MODERN BOHO On a tight budget, a Victorian terraced home has been given some laid-back urban style
Ever mindful of their tight budget, one couple has given a tired Victorian terrace some laidback urban style with fresh paint colours and vibrant accessories
Imagine discovering a house for sale not just in your favourite location, but on your dream street, and within budget. What more could you possibly ask for? How about a house that doesn’t require too many alterations to transform it into a modern family home… ‘Rich and I have lived in this area of Manchester for the best part of 12 years,’ says entrepreneur and former journalist Nikki Graeme. ‘And this particular suburb, with its friendly, arty vibe, always felt like home to us, so we were very excited when a house on our favourite street came up for sale six years ago.’
As well as loving its location and the affordable price tag, the couple agreed that this attractive Victorian house had lots of potential for Nikki to create her vision for a relaxed yet cool modern home – without having to spend a fortune. ‘I lose hours leafing through magazines and scrolling on Instagram gathering ideas and inspiration,’ she says, sharing her renovation and parenting ups and downs as @winging_it_mum.
‘Luckily, this place was structurally sound, needing just a few improvements and a bit of a refresh. While we started researching all the costs for the bigger jobs on the wish list, I got on with the decorating. I often like to rejig furniture, or paint a room on a whim if the mood takes me, so I knew it would be best to start with a neutral palette for the walls. My all-time favourite shade is Strong White by Farrow & Ball – it’s the perfect grey-white that feels cool and modern yet works particularly well in period homes; for interest, I painted the skirting boards and hallway panelling in Purbeck Stone, which is still neutral, but stronger and a little warmer,’ explains Nikki.
‘I do love bold colours, too’, she adds, ‘so I inject some personality with vibrant shades, clashing designs and textures by using chunky throws, cushions and artwork. I like to find unusual pieces without dipping into the renovation budget,
so a lot of my new acquisitions have been sourced inexpensively from online sites such as Ebay and Etsy.’
Nikki hasn’t just been decorating since they moved in, however – as well as raising their three children, she’s been project-managing the improvements that have made a huge difference to how the couple feel about their home. ‘When we bought the house, the kitchen had a bay window at the end with just a side door to the garden,’ she explains. ‘One of our first jobs was to block up that single door, and replace the windows for double doors so that we can walk straight out to the garden; it has also flooded the kitchen with more light, and we have a much better view from the house.’
More recently, after they’d replenished their savings, the Graemes concentrated on the biggest jobs on the list: they installed new kitchen units and knocked down the wall dividing the kitchen and the dining room to create the open-plan layout they have now. ‘We would have loved to extend the kitchen into the side return at the same time,’ says Nikki, ‘but our budget didn’t stretch to that, especially when the company who built the kitchen messed up the finish and we had to pay new craftsmen to complete the job to the standard we were after.
‘Replacing the floor was a bigger investment than we’d anticipated, too,’ she continues. ‘The joists were rotten, so they had to be replaced at an additional cost.’
Fortunately for their budget, Nikki and Rich were able to keep most of their furniture from their previous home, except for an old leather sofa. ‘If you put your sofa opposite the chimney breast in these Victorian houses, it really shrinks the room,’ says Nikki, ‘so we wanted to position it in the bay window to keep the rest of the room as open as possible. Despite our best efforts to squeeze it in, our much-loved Chesterfield was just too big, so we sold it and bought a smaller one – in a gorgeous blue velvet - that fits beautifully.
‘We’ve realised that sometimes you have to make sacrifices to make your new home work,’ she continues. ‘And by making little tweaks here and there, as and when we could afford them, the whole house now works much better for us, and it definitely feels like the relaxed sanctuary I was after.’