in things,’ she explains. It’s a fascination that goes back to her childhood, when she would spend afternoons rummaging through her grandmother’s collection of buttons, haberdashery and handmade lace. ‘There was something about it all that really sparked my imagination,’ she recalls. ‘It still does.’
Initially Suzie tried developing an upholstery business from home called Suzie Covers It, and shortly after moving into the flat she went part-time at the children’s home to enable her to be able to focus on her new venture. ‘My work is important, and I didn’t want to leave, but it was taking a lot out of me,’ she says, ‘so I went part-time and took a leap of faith with my business.’ However, although it has thrived, Suzie found working from home too messy and after a while found a studio to rent nearby.
Today her flat is a refuge from the demands of her job at the children’s centre as well as a creative space where she can experiment with new ideas. ‘It’s a sanctuary, really,’ she says. ‘I deliberately don’t have a TV and I’m on the top floor, overlooking the treetops, so I don’t hear the traffic below. I have everything exactly as I want it and I’ve made so much myself – it gives the place a really great feel.’